I brewed a Baltic Porter earlier in the year and wanted to see if it tasted any better with some age on it. I served it to Mike without telling him what it was right away to get his notes and see if there was any improvement.

Baltic Porter Notes

The main piece of information I wanted to gather with this revisit is to see if some age on this beer would make it taste bigger than it was. The issue I had with this beer was missing my target starting gravity. I wasn’t able to produce a wort with a high enough OG and that fact came through in the finished beer when we tasted it right after it was ready. I had a hope that the more the beer aged, the more character it would have and it would provide cover for its lack of bigness. Wellup, here’s to hoping.

Here are some of the descriptors Mike said when he was tasting it.

The aroma has a biscuit, wet malt aroma. It has an interesting hazelnut and chocolate thing going on. It brings to mind Nutella.

In the flavor, there was a lot of dark crystal malt characteristics present. There were some subtle stonefruit aspects but mostly a big brown bread flavor.

The body was medium – not too full. The finish is clean and dry – not too sweet.

When I told Mike it was my Baltic Porter attempt, all the memories came flying back.

Final Thoughts

Not matter how old this beer is, it will never be a big and full as a Baltic Porter needs to be. Mike’s suggestion was to enter it into competition as a Dark Mild to see how it would perform. I plan to do that, but my first choice is to enter it as ths style I was aiming for and to see how it would do.

Update: This beer received a score of 33 out of 50 in the category of Baltic Porter with notes saying it wasn’t big enough. I will enter it as a Dark Mild and see what the notes are on that entry.

The more important goal is to brew a bigger beer next time.

Brew On!