Tag: Porter
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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Deschutes Brewing Co. Black Butte XXI
As much as I am a bit of a partisan for Hair Of The Dog, in many ways Deschutes Brewing Company symbolizes northwest beer for me. I’ve been lucky enough to travel out to Portland on two occasions and taste a handful of their beers, and have always been impressed by how solid their lineup was, and how top-shelf some of their offerings could be. But more than that, there is something intangible that I can’t put my finger on, and that makes me think of Portland and Oregon whenever I think of Deschutes.
This beer in particular was one that was high on my list of beers to look for during our recent trip out west. Deschutes released Black Butter XXI this past June, and as with all of their Reserve Series beers (a series that also includes The Abyss, The Dissident, and Mirror Mirror) it garnered a lot of attention after its release. And with good reason. Deschutes had taken their solid Black Butte Porter and kicked it up many, many notches.
The Black Butte Porter has been a feature in Deschutes regular lineup since their founding in 1988. They first released a pumped up version of it as part of their Reserve Series in 2008, naming it Black Butte XX in recognition of the brewery’s 20th anniversary. This year’s version nearly doubles the ABV of the Black Butte Porter, rolling in at 11%. The beer’s 55 IBUs aren’t shy, despite the additions of Dominican Republic cocoa nibs from Theo’s Chocolate, dry-hopping with 100 pounds of Ethiopian coffee locally roasted by Bellatazza’s Coffee, and aging 20% of it in Stranahan’s whiskey barrels.
In this case, the question is really: how do all of these ingredients play out in the finished beer? Will it be a train wreck of competing flavors, or a complex, layered beauty?
Black Butte XXI pours medium weight, dark black in color with chocolaty amber highlights and a thin tan head. Enticing notes of caramel, chocolate, coffee, roasted grains, and vanilla rise from the glass. With time and as the beer warms the caramel and chocolate become a bit more prominent, the roasted grains and coffee a bit more subdued. The palate has flavors of cocoa, raisin, vanilla, a touch of whiskey, espresso, and a pervading hop bitterness. The flavors come in waves, with the sweeter flavors, vanilla, cocoa, and whiskey, hitting the palate first, then giving way to the coffee, followed by the hops. The beer has a nice, velvety mouthfeel. The finish is very warming, opening up with hop bitterness that gives way to roasted coffee, anise, and caramel.
Did this beer live up to my expectations? Definitely. While I found the hop presence to be a bit clashing with the other flavors, this aspect lessened as the beer warmed. In fact, it really evolved in the glass, with the barrel aspect becoming slowly more prominent, but never dominating the flavors. The porter flavors of roasted coffee and grains, never entirely went away. I liked the more subtle blending of the flavors from the barrel-aging.
That being said, I shudder to think of how incredible a 100% barrel-aged version would taste. Wow.
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Founders Brewing Co. Porter
I find it almost impossible to pass up a newly released Founders Brewing Company beer, and so it was only a matter of time after the Porter was released earlier this Spring before I broke down and bought a few bottles of it. The problem was that the beer collection here had grown a bit overly large, and so I really wanted to work through some of that before adding more bottles. But then I had the chance to try the Porter on tap at the Dirty Truth in Northampton and my resolve crumbled.
On tap the Porter was so good. Surprisingly velvety body for a porter, and loads of coffee and chocolate flavors. And so not too long after that I came across a couple of bottles in a shop and snapped them up.
Just to be clear, the Porter is not a new beer from Founders. According to an interview with founder Dave Engbers, they had brewed a porter a while back, but a few years ago when the brewery reached capacity they decided to pull the Porter from their lineup. In 2008 they began brewing it once again, and this Spring released it in bottles for the first time in several years.
I’m not generally a big fan of porters, in most cases I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. But this porter has so much going on, so much going for it, similar to the Mayflower Porter it is hard to not really like this one.
The beer pours thick with a chocolate colored head that falls somewhat quickly. The color is opaque black and ruby-brown at the edges. The nose has is rich and enticing with elements of dark chocolate, roasted malt, rye bread, and a thread of smoke. The palate has flavors of roasted coffee beans, dark chocolate malts, cocoa powder, and a bit of caramel. The texture is soft and velvety, with enough carbonation to really carry the flavors well. The finish is initially bitter with roasted grains, then giving way to dark chocolate and caramel sauce.
I hate to say it because I’m beginning to feel like a cheerleader, but this is another great beer from Founders. In fact, given how much better their porter is than most others I’ve ever tasted, I think this is easily one of their best. In many ways this one bears more resemblance to other breweries’ stouts, which definitely lends it a lot of its robust personality.
If you have a chance to try this, don’t miss it.
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Mayflower Brewing Co. Porter
This weekend while I was out in western Mass. to lead a bourbon tasting at Amherst Coffee, I had the very good fortune to try a couple of Mayflower Brewing Company beers. I’ve known about Mayflower since their beers first came on the scene about a year ago, but I’d never actually gotten around to trying any of them. So I jumped at the chance to taste a couple, the Pale Ale and the IPA. Both were quite good, the IPA actually was very good.
I have to admit, I was surprised by their beers. Part of why I hadn’t tasted any of them was because when I first saw their lineup of beers I thought to myself, “Oh man another New England brewing company brewing English-style ales. Like we need another one of those!” Now, having tasted a few of their offerings, I realize that I was way too biased and missed a chance to try some great beers much earlier on. While Mayflower is brewing classic English-style beers, it’s quite clear that their head brewer Matt Steinberg has done a fabulous job of uniquely interpreting these styles.
The Pale Ale was very dry and clean, with subtle hops and malt in the nose and a big burst of fruit at the back-end of the palate. The IPA was excellent, the nose and the palate both full of citrusy hop flavor and mild bitterness, balanced by enough malt backbone to make a wonderfully drinkable beer. This is easily one of the best IPAs being made in New England right now.
And so as I drove home this afternoon I thought about all the great things I’d heard about their Porter, and so decided to stop and pick up a six pack to give it a whirl. First things first, I took a quick perusal of their website to look at the info for the IPA and the Porter.
The IPA has a BU:GU ration of 1:1, meaning that the number of IBUs (69) is equal to the number of gravity units in the original gravity (1.069, 16.8 Plato). They use Nugget, Simcoe, Crystal, and Amarillo, which explains the wonderful citrus and pine hop presence.
The info they give about the Porter indicates that of the four malts they use, one of them is chocolate malt, and another is peated malt! Peated malt is dried using a small amount of peat smoke to imbue it with a smoky character. Brewers will use this malt to add a degree of smokiness to their beers, and as far as I’ve seen its use in porters is pretty unusual. Beyond that, we know that the original gravity is 1.058, it has 5.5% ABV, and there are 33 IBUs contributed from Galena and East Kent Goldings.
The Porter pours a deep, opaque black. A thick head of tan foam slowly settles down to a thick persistent layer, leaving a trace of lacing on the glass. The nose has dark, roasted malt, hints of coffee, chocolate, and a trace of smoke. The palate is pretty dry, and lightly bodied yet sweetly viscous at the same time, with a fair amount of carbonation. The flavors open up with roasted malt, espresso, bittersweet chocolate, and a hint of brown sugar, all of which give way to smoky black coffee on the lingering finish.
I’m admittedly not normally a big fan of porters, but this is a very good, very flavorful beer that is eminently drinkable. Very enjoyable and I’m glad that I’ve finally discovered Mayflower’s great lineup. Since they’re not too far away, seems like the next step is to take a trip down there to visit the brewery. Stay posted.
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