Today’s beer is one of my favorite locally-available porters, the Robust Porter from Smuttynose Brewing in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The brewery has been available in the city for over a decade, and is one of the more consistently good breweries in the Northeast. I’ve rarely had a clunker among the wide range of ales, and a couple of lagers, that they churn out regularly.
Smuttynose started brewing in Portsmouth in 1994, releasing their pale ale and brown ale that year. Robust Porter came along in 2001. The brewery is linked to the Portsmouth Brewery in town, and I’ve found quite a few of their beers on tap alongside that brewpub’s beers when I’ve been there. I’ve heard tell their biggest market in New York City, even larger than New Hampshire, which tells you a bit about how well-received its beers have been here.
Robust Porter, as a style, is expected to be dominated by the roasty, even a little burnt flavors from the roasted malt in the grain bill, but never harsh. Obviously it’ll be brown or dark brown as a rule, and unlike its cousin the brown porter, which is more English in style, some hop bitterness should stand out in the body. It’s typically a rich, full beer, even if not very high in alcohol.
Smuttynose Robust Porter pours a very, very dark brown, opaque, with some ruby highlights if you hold it up to the light. I poured it to kick up the lovely pictured head, a huge, dense, big-bubbled brown head, though that quickly settles to a thin layer that never quite disappears. True to its style, the nose is filled with roasted barley and bitter chocolate. There’s a slight red-wineyness to the aroma as well, and that typically shows up as a marker of oxidation.
Aside: Oxygen will react with the building blocks of the beer to create new flavor compounds over time, many of which are unpleasant. This oxidation, though not what the brewer intended for the beer, can be pleasant enough — for example, wine or sherry aromas and flavors work pretty well most of the time in beers that use a lot of darker, roastier malts. But then, oxidation can show up as papery, like wet cardboard. Not exactly palatable.
Unsurprisingly, the flavor is dominated by bitter chocolate and the roasted barley as well, though there is a bit of hop bitterness present, as a “fuzzier” roughness on the palate than the roasted flavors. No hint of the alcohol — it’s a mere 5.7% — shows up to add heat to the mix. Instead, the beer feels fairly full in the mouth, and the carbonation isn’t so excessive that it distracts. There’s a little sawdusty dryness (another oxidative effect) in the back, too, which carries into the finish and mutes the roastiness in the aftertaste somewhat.
I picked this beer up at Sam the Beer Man in Binghamton, with a best by date of April 2010. So it was probably bottled in October, which means it was maybe getting a little long in the tooth. I’ve seen six-packs for sale for around $9 around the city (and it’s occasionally on tap), so it’s on the inexpensive side, actually. Just check the dates! All in all, the Robust Porter is a worthy, sessionable beer. Give the folks from New Hampshire a little love.
I Love Great Beer!!! says
Love Smuttynose, they make some great beer…
I Love Great Beer!!! says
We were at the Brooklyn Brewery today and tried their Dark Matter on tap. That was aged in old Bourbon barrels: read from Brooklyn Brewery.com website: “Brooklyn Dark Matter is a robust brown ale aged for four months in bourbon and rye whiskey barrels. Some barrels previously held Black Ops, some hosted The Manhattan Project, others came straight from the distilleries as soon as the whiskey was decanted. We’ve blended these barrels to create a beer full of caramel and chocolate flavors heightened by vanilla-like oak notes and hints of the barrels’ previous tenants. The result is a smooth, rich beer that really loves food, from fried or roasted chicken to char-grilled steak, barbecue, pork chops and even monkfish. And on some chilly evening in late winter, or perhaps the first warm night of spring, we hope that you may be tempted to believe that Dark Matter really does bind the universe together.”
Do you have a way to start a string or send new comment or question?
BeerBoor says
Yeah, see, this post is about Smuttynose Robust Porter; it’s not a forum for generally talking about any old beer, or a place to dock a copy of another website about an unrelated beer. Comments like your first one are more relative and interesting.