Utenos Porter

Bottle from Sam’s in Durham. Pours medium-dark clear brown with lovely light tan creamy head. Smells chocolately, creamy, roasty, and just a hint of cherries. Smells and especially tastes of German-style malts. Light bodied. Nothing stellar, but solid and a good price.

Dark brown, no head. A bit of a gusher actually. Aroma is malty and sweet. Flavor is sweet, malty, sugary. One dimentional and sweet.

50cl bottle bought in Cambridge. Reddish copper with a short, dense, cream head; the aroma has spicy apples and roasted malts; the flavour matches but is also rather earthy, the apples are sweet and joined by red fruits, the malts are full and also sweet; the finish has some coffee and some light alcohol. Rather pleasant.

Bottle shared by phaleslu- Thanks a billion peter. Pours brown with a tan head. Smells like a Banana smoothie with some hints of caramel and chocolate. Kind of weird. Glad to have tried it.

Bottle from The Party Source. This was both my first Lithuanian beer and my first Baltic porter, so I’m not very familiar with the style. Poured brown with a tan head. Malty aroma with some chocolate, sugar, grains, milk, and earth. Sweet malty flavor, with sugar, milk, chocolate, mild spices, dark fruits, earth. Just a touch of coffee on the nose and in the flavor. I couldn’t help but think there was also a slightly artificial chemical in there, probably to suit it for overseas shipping. Smooth, medium-bodied, and a little alcohol upon the finish and aftertaste. An interesting gateway to this style.

Bottle. Poured dark red brown with thick tan head. Full aroma of caramel, sweet malt, bubblegum and raisins. Sweet malt flavour with caramel notes Dry finish.

The Utenos porter is a beer in disguise, feeling and tasting a great deal more like a dubbel than any American style porter I’m familiar with. The pour begins with the ubiquitous light brown head, and the dark mahogany body gives the Utenos a certain degree of grace, a vigorous carbonation pushing darker whorls of beer around to good effect. A powerful aroma redolent of wood, cheese and nutmeg quickly bridges the distance between the cup and the nose, adding a final punch of herbaceous celery upon arrival. The flavor pales in comparison to the aroma, especially at first, where few flavors are distinguishable. But the tastes soon segue into a slow, sleepy sweetness and a comfortable aftertaste that cradles the tongue with a little apple flavor, a high note of wheat, and a slight tinge of bubblegum, before vanishing almost entirely, and very quickly. A fine beer, but misleading. If you’re a burly dude looking for a drink that’ll exhibit your manliness, you might try a more true-to-form porter. But the Utenos, surprisingly, packs some dubbel-esque subtleties that are quite welcome on my own palate.

Blind tasted - Pourse clear brown with a spare head. Smells malty and sweet and a bit boozy. Taste is malty and spicy, with a bitter finish and a little hot on the end. Light-bodied. Overall too much alcohol taste comes through to really enjoy this.