Australis Romanov Baltic Stout, Vintage 2000 - September 2007
In wake of the news that the late, great Heavyweight Brewing's likewise late and great beer, Perkuno's Hammer, will be next month resurrected as Baltic Thunder, courtesy of Pennsylvania's Victory Brewing, I finished August with Baltic porters on the mind. So it was only natural, perhaps, that while grasping for a TOTM for September - August having been a rather thin month for extraordinary beers - I reached for a bottle of Australis Romanov Baltic Stout from New Zealand.
Hand-carried back from Australasia by my sister and brother-in-law some years back, I for some reason elected to sit on this beer rather than drink it. In fact, so long did I cellar the champagne-style bottle that it has outlasted the brewery, Australis now being but a part of Auckland brewing history. Still, my thinking went, the beer being relatively strong at 7.8% alcohol, very dark in hue and bottle-conditioned, it should have held up these years pretty well, notwithstanding the brewery's caution that it would age for only "a further 4 - 5 years."
Not to diminish the taste of this lovely stout, the best thing about it is the aroma, filled as it is with notes of very dark chocolate, dried and fresh blackberries and raspberries, black licorice, raisins and coffee. In the body, there's scant evidence of age in this beer, with rich flavours throughout, from chocolate and vanilla notes up front to an espresso and prune accented middle and a roasty, smoky finish. Normally, after seven years I'd expect a beer such as this to lose much of its sweetness, but the residual sugar is still there, making the overall tasting experience akin to the drinking of a very dark chocolate mousse, albeit a smoky one.
By all reports, Australis was a laudable brewery while it existed, and this single, aged stout certainly stands as testament to that notion. So here's a belated "Cheers!" to Keith Galbraith and Ben Middlemass, adventurous ex-proprietors of Australis. You did good, lads!
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