Godspeed Goodies--Kemuri

Billed as a “Godspeed Style Porter”, Kemuri is a 4.7% dark ale brewed in Toronto by the gang at Godspeed Brewery and sold in smoky 355mL cans. Those details are slightly supplemented on the Godspeed website, which classes this as a smoked porter.

The beer is onyx with a tan head. It features a slightly peaty aromatic note, along with a whiff of sweet roasted malt. The flavour mimics the nose, but bigger: it’s quite smoky, rich in maltiness, and, at the back end, has an acrid tang of burnt espresso (but pleasant). 

Godspeed’s take on the smoked porter is basically as you’d expect from a brewery that (in my opinion, at least) thrives by focusing on attention to detail and subtlety. Unlike some smoked porters that bring the campfire energy to 11, this one has a malty, smoky character that is understated. And unlike some other SPs that supplement their flavour with big booziness, this one dazzles with a complicated and complex profile, at a low-alcohol rate. Truth be told, I typically enjoy a smoked porter with a bit more heft, but this offering from one of Toronto’s finest is a real winner at 4.7%. A bit more emphasis on bitterness to drive balance would have been my only note.

Rating: 9.0 out of 10.