Los Naranjos Coffee Stout is the 3rd collaboration between Black Mesa Brewing and Elemental Coffee Roasters of Downtown OKC. For the past few years I’ve basically lived off of Elemental’s Purusha, so sign me up when a local brewery teams up with them for an adjunct. Black Mesa was nice enough to invite us to the launch of Los Naranjos at Elemental this week where we got to soak in the coffee shop vibe whilst enjoying this brew side-by-side with a French press of Elemental’s Sheer coffee (the bean is from La Hacienda Los Naranjos in Cauca, Colombia) which was selected to be the bean included in this stout. Alright, enough chit-chat, let’s get into it.

Company: Black Mesa Brewing

Location: Oklahoma City, OK (brewed at O’Fallon Brewery in Maryland Heights, MO)

ABV: 8%

Style/Description: Coffee Stout

Price: Unknown, but Black Mesa is shooting for a $10 price point (4-pack bottles)

Appearance: Pours a deep, opaque dark chocolate with a fluffy, tan head that dissipates slowly.

Nose: Deep roasted malts, dark chocolate, orange, and a cotton candy sweetness that develops as the pour warms.

Taste: The coffee is huge up front and is joined by big milk chocolate notes and a burst of orange. ‘Naranjos’ means orange, and that’s no shit because this beer is full of citrusy goodness. There is a great candy-like sweetness on the taste that is balanced out by the coffee, cocoa, citrus acidity, and deep roasty notes.

Finish: As the sweetness fades the malt and some great dark chocolate bitterness creeps in which serves well to compliment the citrus candy qualities from the taste, resulting in a really well rounded experience.

Overall: I loved seeing how the coffee presents itself in this stout. Drinking the coffee along side the beer really allowed us to break down those similar notes and figure out which aspects of the bean came out the most (hint: it’s the orange) and which were left behind. Along with the orange, the cacao in the coffee was accentuated, and the debittered black malt really let that velvety body come through. If you want to have the same experience, you can either try to sneak in one of these beers to the coffee shop, which we don’t recommend, or just get you some Sheer here, rock it at home, and take it into a bar that has Los Naranjos on tap. You’ll have to wait a bit to try this one at home though as these bottles won’t hit the shelves until the first of the year…bummer, I know.

Rating: 4/5