Time flies when you’re having fun, they say. I guess I must be having fun then, as it’s been 12 years now since I first had a beer from Nantucket, Massachusetts’ Cisco Brewers. It hardly seems that long, but it’s true, that beer being a Captain Swain’s Extra Stout.

It’s also been close to that long that I’ve been living here in Georgia, which of course explains why I haven’t been drinking as many Cisco beers. Recently, though, they starting showing up on the shelves at local Total Wine outlets, giving me the chance to try them again.

First into my shopping cart was the beer under consideration today, Cisco Moor Porter. I paid $7.99 for a 22-ounce bomber bottle, a few dollars more than I paid for a 750 ML bottle of Captain Swain’s Extra Stout in 2001. This seems to be a brown porter of strength 7% alcohol by volume. Cisco describes this beer as:

A strong porter almost on the verge of being a stout, with a rich chocolatey/coffee flavor.

No specs are provided but their brewer does say this about the beer:

"We brew this with a complex blend of four roasted malts and a dark crystal malt from Belgium. It's a single-hop beer using all Northern Brewer hops from the Northwest. I love a full, flavorful dark beer so I went all out and pushed the envelope of the porter style."

Finally, some more puffing from the label:

“…Chocolate! Licorice! Cocoa! The rich, smokey black malt flavors punctuate the creamy, expansive mouthfeel. An approachable sweet, soft dark beer that will have even the neophyte wanting more…er, moor.”

All of this quoting, you see, is important because it set my expectaions rather high for this beer. Did Moor Porter live up to the hype? Let’s find out, shall we?

My bottle of Cisco Moor Porter pours to a jet black color with a massive thick and rocky tan head formation and a heady chocolate-coffee nose. Taking a sip, I immediately notice the beer is a little thin in body but does have the chocolate and cocoa (if not the licorice) the brewer promised. I get smooth and creamy chocolate pudding notes (like mom used to make on the stove, complete with with the skins on top). The beer has a subtle roastiness to it, though not an aggressive one.

The body thins as the beer progresses, and though I got a gentle hop character at the last I was looking for more to make this beer more interesting. An average and still enjoyable enough beer, but I’ve had much better. Instead of leaving me wanting Moor, it left me looking for Moor. At $7.99 this is not a beer I would buy again.



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