Black Butte Porter Float

I finally did it. I tried a porter float. For those of you who have never lived in Oregon (there are probably precisely zero of you), Black Butte Porter is a splendid porter brewed by Deschutes Brewery in Bend, OR. It's named after Black Butte (pictured above). Whenever I buy a six-pack of Deschutes beer, I brag to the cashier that the beer comes from my home town. They usually just think I'm weird. But I was at Trader Joe's recently and it turned out that my cashier had lived in Bend back in the seventies. He had even skied the cinder cone (this is the cinder cone on the side of Mount Bachelor, after which Deschutes Brewery named their Cinder Cone Red, which is available now through sometime in the fall).

Anyway, I always thought that a porter float would be good. I had some support for this theory:

* McMenamin's serves a Terminator Milk Shake, which contains their Terminator Stout.
* Coffee-flavored milk shakes and ice cream are good.
* Black Butte Porter has a distinct coffee-ish flavor.

I think you'll all agree that this pretty much proves that a Black Butte Porter float would have to be good. So I finally tried it. At first, I didn't put enough ice cream in, and it just tasted like there was something wrong with the beer (kind of like when you don't put enough ice cream in your coffee--if you do that).

But I didn't lose heart. I just scooped more ice cream into the frosty mug and stirred the thing up really well (by the way, it fizzes a lot).

And you know what? It was terrific. I highly recommend it.





-Allan Friesen