Let’s say you have to spend a couple of weeks away from home on a business trip. You’re scheduled into all day meetings, and are dining with colleagues. Then when you finally get back to the hotel, you have to dial into a meeting with the Australian office, where people are just getting to work.
How do you make it much, much easier to take yet another meeting?
Well, obviously you change to your comfy clothes, but besides that?
If you’re me, you open a large bottle of Ølfabrikken Porter, put a bunch of lovely chilled strawberries in a bowl, and set out two of Godiva’s new crème brûlée truffles, and then take the call. Put the phone on mute, and enjoy the combination during all the parts of the meeting when you don’t have to talk.
Yes, that’s much better.
This porter is a much bigger hit than either of the things I tried last night. In fact, I might bring a couple of bottles of this back to Hello City with me–I know at least one smiley guy who would love to try it.
I picked this one out, I admit, because it was Danish and had good label text:
Ølfabrikken (The Beer Factory) is an experimental brewery on the vibrant Danish beer scene.
…
Our Porter is inspired by the weighty Baltic porters common in Scandanavia. This task is slightly smoky, with vinous notes from brown sugar, leading to a long, rich finish dominated by chocolate, licorice, and coffee flavours from our special blend of roasted malts.
I’m not sure I would describe it as chocolate, licorice, or coffee. To me it tasted like a really good porter–my failure on the florid description thing will keep me from being the next Michael Jackson, I’m sure. If you want lots of descriptive commentary, you can find a ridiculous amount of it in the (currently) 30 reviews at beeradvocates.com. Me, I’d say it was weighty, and solid, and it tasted great, both initially and on the relatively quick finish, with a perfect blend of the barley richness and the burnt/roasted bitterness. It’s 7.5%, and it goes down like Guinness (which runs 4.2%) so there is a potential for trouble. It looks just the way I like my beer to look: black as night, and opaque. The head is a little less creamy than I like on a stout, but is comparable to most porters.
It combined very nicely with both the strawberries and the truffles (and, it probably goes without saying, those two went well with each other) but I could also see it being a very good barbecue beer, or beer to accompany some strong cheeses.
As an aside, I went to read the description at the company’s site, which appears to be exclusively in Danish. I found this:
Ølfabrikken Porter er en mørk og kraftig porter, der er ristet uden at være brændt eller bitter.
I glasset præsenterer Ølfabrikken Porter sig tyktflydende og kulsort med et cremet café au lait farvet skum. Aromaen er intens med tørret frugt, røg og vinøse noter, der fører til en kraftig smag af kaffe og bitter, mørk chokolade suppleret af en lang karamelsmag fra blandet andet brun farin. Der er tilsat røgmalt, uden at det gør øllet decideret røget, men blot tilføjer dybde og kompleksitet til de mørke malte.
Intertran‘s best guess at this is:
Ølfabrikken Ports is a dark and energetic ports , there’s roasted except that være burnt or bitter. TO the glass introduce Ølfabrikken Ports themselves tyktflydende and coal-black by a cremet café au lait colored foam. The aroma is intense by dried frugt , smoke and vinøse annotations , there guide to a energetic aroma from coffee and bitter , dark chocolate supplied from a tall karamelsmag from mixed different brown farin. There’s promise røgmalt , except that that doing the beer decideret the smoke , however just adding depth and kompleksitet to they dark malte.
That’s slightly less penetrable than Blinkenlights, but combined with the English label text, you can kind of see what it must mean.
