Welcoming sign at Pub 27 in Pompeii
Baladin Smoked Dark Ale, Piozzo, Italy at Eataly World
Date: October 18, 2018
The Story— We’re still at Eataly World, sipping our way through an array of Baladin beers that would require us to sell our car even if we could find them in bottles at home. Here, you can get them for the normal price of a beer in a good sized city almost anywhere in Europe or the US.
Today’s standout is a dark smoked ale. It’s hard to challenge Bamberg’s Heller Brewery’s Schlenkerla range of smoked beers, but this one gives the champion a good match for a few rounds.
We wrote of habituation yesterday — it’s interesting in a spiced ale because you never know what’s going to recede, but it’s necessary in a smoked ale because the smoke gets in the way of the flavor of the beer as you begin to drink it. The habituation softens the presence of the smoke — with Schlenkerla it softens to a lovely accenting spice in about a liter. Other smoked beers can take more or less time to subdue the initial smoke and one of the strengths of this beer is that habituation happens pretty quickly so you don’t have to have a liter or two to fully appreciate it.
The Beer— Smoke dominates but doesn’t oppress very clean smoked malt. – it recalls sweet smoked fish or meat — there’s a suggestion of honey malt, some stone fruit and clean roast. Habituation starts early and lets the roast and fruits build complexity. Soft smooth, slight creamy with a full body and an eventually very good balance. Ellie may have needed more time than I did to habituate — or maybe I just liked the smoke flavor more than she did. She gave it a good rating, but for me it was one of the best on the trip.
Value — For Ellie, good; for me, very good to excellent. Certainly well worth a few bucks to find out what it does for you.
This week we return to HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE– Surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.” The best we’ve found in researching our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.) We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.
Next week we return to the US to highlight some great beers we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it in 2019.
About these posts: We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year. The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings. Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.
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