John Labatt would be embarrassed. He may well be rolling in his grave as I write this. When I was in Montreal the last few days, I had a bottle of Labatt Porter. Don’t ask me how or why – I am not really sure myself.

I liked the retro label and I think I talked myself into by thinking “how bad can it be?”

Oops.

It was bad. Real bad. They call it a London Porter and it is meant to be a homage to the olden days of Labatt’s, who did actually brew a porter back in the day. Instead, is it just a sticky mess of rip-off pseudo-craft beer. It looked like a brown porter, with a medium brown presentation and not much head. The aroma is sickly sweet but overall fairly clean. No nut or chocolate notes as I would expect from a porter.

The first sip reveals a sugary sweetness a syrupy quality. The malt was indistinct and had a corn syrup presentation (in that the sweetness was uni-dimensional and lacking flavour – not that I tasted corn syrup). The body is far too thin for a porter, making the beer seem prickly. It was lager-like in that the beer was extremely clean and lacking fruity ale esters of any kind. It kind of disappears, except for the lingering sweetness.

My dominant impression? Cola. The beer tasted exactly like cola to me. A dark syrupy sweetness, prickly mouthfeel and a cloying linger. To my taste buds AB-Inbev has produced an alcoholic cola with this product. And maybe that is their intention; to put the “pop” in alco-pop.

I know I should have known better. I blame myself. Consider yourself pre-warned.