Baltic Porter
Sound Brewery

 

 

Day 19 of the 2017 Advent calendar.
Now we're talking. Unlike the fizzy stout of yesterday, this Baltic Porter has got it goin' on!
Thick, black, sweet, flavorful. Complex. Perfect carbonation.
A great brewery-- I can't recall anything I've had from them that I didn't love-- and a great beer.

 

355ml bottle, day 19 of the 2017 Craft BeerAdvent Calendar. Let's hope that this one isn't bottle-conditioned, eh?

This beer pours a pretty solid black, with faint amber basal edges, and a teeming (ah, fuck) tower of puffy, finely foamy, and creamy brown head, which leaves some thick, streaky lace around the glass as it slowly bleeds off.

It smells of rich medium chocolate, bready and doughy caramel malt, some muddled dark stone fruitiness, free-range char, a hint of soured milk, and very subtle earthy, musty, and lit-up floral green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and bready caramel malt, a thin biscuity toffee sweetness, some reduced cocoa essences, mildly tart red berries, wispy smoke, anise candies, and more understated earthy, leafy, and floral noble hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite tame (given the opening theatrics) in its bored-seeming frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with a wee airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a tad around here. It finishes off-dry, the malt, chocolate, and fruity esters working well together after-hours.

Overall - this is a pleasant enough version of the style, sort of leaning in the direction of a stout, but maintaining a boozy lightness of being that I can accept as the real deal. Easy to drink, and thankfully not infected, the huge head just for show, apparently.