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Craft Beer: Handshake a good introduction to Baltic porter

Handshake, a cranberry Baltic porter from Estonian brewers Ollenaut in collaboration with Ukrainian brewer Varvar
Handshake, a cranberry Baltic porter from Estonian brewers Ollenaut in collaboration with Ukrainian brewer Varvar Handshake, a cranberry Baltic porter from Estonian brewers Ollenaut in collaboration with Ukrainian brewer Varvar

THE Baltic states only really come into my full sphere of consciousness when they started to pop up in European and World Cup qualifiers after emerging from the infamous iron curtain at the start of the 1990s.

Of course, they’d always been there and now places like Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have succeeded in marking out their own identity to the world.

Although many brewers in the Baltic region are relatively new, having latched on to the new wave of craft brewing which has swept across most of Europe in the past decade or so, they do like to retain a link with tradition, while giving it a modern twist.

This is certainly the case with Estonian brewers Ollenaut and their cranberry Baltic porter Handshake, brewed in collaboration with Ukrainian brewer Varvar.

Baltic porter is a style which evolved in the mid to late 19th century. Beer drinkers in the region developed a taste for traditional English porters, not least among them the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. While this penchant may have led to the creation of what we now call imperial stouts, an offshoot also helped the birth of the Baltic porter.

This came about when breweries near the Baltic ports to where English porter was shipped began making the dark ale themselves.

Although imperial stouts are renowned for their strength, Baltic porters eventually settled between the 6-8 per cent abv mark. That may still pack a considerable punch, but porters are traditionally thinner and lighter than stouts.

Handshake clocks in at 6.5 per cent. It pours a black colour in the glass with a thin, tan head but it’s not the kind of opaque, jet black you get with a stout. I had this straight from the fridge, but a beer like this really comes into its own when its temperature rises a few notches above ice cold.

There are roasty aromas with a hint of sweetness and that's definitely the initial taste you get. It has toasty notes of roasted barley and a hint of dark chocolate before the fruitier flavours of the cranberry start to waken up. Although, cranberry is quite a tart fruit, so you do get a little acid bite and a slightly vinous feel to the whole thing.

There’s even a hint of space, the result of the addition of a little rye malt. It’s like a rather robust red wine, with a slightly syrupy sweetness. Everything comes together nicely though and it’s well balanced.