Every festive season, Boatrocker like to drop a few hefty releases (admittedly, there are few times of the year they don't deem suitable for higher ABV beers), and the most recent was no different. Alongside their annual adjunct-laden barrel-aged imperial stout Fat Santa came two new releases.
One saw them join forces with Estonian brewery Põhjala, who have been sending some of their beers here for years, typically hitting the taps at the Pint of Origin Europe venue every May. The respective brewers first met at the Young Masters Invitational in Hong Kong, then again at the De Molen Invitational in the Netherlands, and got chatting about a shared fondness for big barrel-aged beers. In 2024, one of Põhjala's brewers, who hails from Melbourne, headed to Boatrocker's home in Braeside to create a style for which the Tallinn-based crew are well known, a Baltic porter, but with an Aussie twist: ex-Starward whisky barrels, red gum smoked malts, and Tasmanian pepperberries.
Now, if you handed someone a glass of double-digit ABV dark beer from Boatrocker aged in Starward barrels, their mind may well drift to the lusciousness served up by the brewery's iconic Ramjet, yet this is a very different beast. While that beer feeds into the new world whisky's sweetness, in Virvendus, the Baltic porter seems to want to fight or contrast instead. There’s a smokiness, a cab sauv grape fruitiness in the aroma, and a dry, roasted bitterness that aims to keep overt lusciousness at bay. Admittedly, there's elements reminiscent of figs and aged sherry too, but it remains a very distinctive offering.
For Vintage Ale 2024, Boatrocker employed another of their best-known big beers, Banshee, giving the barleywine 18 months in a former Pedro Ximenez barrel they'd previously used to finish a batch of Ramjet Whisky. Given a single barrel was used, they ended up with just 250 litres of a beer they've packaged in bottles and labels that remind me of the legendary Thomas Hardy's Ale. Dense, cloudy, sticky, boozy, awash with syrup sponge, rum-soaked apricots and raisins, and with a little marzipan in there for good measure, it's a beer that should definitely cellar well.
James Smith
Published January 5, 2025 2025-01-05 00:00:00
