Creature Comforts Koko Buni Milk Porter

Oh, dessert beers. So promising and yet, so disappointing. Maybe it’s a matter of expectations, but dessert beers usually leave me a bit overwhelmed. I love chocolate eclairs and cinnamon buns, so a chocolate éclair and cinnamon bun beer should be great, right? I like the idea of dessert beers, but in practice, after you spend more than a few minutes with a sugar bomb laden with candy canes and cocoa nibs, it just becomes a bit too much. Sort of like Ska music.

Koko Buni, a winter seasonal from Creature Comforts, sounds like a dessert beer. It’s a milk porter brewed with cocoa nibs, toasted coconut, vanilla beans, coffee…all of which sounds sweet, and it smells like milk chocolate when I pour it into the glass so I’m thinking I’m about to drink a candy bar. But I couldn’t be more wrong.

Sure, Koko Buni delivers huge milk chocolate notes up front, with a velvety mouthfeel, and then some sort of dark fruit kicks in (maybe raisins) before a wave of light, coffee bitterness sweeps through. After I take a few sips, the chocolate takes a back seat and the coconut steps forward, all nutty and subtle. That sounds like there are a whole bunch of sweet things going on in this beer, but I swear, Koko Buni is not a dessert beer by any means.