Well, my plan to try out a couple of interesting beers each night for the six nights kind of fell apart. Primarily this was down to too many nights when my all-day meeting schedule ran over into evening activities. (For the record, the official count was 57 hours of scheduled meetings over 5 days, and that doesn’t include the social activities in the evenings.)
So I decided to use my more-or-less empty night to tonight to catch up a bit. I made it through three big bottles of beer, all relatively high percentages–I’d keep going, but I do want to get up early in the morning and prudence dictates wrapping up the exploration and settling in with that new James Enge book instead.
So, on to the beers…
The first was Longtrail Brewing‘s Imperial Porter.
I had high expectations here–I’m not sure why, but the understated classic label design seemed to suggest quality to me. What I found was what might be a perfectly good porter, but one that was not at all to my taste. In fact, if you imagine the possible variations within the “porter” category as a spectrum with “everything I like” at one and and “not to my taste” at the other end, this was pretty much at the other end. Note that this doesn’t mean it was a low quality beer, but rather that it wasn’t the kind of porter that I enjoy most–and it’s still better than most see-through beers.
If I had to qualify what it is that I don’t like in a porter, I think I could say that it was a “metallic” taste on the finish, and a noticeably “high alcohol” feel in the mouth. I’m not sure how other people perceive that first thing, but it seems to be relatively common among the porters that don’t work for me, especially the higher alcohol ones–I suspect it has something to do with carbonation. The second thing is also highly subjective–depending on how the beer is constructed high alcohol beers can be very drinkable, but if I can immediately tell that something has a lot of booze in it, rather than having that be part of a well-woven fabric, it throws me off.
Anyway, not a success.
The second was Smuttynose‘s Baltic Porter.
The story here was almost a repeat of the first. You can insert almost all the same comments here.
That “metallic” element was particularly strong here. If my palette were more refined I could probably speak more eloquently about this.
I was getting a little depressed at this point, and then all of sudden my salvation came thundering into the room like a mad russian monk who couldn’t be killed…
You see, the third beer was North Coast Brewing‘s Old Rasputin XII.
I first tried the regular version of Old Rasputin a couple of years back–after looking for it for around a year–and quite liked it. I’ve picked up a box of it now and again in the intervening years when the opportunity presented itself.
So, when Julio presented me with the opportunity to try a special limited edition annual version of it, aged in bourbon barrels, I was all over it. And it’s a good thing too, because that was some damn fine beer. Everything I want in a stout, with a strong layer of vanilla notes over the top, and soft hints of bourbon in the finish. Yum. The alcohol warmth is notable, but not out of place–blending nicely into the creaminess of the stout, and slightly hidden by that vanilla. And it just got better as I worked my way through the bottle.
If I had another bottle of this in the room right now, I would certainly, and imprudently, drink it tonight.
Heartily recommended, and I will certainly be stopping on the way home to secure another bottle–I’d get more if the big move weren’t coming up so imminently, but I don’t want to have to move even more booze.
I probably won’t get another shot at the XII, but I’ll certainly be keeping my eye for the XIII next year.
