Milestones, Part 2

We’re not much on crowing about ourselves, but Beer-Stained Letter marked its first anniversary last week, Jan. 31st to be exact.

To give ourselves a perfunctory pat on the back, we headed to Firewaters in Atlantic City, not so much to toast the past year and usher in the next, but to dig into a couple pints of Baltic Thunder and chat with Victory Brewing sales rep Pete Danford, who was on hand for the draft release of the imperial porter at the bar in the Tropicana casino.

Baltic Thunder has grabbed some blogosphere limelight, owing to its artisanal Heavy Weight Perkuno’s Hammer ancestry (a bit of the beer’s history can be found here), and has now made its way to Jersey taps. Look for the dark clouds to form over P.J. Whelihan's in Haddonfield this month and High Street Grill in Mount Holly on Leap Day. It’s also in bomber bottles at package goods stores with good beer sensibilities.

Want three words to summarize Baltic Thunder? Try rich, velvety and inviting. But a heads up, Thunder has a clap, too, at 8.5% ABV. So, you can toss in a fourth word, too: hearty.

While at Firewaters, we ran into Mark Haynie, a founding member of the NJ Association of Beerwriters (more on that in a minute). Mark came to the BT pouring armed with a cellared bottle of Perkuno’s Hammer, offering a handy taste reference for those at the bar sipping Thunder. Many thanks, Mark. Hope to cross paths again soon, owe you a pint.

Comparatively speaking, Perkuno’s alcohol flavors are more up front than Baltic Thunder’s. And since we were watching “High Fidelity” when we wrote this, and patting ourselves on the back for having Jimmy Cliff on our iPod (watch the movie, you’ll know what we’re talking about), we'll say we can’t decide if PH is the Bob Dylan version of “All Along The Watchtower,” while BT is the seminal Jimi Hendrix cover. Whatever, both make the charts.

Yearling
Speaking of Mark Haynie, he’s working on the New Jersey Breweries book with Lew Bryson. Mark says their efforts are being edited now, and Lew told us last month that it’ll probably be August (or sometime thereafter) when the book becomes available.

Speaking of this blog and books about New Jersey-brewed beer, writing a guide to the Garden State’s breweries, brewpubs and homebrewers market was the reason BSL jumped into the über crowded field of beer blogging.

But early on, it became obvious that gathering string for a book would take us a minimum of two years, three was more like it, to make up for five-year a gap in our tracking of the region’s beer scene. That’s about half the life of Jersey’s craft beer movement (we blame the hiatus on a mind-numbing five-plus years of working at the AP in Trenton and the subsequent demanding, all-over-the-place schedule; thankfully we said farewell to that insanity).

Nonetheless, when Lew announced in August 2007 that he was undertaking NJ Breweries, well it only made sense to stand clear and let someone with the time in, contacts and publisher do their thing. (Lew has written books on Pennsylvania breweries; likewise for Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and New York, and is/was a Keystone State member/founder of NJ Association of Beerwriters.)

We’re looking forward to the finished work on Jersey. And if you support the endeavor, buy a copy not from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders but at a book-signing; you’ll be supporting the author directly that way.

On camera
Meanwhile for BSL, stepping away from the book ambitions freed us up to pursue more video projects with New Jersey beer & brewers, which rather emerged as a passion and focus for us. (If you’ve appeared in the handful of vids we’ve done thus far, or have agreed to participate in an upcoming one, then we owe a huge debt of thanks.) Our favorite video over the past year was Oktoberfest (even though it’s a little off the top in the approach to the topic); our best work was the Brewers Guild festival on the battleship USS New Jersey. Our most successful videos have been on Rich Wagner’s Colonial brewing demonstration and an animation on Cricket Hill’s dart-throwing challenge, assembled from stills shot at the Philly Craft Beer Festival a year ago.

And as we noted last month, we have a few video projects under production now, plus more on the way. The camera never blinks.

Lastly, the focus of this blog has been more chamber of commerce-like to the Garden State’s microbrewing industry, championing those efforts, and not trying to gaze upon them with critiques and evaluation. For a state of nearly 9 million people, you’d think New Jersey would have a higher profile in the industry. Alas, no. Jersey’s micros and brewpubs are somewhat spread out, scattered, and we remain a state where the blandness of Bud, Coors and Miller still claims legions of drinkers, and observations like "at least they have Sam Adams (or Guinness) on tap" make you pine for the successes of Pennsylvania (and have you wishing you were in craft beer-friendly Philadelphia more often). Sigh.

So cheers and thanks to everyone who clicked on our site over the past year or took a phone call from us. Check out our new logo, but more importantly have a beer and salute the choice that craft beer provides.

Hammer of the grogs

This is short notice (but not really since Lew Bryson’s blog “Seen Through A Glass” has had it listed for a couple weeks now):

Baltic Thunder, Victory Brewing’s new rich, gale-force porter that is heir to the throne of Perkuno’s Hammer, gets a draft unveiling this Saturday (that’s Jan. 5th) at The Drafting Room in Exton, Pa. A kind, female voice at the bar today confirmed the event is still on and says serving starts at noon. (See Lew’s site for the on-tap details.)

The story thus far
Named after the mythological Baltic god of thunder, Perkuno’s Hammer was the imperial porter created (with some key and label-credited assistance from Lew) by Tom Baker of Heavy Weight Brewing, the diamond in the rough brewery based in Ocean Township, Monmouth County (just south of Red Bank, where the original Basil T’s puts pints on the bar and Tom has guest brewed).

Robust, high gravity beers were the province of Heavy Weight, which sold its beer in four-packs (Smaller Package – Bigger Beer, as their saying went). Tom developed a following as an artisanal brewer before deciding to close HW (in August 2006, thereabouts), and take his mash rake and cross the Delaware to Philly (Mount Airy section), where yet even more blog words say he recently signed a lease for a new brewpub, where he can dust off his recipes under the banner “Earth, Bread & Brewery.”

The V sign
Beforehand, though, all the forlorn beer faces staring at the possibility that Perkuno’s Hammer would strike no more were buoyed by the news that Victory (of Downingtown, Pa., whose great beers we drank practically all December long, in between Jersey brews) had reached an agreement under which it would brew PH under the label Baltic Thunder, with some alterations here and there to the recipe, if we’re not mistaken.

A sneak peak
Tom was able to dole out a taste of the heir to PH as the finale to a talk he gave on the maltiness of beer last fall at Tria Fermentation School in Philly. If you were one of the 30 or so lucky folks there that evening, you can attest to the richness of PH’s progeny. (If you’ve never been to a Tria session, and you like to not just drink beer, but talk beer and gain a better understanding of the chorus of flavors that entice and wow you, then sign up for a Tria session. It’s fun and informative, and comes with great pretzels from Sansom Street, excellent cheeses and warm hosts and great speakers.)

Storm clouds are gathering. Listen to the thunder. It’s hammer time again.

What they (Victory brewers) say:
Truly a worldly beer. Baltic Thunder represents the Baltic Porter style admirably. Exhibiting the enticing, toffee roast of the British porter that originated the style in the 18th century, and the soothing, subtle fruit nuance of contemporary brews that flourish from Helsinki to Vilnius today, this dark lager honors the Baltic god of thunder. Created by an inspired collaboration of brewers and tempered with a touch of turmoil, Baltic Thunder rolls on to bring you enchanting light as the darkness fades.

Hops: European whole flower. Malts: imported German 2 row and roasted malts. ABV: 8.5%

The way you knew it:
A dark and mysterious, subtle, Baltic porter, a style difficult to find outside of the Baltics. PH's grain bill consisted of ample amounts of Munich malt with some chocolate and other specialty malts and Roman beans, fermented with a Bavarian lager yeast. Lew Bryson called it a collision of doublebock and imperial stout. 8% ABV