Regular Coffee Imperial Cream Ale

Review Date 2/12/2025  By John Staradumsky

  Style: Coffee Beer   Brewery: Carton   Country: USA   State: New Jersey   $ Per OZ: $.44 (B)   ABV: 12%

Carton beers are in Georgia! How do you like that? it’s true, beers from Carton Brewing of Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey are now sold in Georgia. I found this out upon a recent trip to the Stout Brothers beer market in Woodstock, Georgia. It was a few days before my 20^th wedding anniversary, my wife semt me there with her credit card as a gift. This, of course, was a rather risky decision on her part, but hey. She married me. What’s risker than that?

For my part, I think I showed remarkable restraint. For example, I only bought a can of Carton Regular Coffee Imperial Cream Ale. They were pouring it from draft and I could have bought a crowler, but 32 ounces of this behemoth seemed more than I should tackle in one setting, so I settled for a can. You see? Remarkable restraint.

Carton says:

A Classic Jersey-ism is “regular coffee.” Here when you order a “regular coffee” at any place you trust to make a pork roll and cheese you get a paper cup of coffee with “milk and 2 sugars” rather than a “black coffee that hasn’t had the caffeine removed.” We added a coffee blend from our neighbors at Fair Mountain Coffee Roasters to a high gravity golden cream ale, contributing our “milk and 2 sugars” for an elevated version of classic plain coffee. Drink Regular Coffee because running over a black beer with coffee is no way to get things done.

Growing up in Rhode Island as I did, a regular coffee was pretty much the same thing. Down here in Georgia, if you ask for a regular coffee, you will only get a bemused stare.

Carton Regular Coffee has an alcohol content of 12% by volume, which is pretty potent indeed for a cream ale. This is why, as I mentioned earlier, I did not go for the crowler, much as I was tempted. I paid $5.50 for my 12-ounce single, and I did not see it in 4-packs. Total Wine sells it for $20.99 that way in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The beer has 20 IBUs. My can had no freshness dating.

Carton Regular Coffee Imperial Cream Ale pours to a pale blonde color with a thick creamy head and a nose of coffee grinds freshly pulled from the pot. Taking a sip, the beer is medium to full in body, rich and potent as it flows over the tongue. The coffee grind notes the nose promised are here in full blossom, and the beer is creamy and smooth and warming with alcohol in the coffee bitter finish.

A sipper for sure, much like a piping hot regular coffee. I very much enjoyed this, and would absolutely buy it again.

Glad I tried it?  T

Would I rebuy it??