BridgePort Raven Mad Imperial Porter

Happy New Year!

We celebrated with my parents in Lancaster County, the same way I've celebrated New Year's Day for as long as I can remember: with a big pork and sauerkraut dinner. It's what Pennsylvania Dutchmen do. If you have pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day, it's good luck the rest of the year. Well...you at least get a good meal.

My mother let me cook the pork and kraut this year (well, actually, she followed my suggestions while I worked on my dad's computer). We patted brown sugar on the fat of the roast and put it in the 425-degree oven without a cover for 20 minutes. Then I took it out, turned the oven down to 325, laid in the lightly rinsed kraut (from a local Amish family), and poured a 22 oz. bottle of Victory Baltic Thunder all over it -- a fine sacrifice -- then covered it and put it back in the oven for two hours.

Yum! It was mighty fine, and the big bottle of BridgePort Raven Mad Imperial Porter we had with it was pretty damned good, too. The 3-D glasses had gotten misplaced somewhere, so we couldn't get the full glory of the label, but the full glory of the beer did come through. RMIP had a light burnt bitterness to it, a smooth drinkability, and a nicely understated wood/barrel character to it -- not an upside-the-head wallop -- almost like an 'easy-drinking' version of an imperial stout. Once again, BridgePort comes through with a beer that focuses on the drinker and not the person who's looking to be knocked out in one glass. At 7.8%, I could have had the whole bottle and a bit more. Wouldn't have minded that one bit, either.