Baltic Porter
Beer Academy

The bottle may be unusual but the contents look picture-perfect: an inky black body topped with a mocha froth. Beer Academy Baltic Porter is so opaque it makes it almost impossible to write about; any reported colour or highlights would be an outright lie. This thing is like petroleum.

The nose smells rich and concentrated as a reduced balsamic. And it'd be every bit as sweet and syrupy too if not for a towering roasted maltiness that induces notes of chocolate truffle and ganache, Kahlua, licorice root, and Mexican mole cake (a spiciness likely the by-product of 9.3% alcohol, fortunately the only real presence of it). Smells damn fine.

The taste is a forceful and potent blend of equal parts black licorice, coffee, and chocolate liqueurs (albeit with less sugar and alcohol presence). There's little creaminess to counter all that bitterness but the profile is impressively balanced nonetheless; there's an inherent caramelized sugar/molasses-like sweetness and dry wood-like presence in the finish. Some nuts too.

Indeed, anyone who enjoys gourmet coffee or artisan chocolate should have no problem with this beer - it's roasty, rich, bitter, and offers similarly acidic (a sharp tanginess on the palate), ashy (like a sprinkling of soot over the tongue), and oily mouthfeel sensations. That acidic-ashy-oily trifecta makes for a rounded, robust, complete porter.

Beer Academy's mission statement is to impart the "knowledge, passion, and diversity of beer" and they tend to do a really good job at it; Baltic Porter is an especially strong offering that definitely showcases lots of all three. If they submit one beer to a competition this year this should be it - it'll definitely bring home some kind of medal. I'd give it gold.