347. Port Brewing Old Viscosity

“Not Your Dad’s 30 Weight”

Another Port beer—or, our port of call tonight is Port Brewing, and more specifically Port Old Viscosity. We’ve previously consumed with delight Port’s 3rd Anniversary Ale, 2nd Anniversary Ale, High Tide Fresh Hop, and Hop-15. Port port port.

Pouring a deep thick chocolate with red highlights, Old Viscosity has a thin tan head and a dry, creamy, and rich stone fruit nose—cherry, plum, prune, and what Elli likes to refer to as a “Twizzler” aroma, by which she means a candy sweet cherry. Old Viscosity has a rich fruit flavor at the start—there is rum raisin and plum, along with a bit of alcohol flavor (hence the rum of the rum raisin). These flavors continue on into the middle, moving into light chocolate and roasted flavors in the final third, finishing dry on the palate with some chalkiness on the back of the tongue. The mouthfeel is rich, thick, and chewy, but also dry and coupled with a little bit of creaminess. The mix of dryness and creamy chewiness is effective, and helps build the overall body and mouthfeel; we’re guessing that some of this comes from the oak aging. The carbonation is medium, and has a decent bite in the middle, smoothing out as it progresses towards the end. Old Viscosity is an interesting and nuanced beer; the alcohol flavor does pick up as the beer warms, which is one downside, but other than that, a very drinkable and enjoyable beer.

From the bottle: “Everyone always ask us, ‘What kind of beer is Old Viscosity?’ We have to pause for a minute here as there are restrictions about how you can and can’t describe beer on our labels. Since you’ve already asked, we’ve decided to tell you that it’s thick, as in my chest just grew a wool coat sort of way. It’s dark and sludgy like the old 50W oozing from the crank of that old truck. Beers like Old Viscosity are revered like old school pieces of equipment we know and love. The ones that cause people to say, ‘They don’t build them like this anymore.’ We know you’ll come to love and appreciate everything about Old Viscosity even if we never tell you exactly what kind of beer it is.”

What’s wrong with this glass? It’s empty...

From the Port website: “Not your Dad’s Wimpy 30 Weight is how our original label used to describe this massive chewy and thick beer. Code named by our brewers ‘The Big Black Nasty,’ this is monstrous dark ale is brewed to no particular style. Thick and sludgy like oil from the crankcase of a wheat threshing combine, Old Viscosity blurs the boundaries of Porter, Stout, Old Ale and Barleywines. A blended beer that mixes old and new brewing traditions into one finished beer, Old Viscosity starts out with 80% of the packaged beer produced from a stainless steel fermentation. It then joins another 20% Old Viscosity (from a previous batch) that has been aging in bourbon barrels. The blend of the two beers yields an incredibly rich and luscious ale that reveals chocolate and cocoa notes melded to silky body of burnt wood, vanilla and ash.”

ABV: 10.0%
OG: 1.092

FG: 1.014

Malts: 2-row, Wheat, Domestic and English Crystal, Carafa III, & Chocolate

Hops: German Magnum

(6/12/10)