Beer styles cover a vast spectrum, starting from light lagers and stretching all the way to dark Imperial stouts. Of the many great winter beers out there, the Baltic porter should very much be on your radar. This twist on the traditional English classic offers a bouquet of flavors that match the chilly season perfectly.
Born in the north and east of Europe, the Baltic porter has a deserved fan base. The beer serves as a great intro to the dark end of the spectrum and is all kinds of generous when it comes to flavor and mouthfeel. This winter, seek some out if you’re looking for something off the beaten path and full of character.
The history of the Baltic porter
Like a lot of great beers, the Baltic porter has a nautical history. Let’s go back the 1700s, when the English brought the porter to fame. These dark beers offered chocolatey notes and fared well at pubs, drink-right-away beers made popular by—you guessed it—porters in the cities and along the docks of Great Britain. Eventually, other countries caught on, especially those around the Baltic Sea. Here, temperatures were colder, so they brewed the beer in a slightly different style and added some heat in the form of alcohol to combat the weather.
Legend has it, Napoleon helped popularize the style after banning porter imports from England in the 19th Century. Other nations made version of the beer, like Baltic porters, and shipped them out. Baltic porters enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s, especially in Europe. Today, a number of domestic breweries make one, especially this time of year. They remain popular overseas and can usually be found seasonally in the craft sector here in the states.
How the Baltic porter differentiates from the dark beer crowd
What makes a Baltic porter Baltic? Generally, the beer is a bit stronger, able to withstand the ice-cold high seas of its namesake region. These beers are generally around at least 8% ABV and offer generous amounts of wintery flavors, like anise, cacao, coffee, fig, and more. The added heft is partly due to the significant malt bill, which leads to some of those darker tasting notes. Essentially, this is the winter coat version of a beer, lush and thawing to the bone.
These full-boded beers are smooth on the palate and, interestingly, quite clean in terms of build. A large part of this trait is owed to the fact that Baltic porters are cold fermented with lager yeast. That’s a major differentiator, as traditional porters tend to be made with ale yeast. Baltic-style porters are also higher in alcohol content, with longer finishes. Think of Baltic porter to porter as an impertial stout to stout.
Author Jeff Alworth calls Baltic porters “hidden treasures” with a lot to offer. “Many niche beer styles have lost market position because they’re timid or a little boring,” he writes in The Beer Bible, one of our favorite beer books. “Baltic porters are neither—they’re obscure because of the anomaly of the Cold War, and only now are they becoming better known to those who lost track of them while they remained on the other side of the Iron Curtain.”
A few to check out
There are some genuinely tasty Baltic porters out there. Some of our very favorites include the Alaskan Smoked Porter, a beer you can age for sometime. We suggest getting your paws on several vintages, aging the beer for a couple of years, and cracking the beers in a proper vertical tasting. Other great options include the riff from Buoy Brewing in Astoria, as well as the option from European-inspired Heater Allen in the Willamette Valley.
Also, be sure to seek out the Baltic porter from Sixpoint Brewery in Brooklyn. And, should you need one more option to fill the fridge this winter, be on the lookout for a fine option from Surly Brewing in Minneapolis. These are model citizens of the beer style, showing all the pros of the genre.
Try a Baltic porter on its own in a good tulip-shaped glass, or pair it up with some gamey meat (elk burger). The smoked versions do well will grilled foods and many of these porters are sweet enough to go with dessert, like roasted marshmallows or a still-warm snickerdoodle.
And if you can get to a bottle shop with a good international beer selection, be sure to try Baltic porters from Denmark, Finland, Poland, Ukraine, and more. There’s even a holiday celebrating the style, which started in 2016 in Poland. So, if you’re not doing anything on January 18th, raise one to Baltic Porter Day.
While we’re on topic, check out The Manual’s features on stout vs. porter and craft beer terms to up your brewing IQ. Here’s to dark beers during the dark nights of winter.
