Smuttynose Baltic Porter; 2010 Big Beer Series #8

Baltic Porter is out in stores and bars now, so it seems there's no better time than the present to share some information with the blogosphere.

Smuttynose Baltic Porter

23° Plato

40 IBU

9.02% ABV

Malt:  Cargill 2-Row, Munich 20L, Weyermann Carahell, Crisp C-120, Baird’s Carastan, Crisp Chocolate, Crisp Black

Hops: Sterling

Yeast:  White Labs Old Bavarian Lager

The most unique aspect of our Baltic Porter is that we ferment and bottle-condition it with lager yeast, in the Eastern European tradition.  Smuttynose Baltic Porter, like all of our lagers undergoes a full cold-conditioning program, which goes longer than most because we don’t filter any of our beers.  Our lager yeast strain flocculates pretty well for a lager strain but it still takes time, so this beer has plenty of age on it (at least a month and a half). 

Like any new additions to our Big Beer Series, Baltic Porter started out when we looked at what sort of big styles were being brewed by others but that we weren’t brewing.  We already had the usual suspects, Imperial Stout, Barleywine, Wheat Wine, S’Muttonator Doublebock and so on.  Baltic Porter seemed like a great way to do something else dark but we wanted to find a way to put a twist on it.  In researching/tasting Strong Baltic-style porters, we saw that a number of the European ones were fermented with lager yeast, because that’s the yeast they already have in their brewery.  Most brewers know that it’s easier to keep your number of yeast strains streamlined.  So lager yeast it was.  The strain is the same one we used in the much-missed but less-purchased Portsmouth Lager.

Smutttynose Baltic Porter is extremely smooth out of the gates but it also ages quite nicely.  And we should know; we just transferred some from two Sam Adams Utopias barrels that had been aging for about two years. 

Thanks for your interest.  Wheat Wine, the final beer of the 2010 Series, will be leaving the building on Monday, December 13.  Despite its recent gold medal win at Mondial de la Biere in Strasbourg, France; it will go on hiatus for 2011.