Ice Bear from Third Space Brewing has a profile similar to an imperial stout but is actually a Baltic porter.
It held off for a while, but there’s no doubt the bleakest winter of most of our lifetimes is here now.
And the dead of this deadest of seasons calls for a special kind of beer, one that matches the blackness of the nights, hearty enough to ward off the cold and, let’s be honest, dulls the senses a little.
Imperial stout is the obvious style to fit this bill, and it’s the one I turn to most often on winter nights. But you’ve already read that column, and I want to put forward a (slightly) different option today: Baltic porter.
This style has much of the same profile of a big stout — dark-roasted malts, moderately high bitterness and ample alcohol — but uses lager yeast to ferment. Stouts’ ale yeast add byproducts of fermentation like esters and their fruity or berry character to the already complex stout profile. Essentially, in a Baltic porter, the yeast steps aside and lets the malt and hops alone create the flavors and aromas.
Granted, in an intense beer like an imperial stout, ale yeasts’ effects are relatively subtle. I drank quite a few imperial stouts and Baltic porters over the years before I started picking up on the effect of the ale yeast — and lack of it in Baltic porter.
The beer that really brought Baltic porter into my home on a regular (seasonal) basis is Ice Bear from Third Space Brewing in Milwaukee.
Ice Bear caused a stir in my house when it was introduced in January 2018, mainly because my then-8-year-old was obsessed at the time with “We Bare Bears,” an adorable cartoon that follows the misadventures of Panda, Grizz and Ice Bear.
Ice Bear is cool because he is the toughest, most level-headed and most taciturn of the “We Bare Bears” trio. When he does speak, he refers to himself only in the third person: “Ice Bear is also thirsty.”
Even though Louie was only passingly interested in a beer being named after an everyday evening resident of our home, Ice Bear became a wintertime staple in my fridge when it was released in cans for the first time the following winter.
Now, I’ll tell you why.
Ice Bear
Style: Baltic porter
Brewed by: Third Space Brewing, whose spacious, high-ceilinged taproom in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley is open Wednesday through Sundays.
Where, how much: Ice Bear moved from four-packs of tallboy cans to six-packs of 12-ounce cans this year, a welcome shift for a beer this boozy. My sixer was about $11, and this seasonal release dropped in Madison during Christmas week, so supplies may be running low.
What it’s like: There are scant few Baltic porters brewed regularly in Wisconsin, and it’s relatively uncommon generally as well. Admiral Stache, a pretty scarce seasonal from Milwaukee Brewing, is perhaps the most widely known one in these parts. It was also the style of the 2017 Madison Craft Beer Week Common Thread — the only time that collaboration was packaged. And we found out last fall that Lake Louie’s Tommy’s Porter is (kind of?) a session Baltic porter.
Booze factor: (Ice Bear voice) Ice Bear is strong. Ice Bear is 9.5% ABV.
Up close: The liquid pouring from Ice Bear’s can is deep brown, but it’s effectively black in the glass. A sniff reveals a lot of sweet malt, some roasty notes and a little hop top note. The sips of Ice Bear are a study in what dark-roasted malts taste like. This is a deep roast, with bitter coffee and dark chocolate notes and a touch of smoke above a cereal-like sweetness. As the beer warms — to accentuate this, pull the can out of the fridge about 10 minutes before drinking — a little bit of plummy dark fruit emerges. Ice Bear is a thick, full-bodied winter warmer that we need this year especially.
Bottom line: 4 stars (out of 5)
Beer Baron’s Beers of the Year 2020: Worst Year Ever Edition
Let’s take inventory of the most unforgettable, symbolic and just downright delicious beers of 2020.
This was not the best new beer Madison’s Ale Asylum released this year, but it was unquestionably the most successful, and it’s obvious why without even cracking open the can. This beer’s label perfectly captured the zeitgeist at the time of its release in early April, and it never really stopped resonating. The pilsner was followed by a hazy pale ale version, and both were taken national by the new Wisconsin-based distributor Brew Pipeline. Locally, the brewery has offered the FVCK COVID duo and many of its other beers for $6 a six-pack for most of the year. By the way, my favorite new Ale Asylum beer also had a “ugh, 2020” theme: MRDR HRNT, the first in a new “Apocalypse Bingo” series. It’s a pale ale heavily dosed with Mosaic, Denali and Trident hops that create an intense, nearly hard seltzer-like lemongrass-lime character.
This is not one but 25 beers, a different one from each of the Wisconsin breweries that committed to this worldwide collaboration started by San Antonio’s Weathered Souls Brewing. Most of the beers were imperial stouts, but the Black Is Beautiful black IPA (remember that style?) from community-focused Delta Beer Lab might have been my favorite of those I tried. The other participating Madison-area breweries were Herbiery, Giant Jones, Parched Eagle, Rockhound, Sunshine and Young Blood. Black Is Beautiful was, of course, a response to the other story that defined 2020: our national awakening on racial justice. The 1,192 breweries that took part pledged to donate proceeds to local foundations that support police reform and legal defense for those who have been wronged by police, and also committed “to the long-term work of equality.” I am happy to drink to that.
Yes, there are plenty of beers on this list that are not a statement on times like these. And Untitled Art’s take on the legendary Chocolate Shoppe ice cream flavor was probably my favorite of them. Loaded with lactose for sweetness and creaminess, and cocoa nibs and dark malts for chocolate character, it was not just a beer that tasted like chocolate ice cream but specifically like Zanzibar. It was sweet but not overly so, and the chocolate had dark depths and the fruity complexity of its namesake.
Young Blood Beer Co. picked a heck of a year to debut. The plan was to pack the taproom on King Street and pour glass after glass of head brewer Kyle Gregorash’s IPAs, saisons, lagers and pastry stouts. The opening went ahead in May, with a quick pivot toward canning the bulk of the beer, though the sidewalk patio did brisk business, too. Young Blood’s M.O. is to crank ’em; its Untappd page records 117 different beers already. And while this is really a nod for the entire brewery over a single beer, I don’t think any Young Blood I had this year surpassed the mostly by-the-book but excellent saison Cheryl’s 2004 Cobalt. I’m looking forward to seeing more of the colorful cans in my fridge — and what they come up with next for beer names — in 2021.
The label of color fields and geometric shapes was almost as adorable as this beer’s diminutive pop culture namesake, but the beer inside was the real force. Released for Third Space Brewing’s fourth anniversary in September, this kinda-hazy session IPA packed bright citrus and stonefruit flavors and a satisfying body despite its wee 3.9% ABV. Baby Yo capped a great year of new hoppy beers, with kveik yeast stars Nordic Sunrise and Fjord Explorer strong BOTY contenders as well.
If you’re the most successful craft brewery in Wisconsin and you’re going to release only one new beer in a year, it had better be a banger. And this complex, enigmatic sipper sure was. A blend of three batches of spontaneously fermented ale from New Glarus’ “wild fruit cave,” it incorporated Geisenheim grapes after blending to put an unmistakable spin on brewmaster Dan Carey’s familiar fruit lambics. This sweet creation was aptly named, with a floral, intensely fruity profile of apricot, white grape and honey that really did evoke a butterfly’s sip.
Oktoberfests get all the love every year, but a great Vienna lager can scratch that toasty-malty itch year-round. For that reason, I didn’t love that this beer from Lakefront Brewery’s My Turn series came out in fall when shelves were already loaded with beers with a similar profile. But it was still a standout: bready and flavorful but clean and balanced. Wisconsin brewers, let’s be like Lakefront warehouse employee Johnny Hopgood (his real name, a true aptonym) and make some more Vienna lagers, please!
Yes, the bow on top of my 2020 Beers of the Year is a 117-year-old American light lager that you can find literally everywhere. I wrote a column in May revealing the Champagne of Beers as my “comfort beer,” a rock of palate certainty to balance the uncertainty in the world. But as the year marched on, I realized there was another factor bringing me back to High Life. On Feb. 26, a Molson Coors electrician killed five co-workers and himself at the Miller Valley brewery in Milwaukee. I feel a kinship with this beer for many reasons but the one I thought about often while buying yet another 12-pack this year was a solemn solidarity with the survivors of that day and the loved ones of the fallen: Dale Hudson, Gennady "Gene" Levshetz, Jesus “Jesse” Valle Jr., Dana Walk and Trevor Wetselaar.
Got a beer you’d like the Beer Baron to pop the cap on? Contact Chris Drosner at chrisdrosner@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @WIbeerbaron.
