Baltic Night is a Stout, but not your average stout. Your first encounter will be its very black colour and whitish head. It has a well balanced roasted bitterness as well as a hoppy aroma. If you gently position your nose at the centre of your glass, about 1 inch up, you will sense the floral notes of First Gold and Fuggle hops mixed with English barley tempt you. The high percentage of roasted barley that we use to create it also gives it a lovely hint of coffee and a long dry moreish cocoa finish. One of the reasons we are able to use such a high percent of roasted barley is because we have implemented the old continental technique of decoction mashing.

More about Baltic Night:

Decoction mashing was developed on the continent: think Bavaria in Germany and Plzen in the Czech republic, before the thermometer was an accepted brewer’s tool. At this time the quality of the malt was far lower than today and decoction mashing allowed the brewers to get the most sugar and flavour out of the malt as possible. Decoction mashing is widespread on the continent and among lager brewers worldwide. However, as malt quality improved, especially here in Britain, a simpler mashing technique called infusion mashing was adopted and has been a cornerstone in British ale brewing ever since.

A traditional Stout style calls for dry roasted notes, sometimes sweet, 4.0-7.0% ABV and little or no hop aroma. With Baltic Night we have side-stepped the style slightly and added a huge, for a Stout, hop aroma. This is done by dry hopping, a method normally used in summer ales and IPAs. After the fermentation has taken place we add hops directly to the beer for a few days and then after removing them let the beer mature for at least a week before we package it. This allows the flavours to properly marry together.

Decoction mashing brings out a much deeper malt profile in our Stout that balances the roasted tones. To envelope the experience as we send it on its way down the sensory synapses we give it a flowery hoppy aroma by dry hopping it.