Magic Rock
Common Grounds
A beer with “Common” in the name? We couldn’t not have it on at Common! That would be nuts! Can you imagine the outcry? Magic Rock, Huddersfield’s finest, kindly obliged our invitation for an impromptu launch of Common Grounds via twitter and the next thing we knew we were pouring it on cask and keg. That’s how easy it can be, you say something and it happens. Amazing. Common Grounds is a triple coffee porter brewed in collaboration with Huddersfield coffee roasters, Dark Woods. Seven different coffees added at three different stages during the brewing process.
Woah woah woah are you nuts. TRIPLE coffee porter? Guys, that’s too much right? I wanna drink beer and “chill”, I don’t wanna prang about the house sped up on late night caffeine. Beer is supposed to make you fall over and fall asleep, right? Not climb walls and talk about what you were like as a kid to strangers. Does coffee beer get you hyped? To be honest I’ve never noticed a significant lift but then I’ve never really blazed enough of a coffee beer trail throughout any one evening. It certainly doesn’t make cigarettes taste like chocolate like red bull and vodka does.
For the record, I didn’t find this beer intense at all. Oh there’s coffee alright but it’s not so bitter a load as you might preconceive on reading the TRIPLE coffee subtitle. Oh it’s bitter alright but it’s sweet too, choccy and hazelnut tones. It’s a smooth drinker. Dare one say quaffable? I’d rather not. For the record I prefer the cask version of Common Grounds to the keg. The keg rather passed me by, maybe I was thirsty. My 2/3 of cask hung around a little longer and was absorbed, at leisure, mid afternoon. I thought the coffee was more pronounced on cask.
It’s pretty near a dang cert that any beer Magic Rock produce these days is going to score high on the humdinger meter. Their best effort in v recent times, IMHO, was the Against The Grain collabo, Rhubarberella (rhubarb braggot). I enjoyed this at the impeccable Magic Rock Tap and left fully loaded with a six-pack of the recently canned, Cannonball IPA - available at all good beer shops/bars alongside Grapefruit High Wire and Salty Kiss. High times to be a can drinker. Common Grounds doesn’t rip it up entirely for me but it’s a more than fine change of pace and a coffee beer that I’d be more than willing to take the drink-5-pints-and-see-if-you’re-buzzing-test. I just need a sponsor. Guys?
Find Common Grounds at Common while stocks last!
Magic Rock “Common Grounds” / 5.4% / Common / £3.80 a pint / cask
