Tasting - LowTech Brown Porter v4

The Mrs' and I have tasted several pints of the LowTech Brown Porter v4 brewed with WLP005 and I can say with certainty, the changes haven't been great.

Appearance

Pours from the tap very dark, with a light beige, somewhat airy head.  The head hangs around for a minute or so before settling back into the glass with a fine lace.  Subtle lacing throughout the pint. When held to light, beautiful garnet highlights shine through, on the fringe of being opaque yet very clear. 

LowTech Brown Porter v4

Having brewed this Porter on several occasions now, I've become accustom to the appearance.  I'd say it's on par with previous attempts, perhaps a touch darker on account of the crystal malt change.  For v4,  I dropped CaraMunich 1 entirely, subbing in a larger percentage of CaraAoma. 

Aroma

Very disappointed.  v3 had aromas of toasty bread, carmel and chocolate.  For v4, the Chocolate is very slight, mainly roast/coffee with perhaps some raisin?  The lovely toasty bread is gone gone gone.  I am guessing this quality was from the Melanoidin Malt used previously and dropped from the v4 grist?

Yeast brings nothing to the party here, completely washed out by the brew's roastiness, more Stout like than Porter.  Overall, quite generic.

Taste

To keep carbonation low, I intentionally pulled the Co2 on this early.  Carbonation is low and appropriate. At it's warmest setting, the keg fridge pours @ 5 degrees Celsius.

The flavours are young, quite generic.  Roast is prominent with just a hint of sweetness on the back end.  On a positive note, the beer is well attenuated, not cloying.  Unfortunately, nothing else really jumps out.  Previous versions have had a toasty bread quality that I absolutely loved, I am not getting this anywhere. The caramel notes have also been replaced with a harsher coffee like flavor, the Chocolate is present but somewhat muddled.

I think that the Chinook hops were a poor choice, the beer is too bitter, too harsh.  I need to drop the IBUs on the next version and stick with a hop lower in cohumulone content.

Drinkability

Not much more to say other than generic.  I think I need to go back a version on this brew!  5/10