Think You're Man Enough?
Written: Mar 24 '00 (Updated Mar 24 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Massive, rich, complex
Cons: None
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| beerfly's Full Review: Okocim Porter |
Here's a beer that can stand up to the biggest cigar, the richest meal, confidently follow a screaming hop-zap IPA. It's big; no, it's huge. It's Polish porter from the Okocim brewery.
Although I've only been posting epinions a very short time, I believe I've made it clear that I don't like posting anything but the review itself; no background on style or brewery, no history, no setting of the mood. These are, after all, supposed to be useful reviews of the beer in question.
However, because this is a little-known style in America, I'm going to give some background for those who may not be familiar with these outstanding beers. I was caught off guard by them back in 1994, but they've become some of my favorites since. And, because this beer has deeply, almost uniquely affected me, I have added a few short personal glimpses of how a great beer can complement your life.
Imperial porter
Baltic porters were born out of trade. Most beer geeks know about Russian Imperial stout, the staples of Britain's Baltic beer trade with the Russian Empire. They were roasty dark-brown beers, hugely strong and powerfully hopped to last for months in the cask or bottle. However, when this trade began, these beers were called (and clearly labeled) porter. Stout had not yet been developed.
As these beers grew in popularity in the eastern reaches of the Baltic littoral, naturally enough some local brewers began brewing the same kind of beer. They could sell their beer for roughly the same price as the British beer (or undercut them a little) and make a big profit on the savings in transportation.
Big, dark beers labeled with the English word "porter" are found around the Baltic Sea in Denmark, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Finland, and Sweden; Michael Jackson also says there is one brewed in Karlsruhe, Germany. Note that not all examples of the style are from countries bordering on the Baltic; there is at least one I know of in Slovakia, two in Czech Republic, one in Yugoslavia, and one in Ukraine.
Cold Porter
However, these "porters," with one exception (Carnegie, of Sweden), are lager-brewed at cold temperatures, unlike the familiar ale-brewed porters of England and the U.S. (Although actually, the only "porters" to survive from pre-micro days in the U.K. or U.S. were both bottom-fermented as well: Yuengling porter and Stegmaier porter.) What happened? Are they "true" porters?
German lager brewing techniques and the perfection of pilsner beer as the ultimate thirst-fighting beer made lager yeast the preferred fermentor in Europe. Inevitably, Baltic brewers dropped their ale yeasts as too much trouble, particularly under the twin impacts of World War II and Soviet occupation. As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. "Porter" became a lager-fermented beer in almost every Baltic brewery.
This was not all bad: the big examples of the style developed a unique profile like a head-on collision between an imperial stout and a doublebock. You get the slightly burnt, almost vinous notes of a good impie stout mixed with the rich malt depth of a big doublebock. The big Baltic porters can be overwhelming if you're unprepared.
"oh-KOTCH-eem"
Okocim Porter was my first Baltic porter. I was chatting with a beer wholesaler I know when he suggested we wet our whistles. "We'll have to try this salesman sample," he laughed, "the guy said it was a Polish porter!" Once we got a whiff, we stopped laughing. First, the beer was deep chestnut brown, and thick with it, almost as opaque as Guinness Extra Stout. Next, the smell was rich with dark, ripe, pit-fruit: plums, prunes. Finally, when I took a sip, it was like sunrise of a dark star: my mouth filled with malt power and twisting skeins of those rich prune notes, sweet as pastry but not tooth-aching like candy, a mellow pillow of powerful sensation. There was a strong thread of anise through the beer that lasted right through the finish, taking the cloying edge off quite nicely.
I've since had numerous beer experiences with Okocim Porter. I remember standing on the side of Bear Mountain by the Hudson River with my brother-in-law, sharing a bottle in a snowstorm, neither of us saying a word, warmed by the big, big beer. I remember sharing a bottle with my publisher one warm summer night at his house in the woods, smoking Cuban Hoyo de Montereys and both laughing at how the Okocim shrugged off the cigar without effort, punching through with more malt and depth every swallow.
But the best Okocim experience I had was at my wife's uncle Pete's funeral. The clans gathered from across the country in a small town in upstate New York. After we'd all wept a bit, that night we settled down in Pete's living room and started calming down. The stereo was going, the lights were low, and eight of us, from 18 to 49 years of age, sat in a rough circle, talking and remembering. And a bottle of Okocim went clockwise, and another went counter-clockwise, and every now and then the youngest of us went out to my car and got another pair of bottles. We waked Pete properly that night, and some of us think no other beer would have been so right.
Find this one. It's huge, it's inspiring.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
beerfly
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Member: Lew Bryson
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 79 members
About Me:
One bourbon, one Scotch, one beer, eh? I'll take Kentucky Spirit, Scapa, and HopDevil.
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