It has been a while, hasn’t it.
The project isn’t over, it was just on hiatus for a while. I won’t bore you with my life story but an impending house move means we need to revisit the contents of the kitchen cupboard, which yields this: a 2012 vintage Alaskan Smoked Porter.
It’s currently 2026 and this one was found at Brew Cavern‘s previous premises in Nottingham on a day trip with The Official Threehundredbeers Sister, in January 2015.
Well, some time has passed and she is no longer with us, but this beer, miraculously, is.
Alaskan Brewery beers are not easy to come by in this country, and I literally had to send someone to Alaska to find Alaskan Amber. For a while though, the 2012 vintage of this one did crop up on the shelves of specialist beer shops in England. There are rumours that a consignment was destined for USAF bases in Europe, but a van somehow took a wrong turning…
It’s hard to know what to expect from a 14 year old beer, let alone one you’ve never tasted fresh. It’s either going to be magical, or food poisoning, isn’t it? Fortunately there’s just a gentle “pssst” on opening.
There isn’t a huge aroma immediately, but on pouring we do get a waft of, well, beer, but also some chocolate/cacao kind of notes. The body isn’t huge and there’s very little head retention, which isn’t a great surprise after so long.
Alaskan Smoked Porter is inspired by the smoked beers of Bamberg, Germany, such as the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, and as Roger Protz says in The Book, it:
…may give us a glimpse of what the early London porters tasted like, when malts cured over wood fires had a smoky tang.
I’m not smelling smoke at all, and whereas the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier was overpowering, I don’t taste it either. Whether this is just a more subtle beer, or whether the years have taken their toll on the smoke flavours—as they clearly have on the hops—is hard to say. As I mentioned, I’ve never tried a fresh one of these, so have nothing to compare it to.
The body is fairly light, perhaps befitting a porter as opposed to a stout. There are subtle fruity notes, a little chocolate and some kind of umami thing going on which perhaps reminds me of dark soy sauce or Bovril.
I’m told that probably is the smoke flavours breaking down over the years, and whilst the Chinook and Willamette hops have faded in terms of aroma or flavour, there is still a subtly bitter and perhaps slightly numbing finish.
Otherwise it’s, dare I say it, a fairly normal beer. No fireworks, but no food poisoning either. I think if I had another I wouldn’t wait over a decade to drink it, but I was pretty pleased to find it at all, so no regrets.
Facts and Figures
| Brewery: | Alaskan Brewing Company |
| Style: | Porters and Stouts |
| Strength: | 6.5% ABV |
| Found at: | Brew Cavern, Nottingham |
| Serving: | 650ml bottle |