Alaskan Brewing Co. Alaskan Smoked Porter 2008
One of the few beers that I was really hot to try during our not-so-long-ago excursion out West, was the Alaskan Brewing Company’s Smoked Porter. I distinctly remember a few years ago when I began homebrewing and bought an issue of Zymurgy, there was an article in the back featuring a tasting of several vintages of the Alaskan Smoked Porter. I was relatively new to beer and brewing, and the concept of vintage beers was totally foreign to me.
Accelerate a few years forward, and while I’ve had the good fortune to sample a number of tasty beers, the Alaskan Smoked Porter has always stuck in the back of my head as one of those I’d like to try someday. Not an easy thing to do, since it isn’t distributed anywhere near our state, and we rarely travel out West. Thus it being one of the handful of beers that I was really looking for during our trip.
Alaskan Brewing Company first brewed their Alaskan Smoked Porter in 1988. Having opened their brewery in 1986, the smoked porter was one of their first attempts to recreate a style that had roots in Alaska’s brewing history. To produce the smoked porter they worked with the owners of the Taku Smokeries smokehouse in Juneau to produce the smoked malt. They used alder wood, a type of wood commonly used in Alaska for curing fish and other items. Alaskan Brewing Co.’s Geoff Larson wrote,
Alaskan Brewing first produced its smoked porter in December 1988. It was released as a single batch, and it was called Chinook Alaskan Smoked Porter (Chinook was subsequently dropped from the name). The inspiration to produce a smoked porter came from historical research conducted by Mary Larson on the breweries that were located in Alaska in the late 1800s and early 1900s…To produce a modern porter similar to that brewed a hundred years earlier in Juneau, Alaskan Brewery used the Taku Smokeries smokehouse. Work began by smoking malt for a porter recipe that then-Alaskan brewer John Maier had developed…They discovered that balancing the intense flavors of alderwood smoke with those of the beer was best achieved by using predominantly a cold-smoking technique…In this process, Alaskan uses wet alderwood with controlled and low temperatures of combustion…the malt is smoked and then dried at elevated temperatures that darken the malt slightly.*
The smoked porter has been vintage dated since 1993 when they began refermenting it in the bottle. This bottle is vintage-dated 2008, and rolls in at 6.5%.
The beer pours dark black with amber highlights. The nose is rich with wood-fire smoke, anise, cocoa and roasted malt. All in all, largely a mix of smoke and malt underscored by a hint of sweetness. The palate has velvety textured carbonation, conveying flavors of chocolate covered espresso beans, molasses, alder smoke – a pungently sweet smoke – , and just a trace of hop bitterness. The smoke becomes a bit more prominent and acrid on the finish, accompanied by flavors of smoke, coffee, and a trace of molasses. Much more bitterness on the finish than the palate, driven by the smoke and hops.
All in all, a great porter and it’s inspired me to brew my own smoked porter. The best thing about the Alaskan Smoked Porter is a) how the intensity and presence of the smoke increased throughout, and b) arriving at 6.5% meant that the beer conveyed loads of flavor without knocking you out.
*Quote from Smoked Beers, Geoff Larson and Ray Daniels, 2000, pp. 82-87.
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