Redoak Baltic Porter

Brewed by Redoak Boutique Beer Cafe
Style: Baltic Porter
Sydney, Australia

Bottled. Dark amberish ruby colour. Aroma of candy sugar, plum and mild roasted malts. Flavour is malts and candy sugar with dry fruits and roasted malt. Alcohol gives a very warming effect, though it doesn’t show up that much in flavour. Very pleasantly done.

(Bottle 33 cl) Courtesy of Phil (motelpogo) who travelled the world for 3 months with this in his backpack to bring it to RBESG 2006 in Gothenburg. What an effort.... Pours a clear, reddish mahogany with a small, light brown head. Full and vinous aroma with sweetish, roasted malt and some dried fruit. Full-bodied and very complex with raisins and other drid and overripe fruit. Very warming alcohol and a subdued bitterness. A pleasure indeed. 260806

<!-- i -->Bottled@RBESG’06<!-&# /i -->.<!-- br --> Pitch black, stready cream tan head. Parfumic alcohol and madeira wine in the nose. Liquerish palate, alcohol, toffee, some coffee. Nicely complex but maybe a bit overrated (when it was rated 4.13).

Black, brown head. Aroma from juniper berries, malty, a bit sourish, figs and fruits, chocolate notes. Very malty and fruity flavor, roasted, some juniper berries, hoppy notes. Great body and a pleasant finish.

Bottle at RBESG 2006. Dark brown coloured with a beige head. Roasted aroma of caramel, chocolate and alcohol. Roasted flavour of chocolate and coffee.

Bottle. They keep this in the fridge and it was way to cold to start off with, so i let it warm a little bit before i passed judgement. It was worth the wait because this was quite good. Quite sweet and a little sticky, but with a enough roasty bitterness to balance things. Dark fruit, bruised fruit, toffee, mocha, there is some nice complexity in here. Too sweet if anything, but i’m being a little picky when i say that, because this was very nice.

Bottled. Dark black, brown head. Rich aroma of salty licorice. Coffee and syrupy toffee dominates. The body is full, it’s very roasty with notes of plums. Themouthfeel is filling, but fairly clean. Very rich and true to style, event hough perhaps slightly more hoppy than it’s cousins around the Baltic.

Bottle at Redoak. OK, here goes. I really wanted to like this, so much so that I went back and tried it a second time, which shows a fair bit of dedication given the price, I reckon. Comes in a 330mL bottle, which I found a bit odd. Pretty murky looking with little head and quite low carbonation. No yeast sediment in the bottle - counter pressure filled? It would explain a bit... Ultimately, it’s all about Vegemite: Vegemite on toast aroma leads into Vegemite on burnt toast flavour. A big, powerful, rummy, alcoholic character, some milk, diacetyl, slightly rubbery and perhaps even oxidised. The malt character annoyed me somewhat, it was more of the rough and prickly variety than the smooth stuff that I was expecting. The best way I can describe it is that the dark malts give it a weird prickly flavour. It reminded me of Southwark Stout too, only I reckon I’d rather drink a Southwark. I’m no Baltic Porter expert, but this was kinda hard going. Frankly if I wasn’t drinking it at the brewery’s source I’d think I got a bad bottle (twice.)
RR: I have had this twice more since the original rating, and it’s still not that good. Once at the brewery and once at Beertopia. At Beertopia it actually seemed pretty good, at Redoak it was its same old clunky, rough self. I just don’t get the appeal of this stuff.