Category: Anecdotes

A menacing queue forms before me.

It is comprised of well-intentioned nutritionists, crusading physicians, profiteering diet planners and congenital killjoys. In this nastiest of personal nightmares, they have gathered to demand that I eschew my expansive habits, to repent, convert and see the light … to eat and drink “right.”

Stubborn and unrepentant, I point defiantly to the thermometer. It’s cold in Louisville and Southern Indiana. Salade Nicoise, gazpacho, watermelon and corn on the cob, while theoretically possible in the context of the global economy, all seem inadequate amid the frigidity. Waxen imitation veggies need not apply.

Rather, what is needed is food to warm the bones, to arouse the slumbering genes of Northern European ancestors on the steppes and in the forest, those enduring and resourceful people who, during winter, reached for the pickled vegetables, delved into cellars for potatoes, beets and onions, and cracked open stocks of salted pork and fish.

For cooking in winter, I prefer hearty ingredients for soups, stews, goulash, cabbage rolls and casseroles. Furthermore, I want beer styles to complement them — beer that is cool, not cold; firm, not puny; and challenging, not simple. Winter provides the most suitable conditions for sampling the beefier classics that have come to us from various Old World brewing cultures, now embraced and sometimes redefined by American craft brewers.

Among these are familiar targets – Imperial Stout, Barley Wine, Old Ale and Doppelbock – as well as one with less notorious a reputation: Baltic Porter. These styles provide ample warming for bodies iced and chilled in the great outdoors, and also stick to the food that sticks to your bones when it matters most.

What’s more, they reflect personal origins in some elusive, yet cosmic fashion. My ancestry is as clear as mud – specifically, the wet dirt comprising flat and indefensible terrain formerly occupied by landowning Junkers in eastern Germany and the western half of what now is sovereign Poland. My people were the German grunt workers hoeing those endless rows, not the Bismarckian aristocrats over in the manor house.

Beer is written into my genetic code. Wine is a pleasant diversion, but my people toiled in Europe’s grain, not grape, belt. For this reason, Baltic Porter always has been intriguing.

Porters and Stouts come from the very same English family brewing tree, and rose to local popularity in the 18th century. England was the reigning sea power, and it was inevitable that these trendy beers would be shipped abroad; export markets soon were opened in Tsarist Russia and Hanseatic port cities astride the maritime route to St. Petersburg. In time, Porters and Stouts spawned numerous local imitators along the shores of the blustery Baltic.

Seems that economic localism was alive, even then.

At first, like other beers of the time, top-fermenting ale yeast was used to brew them. Later, as German bottom-fermenting (lager) brewing methods and technology spread throughout Europe, the same strong, dark beers continued to be produced, but mostly with malts, hops and bottom-fermenting yeasts deriving from the German, not British, brewing ethos.

Today, the Baltic Porter style is flexible, and can be made as an ale or a lager. NABC’s Solidarity is top-fermented, and brewed for greater unity.

22-oz bombers of Solidarity will be available in Indiana and metropolitan Louisville on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. A limited amount of draft will be allocated, and of course, it can be enjoyed in all forms at NABC’s two New Albanian locations.

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Solidarity

Baltic Porter

ABV: 8%

IBU: 30

Color: Burnished mahogany.

Flavor: Medium- to full-bodied, with decided maltiness, no roasted malt flavor, and an elegant, clean character with very subtle hints of fruit.

Compare to: Okocim Porter, Zwiec Porter, Sinebrychoff Porter

Description: Baltic Porter is the surest way to tip your hat to the activists in the Solidarity independent trade union in Poland, and it is a robust reminder of Baltic foresight in activism and strong beer.

Recipe Suggestion: Pour Solidarity from growler or bomber bottle into a heavy glass mug. Slice a kosher dill pickle. Chop onions to garnish kippers that have been laid atop thick, dense rye bread. Consider topping the open face sandwich with slices of hardboiled egg. Eat, drink and explore the primeval.

Belgium begins at the sea with sandy beaches and mud flats bordering the English Channel, and ends in the hilly, scenic terrain of the Ardennes, where towns like Bastogne remind the visitor that war regrettably has been a regular feature of European history.

The country has been a hybrid from the start, carved out of former royal dominions by the “concert of Europe” less than two hundred years ago, given a king and some postage stamps, and intended as a buffer between French and German lands. King Leopold later became the famously corrupt “owner” of the Congo. Belgium’s mandated neutrality was violated twice by German militarism as a prelude to world wars.

Now renowned for its Flemish (Dutch) and Wallonian (French) cultural and linguistic dichotomy, Belgium’s politics are convoluted, but somehow it remains intact. Famous sons include Adolphe Saxe (inventor of the instrument named for him) and Jean Claude van Damme (The Muscles from Brussels). Coincidentally, the European Union’s considerable bureaucracy is centered in Brussels, and the Mannekin Pis statue is a metaphor for money passing from rich countries to poor ones – especially since the 2008 financial collapse.

Belgium is renowned among beer lovers for its eclectic and diverse stylistic legacy of ale making, one the Belgians themselves once were about to forget until reminded of it by exploring Brits and Americans. Portions of the local Belgian brewing heritage survived modernization and lager encroachment, and then later, brewers shrewdly exploited the same forces of modernization to their advantage, including the practice of vigorous exporting, electronic media visibility, and hitching to the country’s reputation for gastronomy and tourism.

American craft brewers have derived considerable inspiration from the saga of Belgian brewing, and the New Albanian brewing company is no exception. Each year just after the holidays, we release Tunnel Vision, dubbed a Royal Wallonian Ale, and intended to showcase New Albania’s equivalent of the Ardennes: Our stubby, mysterious Knobs of Floyd, which rise over our own riverside flood plain, and are inhabited by American landed gentry in their castle parapets.

Lots of NABC’s customers tell us Tunnel Vision is their favorite, and therein lies a story. It began in the 1990s as a homebrew recipe devised by NABC co-owner Amy Baylor. Amy’s recipe included barley, wheat, rye and honey, and was fermented with Belgian yeast. It was of mid-range gravity, and quite popular.

In 2003, NABC’s founding brewer Michael Borchers adapted Amy’s recipe for our start-up, low-mileage garage brewery at the Pizzeria & Public House. Gallons of honey were required, as delivered to the brewery in dozens of small jars by a frantically toiling Crawford County beekeeper. The first batch was good, but the formulation was complicated, and the logistics involved in shifting to larger scales of operation invariably resulted in changes and experimentation by his successors. Then the price of honey skyrocketed, followed by a time when we couldn’t get any at all.

When David Pierce became NABC’s director of brewing operations in 2009, he locked down the Tunnel Vision formula and made it sing: Five continental malts, Magnum hops, both sweet and curaçao orange peel, coriander seed and Wallonian yeast (brought to America from Belgium under stove pipe hats worn by gnomes seeking subterranean refuge beneath the McMansions of Floyds Knobs).

22-oz bombers of Tunnel Vision will be available in Indiana and metropolitan Louisville on the Kentucky side of the Ohio. A limited amount of draft will be allocated, and of course, it can be enjoyed in all forms at NABC’s two New Albanian locations.

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Tunnel Vision

Royal Wallonian Ale

ABV: 9.5%

IBU: 20

Color: Orange/amber.

Flavor: Full bodied, with malt sweetness and fruity Belgian yeast character.

Compare to: La Chouffe and other strong ales from Wallonia.

Description: Those hardy immigrant gnomes who came from the venerable hills of the Ardennes to take up residence beneath the mysterious Knobs of Southern Indiana need a potion reminiscent of home, and one sufficiently versatile for consumption in all seasons. This is it.

Recipe Suggestion: Up beyond those Knobs, westward past Greenville, world-famous goat cheese is crafted by the Schad family. It’s called Capriole Farms, and it’s the ideal pairing with Tunnel Vision. Surface-ripened Piper’s Pyramid and Wabash Cannonball are fine choices, so cut up the cheeses, and gather some nuts and berries, and perhaps venison salami. Use a Belgian-style glass for Tunnel Vision, as dispensed from a growler or bomber bottle, and feel the power of the gnome’s table.