Flag Porter 1825 Original

Brewed by Elgoods
Style: Porter
Wisbech, England

Dark roasted coffee bean brown color. Small khaki head of medium bubbles. Smell is chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, and oatmeal/dough. Begins sweet caramel, butterscotch and chocolate, then a little sour cherry and lactate with some raisins. After is sweet and subdued. Very mellow porter, tasty. Bottle purchased at Chevy Chase wine and spirits.

Bottle into tulip glass; part of my Milwaukee Discount Licquor bounty. Without knowing anything about this beer, I grabbed it from the shelf mostly because I liked the imagery (Captain Ahab on the open sea in search of the Leviathan by moonlight; yar). When I drink a porter, I want to feel like Winston Churchill. This one was more like Neville Chamberlain. To be fair, it was like Chamberlain would have been were there no rising Nazi threat: adequate. Not at all the monumental failure of the century. Poured a deep brown with clarity, virtually no head remaining after the initial five seconds. Smelled very nice, with some butterscotch maltiness, bread, yeast, and a vague crispness I couldn’t associate with anything specific, but which did not remind me of any malt smell I’d encountered before. Body was lighter than I like in a porter, but for the size of the beer was quite alright. Creamy but watery. Flavor was weak, but not bad: predominant sweetness all the way through, slightly roasty, not at all bitter, and a little bit like poppyseeds.

7/18/04. Poured out of 12 oz. bottle, obtained in a trade with someone on RateBeer a long-ass time ago. Pours a deep, dark, slightly hazy brown with many particles floating around in it and a dark burnt orange outline. Diminishing head is tan that turns sort of flat grey-tan. Not much going on in the lacing, and it doesn’t look all that special overall. Aroma gives some promise, mostly an almost doppelbock-like earthy malt quality. Some dark roasted notes and a touch of wood and hops. Reminds me almost of Anchor Porter mixed with Anchor Liberty and Anchor Our Special Ale. Yeah. Actually, I mean "No thanks." Flavor brings back some of that bite, a little strange for a porter, and complements it with an acrid sort of burnt edge. Pretty mildly acrid, but it’s still there. Also a light caramel hint and some roasted nuttiness. I even tasted a little bread crust in there, but I have a hard time picking it out now (and no, I wasn’t eating bread when I tried this). The finish is pretty nice after it starts a bit sharp, rounding out a lot to a pretty malt glow. Solid, but unspectacular.

If the story about the yeast in this beer (being salvaged from some living yeast in a sealed bottle of beer from an 1825 shipwreck) is true, then we are literally touching some once living person from the nineteenth century, whoever last handled the yeast. It’s a cool story, and believable enough. I was surprised not to see this story on the bottle, which makes me believe it more, as it does not apear that they are trying to exploit this for sales. And how many people would really buy it for that story anyway? Most people would not even know what they were talking about. And, fellow beer geeks, you know damn well that if the opportunity presented itself, that you would do it too.

As for the ber itself, it is a very nice porter and earned a spot in my top porters. If anything, it reminds me of Anchor Porter the most, because it has a bit of a bite. It’s not a hoppy beer though - but it’s definitely not smoothly cloying, as some porters can be. An interesting story for an interesting beer.

Bottle Pours a very dark brown with no head and faint lacing. Aroma is dominated by chocolate and dark roast/burnt wood. Molassas and brown sugar too as it is a bit sweet. Flavor is a bit simple and somewhat thin. Taste is a dark roast and a bit smokey. Feel is a bit thin but the finish is nice and very little bitterness. A decent porter.

Smokey, Coffee, Spicey Aroma. Pours black. No head. Thin, nutty, butterscotch, caramel, chocolate. Pretty complex for a porter, wish it was thicker, but I’ll make it.

From the Sharp Edge Beerfest a good color for a porter... but i have no idea why they called this full bodied... a rather weak low end porter

Very dark charcoal porter. Kind of molasses consistency and appearance. Hits with a lot of malt upfront which then fades quickly.