Apologies for my absence last weekend: I was playing a bluegrass festival in Northeastern PA, and by the time I got home late Sunday, i was just too damn tired to write anything.
Right now, we’re almost out of extract, and there’s not too much going on in the kitchen. There’s a 5-gallon carboy filled with an ESB of some sort in the kitchen, and the keg of porter just ran out. We’re talking about doing a red ale of some sort, but I might begin investigating Baltic Porters after having a couple with dinner the other night.
Of all the Baltic porters, Poland has the best variety and the easiest to acquire, perhaps owing to the country’s brewing history and geographic location. The middle of the 19th century is generally regarded as a watershed for refined brewing technology. Chief among these advances was a more thorough understanding of bottom fermentation and lager beer production, which became the standard method in Germany, Bohemia and Austria. Polish breweries adopted this lager technology from their neighbors (much of Poland was actually under German and Austrian control during this period)…Be wary; they are the strongest as well, reaching 9.1 percent ABV.
I’ve only recently begun exploring Polish beers: as I began this diary I started bopping around the internet looking for a site that was informative, but nothing really great came up. My limited experience has been one of sweeter beers, with almost a honey aftertaste in lighter styles like Ococim Lager, combined with a massive alcoholic wallop. I think my g/f had maybe a beer-and-a-half, and she was shitfaced.
No recipe this week (we start brewing again on Friday), so I’ll leave you with a brief history of the Polish Beer Lovers Party, which took 16 seats in the government in 1991.
That’s a third party I can get behind, and they’re probably a lot more fun than Ralph Nader.
