It's amazing the things we find in life after striking out at something else first. Whether it's a job, a relationship, a tough victim who JUST escapes your elaborate ruse, or a beer, sometimes it pays to misfire a time or two.
Such was the case last night.
Sandy and I went to a new place (to us) called The Foundry, the third in a bar triumvirate that dominates the corners of Pennsylvania and Westport Road. The menu looked intriguing (read: extensive), and they have a pretty good selection of beers on tap. Wednesday night out!
Sandy ordered McCoy's Hogpound Brown Ale (more on this in a later post), and I went with McCoy's Peach Wheat Beer. My love of fruity beers is well documented. As fate would have it, they had moved out the Peach Wheat in favor of a seasonal beer (what's more summer appropriate than a Peach Wheat beer?). I decided to mix it up for my second attempt and try Boulevard's Bully Porter. Fate struck again (think of it as the repeat of the Beethoven 5 exposition if you're a total nerd like me), as they were out of this, too. Our server asked if I was interested in trying another porter, this one from a bottle. I was in, because at the very least I assumed it was an available option if he recommended it.
He brought me a bottle of Baltika Porter no. 6. I type Baltika because I don't know how to type Cyrillic, which is what the label used. Baltika is a Russian brewery based in St. Petersburg, and they number their beers all together (which is to say they don't have six different porters).
Baltika Porter is tremendously dark, somewhere between dark brown and black (kind of like the soul of the Mother Land), with a nice, thick foam that lasts a pretty good while. It smells incredible; some chocolate here, some coffee there, and the tiniest bit of fruit flavor buried in there somewhere (a smarter man than I says it's plum, which seems plausible enough). According to their website, Baltika makes this porter with both light and dark malts. If I knew what that did to the beer, I assure you I would tell you, but suffice it to say it worked. For a beer that is a full 7% alcohol by volume, it is incredibly complex, sweet, satisfying, and balanced.
What a treat. I ended up having it with nachos, but only because I had made up my mind on nachos before the first two strikes on beer (for the record, I tend to judge a bar's food on my first impressions of their nachos, for reasons I cannot fully explain). It didn't really work as a pairing, but who cares? The nachos were good, the beer was amazing, and the company was terrific. I'm speculating that it would have been a better pairing had I ordered one of the delicious looking burgers or a steak, or attempted to reconstruct the Soviet Empire.
It is no exaggeration to say that Baltika Porter has vaulted to the top of my list of favorite porters. It is no exaggeration to say that Baltika Porter has vaulted to very near the top of my list of favorite beers. I've never seen it anywhere, so I'm guessing it's pretty hard to find, but I will be on the hunt from this point forward.
Baltika Porter no. 6. Go get some.
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