From Russia with Love????

I jumped the Pacific…I feel maybe to preemptively…or maybe this is just the way a foreigner feels in a foreign land, but now I find myself sampling the brews of the former Soviet Union.

Baltika Brewery which brews 11 different beers, numbered 0-10, rather than named. The brewery was established after the fall of the Berlin Wall as a joint entrepreneurial venture involving the Carlsberg and New Castle brewing companies.

The beers are popular around Russia and in the many of the former Soviet states, yet to the refined palate of the Colorado drinker, Baltika #4 Dark Lager’s taste and aromas recall the acridness of an old industrial city.

Things seemed wrong from the start, when I wiped the dust off the bottle in the store, to when I poured it.

While the color was there #4 seemed to pour way to viscously making me think it lacked body and form. The head was also made up of inconsistently sized bubbles that resembled dish soap and collapsed too quickly, leaving the beer flat by mid-glass.

The smell was a beast in its own, and seemed to morph itself from a soy sauce-like odor, right after the beer poured, to a caramel-apple-soy sauce blend about five minutes after the beer settled.

#4’s taste wasn’t far from its smell in both character and quality. At first it tasted like soy sauce, yet eventually it mellowed and began to take on a sweet taste of sour green apples, while hints of soy sauce took a backseat.

To surmise, this beer was strong (not good) on flavor and weak on everything else including its alcohol content, sporting only 5.6%ALC. At times I thought of quitting the wretched excuse for beer, it just didn’t seem worth while. In short the beer is an all around weak disappointment and not worth the calories.

I expected more from a country that demanded an imperial stout but I guess I will just have to keep looking.

Maybe I'll head south, I hear it’s nice this time of year.