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!!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.