Baltika 4 Originalnoe (Original)

Brewed by Baltika Brewery (Baltic Beverages Holding - Carlsberg)
Style: Dunkel
St. Petersburg, Russia

Bottle- Dark brown in colour with red tinge. Fruity aroma with dates and raisins detected. Mild spiciness in the taste and very tangy on the tongue. Fruit cake also detected. Quite drinkable.

Pours dark reddish amber with a mostly receding light tan head. Aroma of dates, plums, toffee, and cherry. Taste of caramel, toffee, plums, and chewy malt. Mouthfeel is medium bodied with lush carbonation. Better than expected.

This was part of a Baltika batch that I got recently. The dark brown bottle and simple label design are attractive. The beer poured with a thin, bubbly head that sank and left no lacing. The color was a very dark amber, almost coffee-like. This matched the aroma, which was rather smoky. The flavor was a bittersweet mixture, with some coffee-like taste and faint wheatiness. The alcohol kick is signifcant. The palate was a little thinner than a Baltika 9, but still OK. I didn’t notice any nasty dregs, which was an improvement on the 9. This was a good beer, and could become one of my favorites. It’s good value at $2.05 for a pint-plus bottle

Bottle: Dark orange mahogany color, decent light head. Dust, grain, light orange and dry hop fragments in the nose. Mainly a dry lightly toasty roasted malt flavor, a bit of alcohol and distant hop resin. The finish is creamy, full bodied and toasty, lots of caramel and rye bread notes. Actually not that bad for a Russian dark lager, usually you get the vegetal hop and astringent roasted malt combo, but this was more like an amber bavarian lager. Not bad. Hi Jenn.

Poured a heavy brown-amber body with a small yet decent forthy white head. Malty sweet nose. Hoppy and saccharine fruit presence. Finished big and seet.

Pours dark copper with a faint beige head. Rich malty nose, earthy and rich, with a bready caramel character. Flavor had a slight chocolate and earthy syrupy flavor. My only big complaint was a slight oxidized papery flavor in the aftertaste.

Bottle. 1 pint .9 fl. oz., best before 01/04/07 so it may be a little old. Pours a dark redish brown with fastly disapearing head. Aroma is strong with caramel malt, dough, and ginger snaps. Smells like a big ole fresh cookie ready to eat. Fairly light in body with light carbonation. Flavors malty and sweet, full of caramel, dough, cookie, fresh dark bread. There is a light hop presence, mostly noticed in the finish. Finish is quite short in duration with some sweetness and a hint of bitter, a small hint. If I wasn’t getting some weird syrupy Carnation instant malt type flavor I’d really enjoy this. Still, not a bad brew at all and so much better than the other Baltika’s I’ve had so far.

Poured dark amber, with a good head. Very faint aroma of nuts, wish it was more pronounced. Was expecting something bad, but instead the initial taste had a good body, with a solid nut finish, very little bitterness. Another surprise, and I thought Russians were only good for making vodka. A good beer- not great, not bad or average, good.