Baltic Thunder: Unleashed and Rolling

Yup, that's me and Bill Covaleski, in Victory's tank farm, tasting Baltic Thunder...as the tanks were being sucked to the filter. Historic, epic, and delicious.

As Uncle Jack has already reported, Victory invited me and him and Don Russell to taste the Thunder in its last days of wildness. The dates, Dec. 26 or 27, coincided with my annual 'busman's holiday' of beer-hunting with some old friends, so all three of us went. We made a stop at Iron Hill North Wales, where brewer Larry Horwitz made us very welcome with a pre-opening session at the bar, arguing about ... well, about a lot of things, which is why I like hanging out with Larry; keeps your mind supple. Then we grabbed some Christmas leftovers for lunch at my buddy Les's apartment in Plymouth Meeting, and headed for Victory.

Brewpub manager Matt Krueger welcomed us, sat us at a table while he found Bill, and we got a round of Donnybrook Stout. Victory's really got this one in a nice spot, a sub-4% dry stout that drinks easy and fine, interesting but quaffable. We ate a pizza -- stuffing a bit, but when you're headed for the tank farm, laying in a base is always a good idea -- and then Bill showed up. Did we want to drink samples there at the table (surrounded by a loud and happy office party), or off the zwickel? Get serious! Off to the tanks we went.

We tasted four different brews of Thunder. The first, oldest one is, yes, the one I've been touting as extra-lagered, smooth, you'll-never-get-it-like-this-again...and it was tired. It was subdued, no dark fruit, barely any coffee, big, but a yawner. Bill smiled and led us to the August tanks. This was a much more lively beer, with big singing notes of coffee and dark chocolate, fruitiness but not the dark pit fruit I expected: a lighter berry character that my friend Rich Pawlak (food editor for MainLine Magazine) insisted was "blueberry." Okay. This was my favorite of the batches. The two September batches were almost too fresh, a bit sharp, not as well melded: good, but not the glory of the August batches.

Which makes it a good thing that Bill and Ron intend to blend the batches. I remember when blending batches used to be anathema at microbreweries, something those big brewers did. Please. Blending these batches evens things out, rough and smooth. There's a place for unblended batch, and there's just as much a place for blending. We blended four batches, even up, and it was very, very nice: smooth, with all the parts in place: chocolate, coffee, fruit, weight, and the craftily hidden 8+% ABV.

Is it Perkuno's Hammer? No, it isn't. The elusive prune notes that Tom Baker and I wanted to capture aren't there, the slight edge of burnt bitterness isn't there. However, Baltic Thunder has a captivating balance for such a big beer, a dryer edge (probably from Victory's mastery of German malts), and a liveliness that dangerously masks its strength. I've been quoted as describing Baltic porters as a trainwreck between a doppelbock and an imperial stout: Baltic Thunder perhaps leans more towards the doppelbock side. It is most definitely a winner. It is most gratifying to be connected, however tenuously, to this beer...which was never intended to be Perkuno's Hammer, but Victory's Baltic porter.

So I'll see some of you tomorrow at the Baltic Thunder launch at The Drafting Room in Exton. Thunder will also roll at Victory tomorrow, in draft and in 22 oz. bottles. One bright side of the long battles to get this beer out the door was Victory's discovery that their bottling line could indeed handle 22 oz. "dinner bottles." Expect to see more Victory beers in this package.

Red Thunder coming same day as Red Dawn

A little Red Thunder

Last week I was able to try Victory's Red Thunder, their Baltic Thunder Baltic porter aged in once-used red wine barrels from Wente Vineyards, ahead of the release on November 21, which Victory has dubbed Red Wednesday. (As the folks in Downingtown admit, yeah, not tremendously imaginative to re-dub last year's Dark Intrigue release -- Dark Wednesday -- Red Wednesday, but there you are.) Red Wednesday is going to be a first for Victory: instead of the mad free-for-all of Dark Wednesday, this will begin at 8 AM with a sit-down breakfast:

• Eggs Benedict
• Spinach, Mushroom and Feta Quiche
• Scrambled Eggs with Bacon or Sausage and Home Fries
• Stuffed Cornflake French Toast with Blackberry Compote, Butter and Maple Syrup
• English Muffin Sticky Buns

Ron's real hair. He wears a baldy cap.

Served with the full complement of Victory drafts, which, I hasten to point out, is awesome on any day, and sure to be excellent on this day. It will also include Red Thunder; you tickers can get tasters, the rest of us can get full 12 oz. pours, and you can even purchase up to six RT bottles to go. Such a deal!

So how was the Red Thunder? Well, bearing in mind that what I had was a five year old bottle sample of a pilot project...it was pretty damned good. The cocoa/chocolate richness of the Baltic Thunder was still there, but the berry/pitfruit flavors of the big dark booger had been attenuated and refined by the red wine oak's fruit and tannins. It's a sophisticated drink, not a whack-in-the-chops stunner, and I quite liked it. Mind you, I quite liked the slow-pour Braumeister the goofy booger with the blonde curls at the left suggested I follow it up with, too.

Remember the timing, too. You can go get a Victory breakfast, with Victory beers, and score your Red Thunder (up to a case, and if you want more -- greedy sod -- there WILL be more available throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts and Ohio)...and then go catch the opening day of the remake of Red Dawn. Wow. Now that's a day, huh? Wolverines!!!

Finally... Baltic Thunder

I'm going to take Patrick Mullin and Steve German at their word: Baltic Thunder, the Victory-brewed revival of Heavyweight Perkuno's Hammer, will officially launch on January 5th at the Drafting Room in Exton. And not alone, either, it's a veritable Baltic Blizzard of Beer, according to Mullin:

Also pouring on draft that day:
Heavyweight Perkuno's Hammer 2006
Heavyweight Lunacy 2006
Heavyweight Baltus OVS 2006
Victory Abbey 6
Victory Hop Wallop (cask-conditioned)
and perhaps other Victory surprises...

Available in bottles (while supplies last):
Victory Baltic Thunder
Heavyweight Biere d' Art
Heavyweight Black Ocean
Heavyweight Doug's Colonial
Heavyweight Jakeldricka
Heavyweight Slice of Bread

No admission, pay as you go. The kegs will be tapped at noon and will continue to flow until they're gone. There should be plenty of Thunder to last through the weekend. Bill Covaleski will be in attendance, and I have contacted Tom & Peggy with the hope that they will be able to join us as well.

Well. I suggest to all of you that you get as much of this as possible, because the lagering on this batch will probably never be repeated!

Echoes of Thunder

Bill asked in the comments about the Baltic Thunder release at the Drafting Room, "how was the event?" Fair question. I'd add pictures, if my batteries hadn't gone dead on me as soon as I turned the damned camera on.

I got to TDR about 11:50, exchanged some pleasantries with various folk at the bar (Deuane, I finally realized who you were, my apologies!), said hi to Mr. & Mrs. BrewLounge (talked a little biz, too, we've got plans), and then got kidnapped by The Big One and The Other One (as Uncle Jack has dubbed them) and joined them at their table. They're right: the bar is high-voltage, but the table's the way to fly.

We sampled some of a long-hoarded keg of Seven Threads, the blended beer made by local brewers for the Craft Beer Conference held in Philly two years ago. A bit sour. "That's O'Reilly's contribution," one of us quipped (no, I'm not saying who), referencing the Sly Fox head brewer's chagrin at not being included in the blend. Then we sampled a surviving keg of Perkuno's Hammer -- sour -- and a surviving keg of Heavyweight Lunacy -- delicious.

I heard the keg of Baltus was much nastier, and we wondered if we were attending the First Unintentionally Sour Ale Festival... Hey, no slant on the Drafting Room at all. We wanted this stuff, and we were willing to pay for it, long after it would have been at its freshest, and to their credit, they warned us. And...like I used to say about bottled German beers: you could still definitely hear the echo of what these beers once were.

And then, yeah, I got a pint of Baltic Thunder. It was good, solid, and wickedly drinkable. If I had a complaint...okay, I do. No, a curiosity: I wonder what it will taste like when the total content is as lively as the August batches I tasted in December (see my notes on tasting the tank samples and blending). It's good now...but that might be even better.

More folks started showing up, but I had to run before the celebs got there: Tom and Peggy, Bill and Ron, and Uncle Jack. Sorry I missed you guys, would have been fun to have all of us together for a big old glass of Thunder.

But I had to get my butt down to Victory to pick up a case of Thunder for later. Talked to some STAG readers while I was drinking a glass of Donnybrook Stout at the bar (hi, guys!) -- still loving that beer -- then hustled home and headed off to a holiday party with the family. A good day, if a long one.

Thunder Power

One of the things that first drew me to Baltic porters was their ability to stand up to damned near anything I threw at them. Massive Cuban robusto? (don't ask where I got them; they were actually legal, on a technicality) Okocim Porter took it and smoothed and accentuated it. Fra Diavolo shrimp? My boy Dojlidy could smother that heat while still picking up and cradling the sweetness of the shwimps.

I know you're probably sick to death of hearing about Baltic Thunder, but hey, it's loose in the real world now: this isn't hype, it's after-action reports. Yesterday we were at a good friend's house to partake of a venison bounty his brother-in-law had brought home. He'd made a pork and venison stew, and a ground pork and venison meatloaf (he's Polish, I think he's got bigosh on the brain, but good on him, it was delicious).

And it just got better when I popped open the Thunder and sent it in after the game. Big flavor of venison, sweet flavor of pork, and multi-talented Baltic porter met and mingled, and I had a big happy mouth full of eats and drinks. Baltic porter, when it's the right one, is right up there with Belgian dubbel and Oktoberfest when it comes to making friends with food.

Far-off Thunder

Baltic Thunder has been delayed. The release date of October 15 (and the big unofficial launch party at The Drafting Room in Exton) has been pushed back indefinitely: glass problems. According to an e-mail I got from Patrick at the Drafting Room, he was told by Steve German (the big mahoff of sales at Victory) that the 750 ml bottles had come in far enough out of spec that their bottling line couldn't handle them. They're going to 22 oz. glass instead, which will require changes to labeling and packaging (stop me if you've heard this before), all of which means that we won't get any Baltic Thunder for a while yet.

No one has explained yet why this means a draft release has to be delayed. Maybe because no one asked the guys at Victory. Bill, Ron, Steve: consider it asked. I understand that it's a good thing to have a single release, to come out with draft and bottle all at once. But we've been waiting patiently, and this is a big in-group thing to begin with. Couldn't we get a draft release for a couple months while this bottle mess gets straightened out? Please?

Can You Hear the Thunder?

As reported, Victory won't be releasing Baltic Thunder until October 15. "No packaging," admitted brewery president and co-founder Bill Covaleski when I asked him why the long wait. But a guy who had some tiny part in this beer's creation can wheedle his way to zwickel-side and get a sample.

Actually, I met Victory publicity-wrangler Jake Burns in the parking lot and asked him if I could get a taste of Thunder, and he said sure, why not, I'd like a taste too. Ron Barchet laughed when I told him why I'd stopped by, and said "I think that when we go to package that tank there's not going to be any left!" And he paused and got that reverent, serious look he gets when he talks about beer, and said, "It's really good."

I'm happy to report that he's right. Jake screwed the pigtail onto Tank V10 (erk. Kind of ominous, that) and poured me off almost a full pint of the 8.5% stuff. It was dark and rich-smelling, prunes and plum pudding, moist chocolate cake and a subtle vinous aroma, and I couldn't help thinking of the mythical Herzwesten Dark from Tim Powers's The Drawing of the Dark (fergodssake, if you've never read this, get it): "Then he sat down, and even without bringing the cup to his nose he smelled the heady, heavily aromatic bouquet. God bless us, he thought rapturously, this is the nectar of which even the finest, rarest bock in the world is only the vaguest hint. In one long, slow, savoring swallow he emptied the cup."

I didn't empty the cup, but the temptation was there. What I did taste reminded me of my oft-quoted characterization of a Baltic porter as a trainwreck between a doublebock and an imperial stout: only the imperial stout train was 120 boxcars long and high-balling it. The beer was as smooth as only a long-aged lager can be, but it had a burnt bitter edge to it that recalled some of my favorite impies, like Smuttynose and Courage. It brought to mind the original limited edition Perkuno's Hammer, the 300-bottle brew that was supposed to be a one-off and proved to have a life of its own. Best -- or worst -- of all, Jake and I agreed that it maybe tasted like a 6.5% beer at most. "This sucker's dangerous," I said, "It's a 'Where did my knees go?' beer."

Consider yourself warned.

Thunder Time! Perkuno lives!

Just got the word from Victory:

Perkuno's Hammer

is now

Baltic Thunder.

Release date is October 15.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, and germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!

Hot Times at Manayunk

I helped judge the Best of Show beers at the Manayunk Brewfest on Saturday. Once again, it happens just as allergy season is hitting me, so I loaded up on Sudafed (the real, sign at the counter stuff) and Chlor-Trimeton, kept my nose clear for the fest, and paid for it with dopey drowsiness later.

I got to the fest about noon, grabbed one of the last free staff spots, and got down into the show. I met up with my fellow judges (four very experienced homebrew judges who I thoroughly enjoy tasting beers with; it's a very nice give-and-take, making this one of my favorite beer events of the year), grabbed a quick lunch, and settled in to start tasting.

Wide range of beers this year, and a much higher level of quality. The brewers represented at the fest each sent one beer, their choice, over to our table. There were a couple eye-rollers, but only a couple (we're tasting completely blind (or were after the first two pitchers, which a new steward labeled with the brewery name!) and only found out what the top three actually were, so don't bother asking: we don't know (and didn't wanna know!)), much fewer than in the past four years.

After two hours of serious, note-taking and discussion-style tasting, we narrowed it down to seven beers, and sent the stewards out for more samples to refresh our memories. Two of the beers had already run out (proving the crowd agreed with our palates!), and since none of us had those two beers as our number one picks, we decided to drop them. Once the five beers were in front of us, we came to a consensus rather rapidly: about 90 seconds! The winners, by unanimous consent:

3rd -- Erie Railbender, winning with a beautifully pure malt character, easily the very best batch of Railbender I've ever had (and I've had my share).

2nd -- Victory Baltic Thunder, nipping out General Lafayette's Chocolate Thunder Porter (a close #4) by virtue of smooth complexity and (scary) drinkability.

1st -- Triumph Simcoe IPA, rocked us all with its beautiful balance and integration. Billowing hop aroma, great hop flavor, trenchant but not overwhelming bitterness, and a smooth, solid malt basement made this the beer of the day, and we all went looking for more.

I wandered off with Chris Fiery at this point, and we did a little sampling of his Manayunk beers. He'd sent his Maibock to our table; I think he should've sent the California Dreamin', a powerfully-hopped beauty. And if you haven't had the Schuylkill Punch lately -- I hadn't -- it's all Oregon fruit puree (red and black raspberries), no extracts or essences, it's bumped up in ABV, and it's pretty good stuff.

A nice fest, not as crowded as previous years (last year I could hardly move), one of the best M/F ratio fests going -- always has been, don't know why -- and a GREAT band, Holt 45 (with an appropriate name for a beer festival, eh?). Usually I don't give -- pardon me -- a rat's ass about the band at beer festivals, because they're just getting in the way of my beer enjoyment and talking to people about beer. But these guys were NOT too loud, they were way into the music, and they were real musicians.

So then I left, and unlike other years, made no stops on the way home. We went out for a diner dinner (bluefish...I love broiled bluefish), came home, watched some tube...and I crashed out, done in by drugs and allergies. The first week is always like this: dopey, drowsy, and stupid. I'm fighting it off with coffee and air-conditioning this morning. I hate May.

One more love note to Victory Brewing...

Some of you probably know I had some input on Victory's Baltic Thunder...in an extended way, a lot of the reason that beer exists is because of an e-mail I wrote to Tom Baker quite a few years ago, a mash note on Baltic Porters that led to Perkuno's Hammer, and then Ron Barchet and I talked Baltics when Victory picked up the beer from him. Strictly an inspiration.

But I also helped -- a very little! -- to inspire Victory's Dark Lager, just a little conversation Ron and I had in the lagering room way back. And yesterday I heard from Bill Covaleski that the Dark Lager (which is on tap at the pub and a few other places right now) is really one of their few sales failures. It doesn't really sell enough to keep making it...but they do anyway. Because they, and a few others of us, just love that beer. It's just so craft beer...

So I wanted to take this opportunity to say "Thank you," to Ron and Bill and the crew at Victory Brewing. Thanks for making Dark Lager despite low sales, thanks for continuing to make great session beers like Milltown and Uncle Teddy's (and Dark Lager, at 4.2%!), thanks for everything. And the rest of you guys...time to drink up!

Happy 16th, Victory!

Today is the day one of our favorite local brewers celebrates their anniversary. Victory Brewing in Downingtown is sixteen years old today -- they can shoot pool in public and drive -- and it's been a great sixteen years. Victory powered out of the starting blocks with a successful pub -- remember that hugely high, echoing ceiling and concrete floors? -- beautifully well-made beers, and a firm determination to make beers that they liked, confident that the growing number of better beer fans would like them too. The one we did like, HopDevil, caught them somewhat off-guard; they'd expected the malty Festbier to be the winner, not the aromatically bitter IPA, but they adapted, of course.

Now they're celebrating sixteen years of success:

Bill & I with Batch #1 of Baltic Thunder

• Experimentation: V10, Mad King Ludwig, the ground-breaking Braumeister single-hop Pils series, Wild Devil, the American/English Pale Ale Experiment, and now the Tettnang Terroir pilsners.
• Pizza Plus: Victory grew from a friendly hangout with a wood-fired oven to the county's biggest volume restaurant (still with a stone hearth pizza oven), going through some growing pains along the way that led to a solid rep as a favored destination.
• Variety: Victory makes exemplary beers from multiple canons:  lagers, British ales, cask session ales, Belgian-types, American craft classics, and brett-laced bug beer, and all of them with their own spin.
• Quality: the company has spent literally millions on the very best equipment and ingredients to make their beer as good as it can be. They've invested in equipment -- like their wetmill and automated brewhouse -- that usually belongs in breweries much, much bigger, because no excess in the service of the beer is unnecessary. 
• Determination: they did it their way. Victory has stuck to their guns on a number of issues that many said were bad ideas...and some turned out to be just that, but others, most others, turned out to be visionary.

Ron by the open fermenter: Golden Monkey?

It's time to congratulate them on their success -- again! -- and mark it as a celebration of the success of Pennsylvania craft brewing -- American craft brewing -- as well. The numbers keep swelling, and beer is more varied and more available than ever. Victory will be opening a major beer hall in Philadelphia this year, Sly Fox and Tröegs are bringing major new breweries online, Yards continues to expand, and we're finally -- finally! -- seeing a new wave of brewpubs in the area, something we've been waiting on for years (and thank you, Iron Hill and McKenzie for keeping the lights on with new places).

But as founders Bill Covaleski and Ron Barchet like to say, they dove through the window of opportunity for the first wave of American craft brewers just as it was closing. This is also the sixteenth anniversary of what was called The Shakeout, when the first blush of craft brewing success flatlined, a victim of its own success. Craft brewing was growing fast in the early 1990s, a faster rate than now -- 40% in some years -- although on a much smaller base. But that growth attracted dumb money, and bad decisions were made, and bad beer was getting out on the shelves...and soon the capital would dry up, and it would be very difficult for new brewers to start up, or for established ones to expand, or even get sustaining loans through tough periods. It would be almost five years before things loosened up again.

Are we in danger of that again? Is dumb money coming in, are expectations rising, will bad beer flood the shelves? I'll be honest: I did think so, a few years ago. I was worried. But now? No, I don't think so. First, and most convincing, solid bank money is available to established breweries, even in the current economy. Three years of unstoppable growth in the face of a general downturn in beer sales is quite a convincer. It may not be cheap money, but it's there. Second, brewers like Victory have done their part to nail down the quality of American craft brewers. I'm talking about safe in the bottle quality, no infected beer (not unintentionally infected, anyway!), solid shelf-life quality. It used to be a crapshoot; now getting a sub-par beer is much, much less likely.  

Finally, and maybe this won't mean as much to younger craft drinkers...there's no raspberry beer. Cheap sweet raspberry beers were huge in the run-up to the shakeout, but when the trendy drinkers tired of them, they moved on to the next thing, and it wasn't a beer thing. No, the beers you see selling big today are beers like Victory makes. They're beers that rely on solid cornerstones of brewing: malt, grain, hops, yeast, and what brewers and maltsters can do with them. That's the story at Victory -- always has been -- and that's what's selling craft beer to America.

Happy birthday, Victory! Keep at it, we'll keep drinking.

Resurrection Proudly Pouring Victory's new Pale Ale on 2/16

What the hell: word for word, what I just got from Leigh at Resurrection:

For Immediate Consumption:
Victory Brewing Company 15th Anniversary Celebration at Resurrection Ale House Featuring New Beer Release: Victory Headwaters Pale Ale.

Help Resurrection Ale House celebrate Victory Brewing Company's 15th anniversary on Wednesday, February 16 from 6-10pm!
In addition to gads of Victory favorites on draft starting at 6pm, Resurrection Ale House will be pouring the first taste of Victory's newest full-time brand; the Headwaters Pale Ale.
The celebration draft list includes Helios Ale, V Twelve, Baltic Thunder, St. Victorious, Victory Lager, Hop Wallop on cask, and MORE!! Expect an extra special firkin pouring off the edge of the bar!

I think the week after next is going to be one hell of a fun one around here for beer lovers...I'm getting an advance taste of Headwaters next Sunday -- along with other area beer bloggers -- and I'm truly looking forward to it. Cheers!

 

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.

Iron Hill Black & Tan cask lineup for Nov. 15

Here's the run-down on what's going to be at that Iron Hill cask Black & Tan event I told you about last week. It all goes down at noon at Iron Hill Newark. Mix it up!

IRON HILL CASKS
Iron Hill West Chester – Baltic Porter (7% ABV)
Iron Hill Wilmington – Bourbon Double Brown Ale (8.5%)
Iron Hill Lancaster – Belgian Pale Ale (5.0%)
Iron Hill North Wales – ESB (4.5%)
Iron Hill Phoenixville – Sticke Altbier (7.2%)

Guest Casks
Flying Fish – Extra Pale Ale (4.8% ABV)
Sly Fox – Oatmeal Stout (5.2%)
Stewart’s – Coffee Stout (5.9%)
General Lafayette Inn – Red Velvet, a blend of Chocolate Thunder Porter (6.7%) and Sunset Red Ale (5.9%)
Victory – Storm King Stout (9.1%)
Nodding Head – BPA Bill Payer Ale (6.5%)
Earth Bread + Brewery – The Bradley Effect (dark gruit ale; 4.2% ABV)
Yards – IPA (7.0%)
Triumph Philadelphia – Bengal Gold IPA (6.5%)