By Greg B: A few months ago I had the luxury of sampling a beer that can only be described as rare and delicious: De Molen’s Rasputin.  Well, as luck would have it, I found a bottle of De Molen’s Porter up in Hamden at the Wine Source, and promptly bought it to celebrate the arrival of a new year.  I was not disappointed.

Once again, I was greeted with a simple and elegant label for this pint of beer.  De Molen knows their beer is good, and they don’t need any fancy colorful labels to draw attention.  It has a classy black and white label containing some beer stats to give you, the drinker, an overview of what they did with this beer and a guide to understand the beer a little bit.  As usually, they make small batches and this bottle was number 274 of the 708 bottles of their Porter made, following an original recipe first made in 1914.  It comes in at 5.8% abv and the label tells me the beer was brewed Jan 26th of 2008, and bottled Fed 19th, with up to a 5 year cellaring time.  Some other details included the hop profile, Kent Golding hops for bittering, and Kent Golding for aromatics.  This particular hop variety is a classic English hop (for a classic English beer style!), usually with about an average alpha acid, a little more than 5% or so, and with a pleasant and mild hop/floral aroma, but not overwhelmingly piney or musty.  Oh, and I should point out that the brewery has re-done their website, and it is much easier to navigate now, well done Brouwerij De Molen!

Elegant Bottle and Label

And now for the beer.  The beer pours a lovely dark dark amber/copper color with a large, light tan, rapidly receding and singing head.  The head does maintain a very small presence after the initial pour though, even up to 45 minutes after pouring.  It has a beautiful nose with a hint of beer yeast, but a strong dark Carmel candi. (Please forgive the use of the guinness pint glass on the right, and don’t be confused, this beer is nothing like a guinness!)

As for the taste, this beer did not disappoint.  There was an initial fizziness on the mouthfeel, but this smoothly transitions into a creamy, thicker mouthfeel.  The taste starts out as a hint of sweetness which then slides into a wonderfully mild dark caramel flavor, something that persists through the finish and after you’re sip of beer.  It’s a great taste, and since it is so mild and long lasting you’ll be tasting this beer between sips and even after you’ve finished it.  While this beer is not as complex as the Rasputin was, it is a fantastic porter, one of the best porters in terms of drinkability that I’ve come across.

In the end, this was a $20 bottle of beer that was well worth the money.  It’s a shame that beer from De Molen is so hard to find in Baltimore (despite having considerable luck this past year getting a Rasputin AND a Porter) but it is a great opportunity to drink beer from people who really sit and think about a beer in an almost artistic manner.  In the future, I’d love to get able to get several beers from the same year and style and cellar them, seeing how they change over time, or even compare different years to each other, and note subtle differences  in the beers, be they from different malts, temperature fluctuations or tweaking of the recipes.  Even pairing this beer with food would be a nice idea for the future, as this porter would be great going with clams or mussels or even oysters (raw, of course!) in some way.  For those of you new to beer, a good beer has potential to be a living, changing piece of artwork.  And Brouwerij De Molen has their art down to a science.