CO Baltic Porters

Not too often i stumble across baltic porters. Luckily i live near Jacks Abby and they have the framinghammer series.

i think they are playing with some new variants this year. OP hit me up if you might want to trade down the road

 

Depending on what you read, it seems that all "true" ones should be lagers. Michael Jackson coined the term in the 70's to differentiate the locally-brewed Baltic versions of an Imperial Stout (which had all become lagers by that point) from the UK and UK-inspired ale versions.
Like a lot of things MJ wrote, the BJCP tried to codify it...but they didn't hard-code it for lagers since those beers were once ales. A Baltic porter that is warm fermented probably should be called an imperial stout unless they're lagering it after the fact. In that case, it's a throwback to when the Baltic versions were alternating different yeasts. Can't say I've had any that claim that, but there's no reason it couldn't happen.
That's as much as I can piece together from some historical articles.
Something like 75% of the terms and styles we use originate from Michael Jackson trying to describe the beers of the world in one common language. It's pretty amazing because most of has stuck and remains at least mostly true.

 

I wrote the first draft of the Baltic Porter guidelines for BJCP. It included ales mostly to recognize Carnegie Porter, a Swedish beer with a flavor profile more aligned with the Polish, Czech, etc that comprised the core of the style. There may have been others we identified as well, but my notes and memory are lost.

 

I have a few sources I tend to look at. Garrett Oliver's Brewmaster's Table actually has a ton of historical stuff in it. All of MJ's books, obviously. Ron P and Martyn C both post here (usually in the European forums) and have beer history blogs.

I don't really keep up with the latest and greatest places popping up, but I dig the historical beer stuff.

 

I should add that the writings of Lew Bryson was a major source, or at least influence, if I recall correct.

 

Here is an old thread that kind of shows where we were 13 years ago.
http://hbd.org/brewsandviews/messages/15516/18066.html?1064424688

The links to my old historic brewing web site are long dead unfortunately.

There was really only one us example we knew of at that time, Perkuno's Hammer that Lew was involved in. We also suspected that some of the eastern European breweries were adding sugar, so a lot of early home brewed attempts did that. Also, my original recipe used a cold steep of the dark grains. I love that, a classic example of tricks we all used because of our limited ingredients. Now with the wide variety of Cara malts and other tremendous base and specialty grains, it is easier to capture the European flavors without stunts.

To bring this back to Colorado, I am pretty sure the first CO Baltic was brewed by John Hanley at Rock Bottom South Denver. John was an extremely talented brewery and great friend that left us too early. John was also friends with Kevin Delange, Dry Dock, and Dry Dock continued to brew John's recipe after he died. I know the recipe cost a fortune to brew, but was delicious. I do not know if Dry Dock is still basing their Baltic on John's recipe or not, but I am sure the spirit is still there.

 

DD's old Hanley's Baltic Porter is in my all-time CO top 5. Cool to learn where it came from.
I don't have any idea if anything they're making is based on that anymore, but that was a killer brew 6-7 years ago.

 

Bierstadt's winter seasonal is going to be a lager-style Baltic.

 

Grist Brewing in Highlands Ranch is releasing a Baltic Porter called Basilia Baltic Porter in six-packs. They are selling the first six-packs at the brewery this Saturday at their third anniversary party.