One Final Victory for Heavyweight
Yesterday was the One Final Victory for Heavyweight event at The Drafting Room in Exton, PA and you know I was there.
The basis for the event was basically Victory was releasing a new beer, Baltic Thunder, which was a remake of a Heavyweight beer, Perkuno’s Hammer. Supposedly the story goes like this, Heavyweight Brewery closed in 2006 after about ten years of mild success to a very devout fan base. One of the beers Heavyweight brewed was called Perkuno’s Hammer and was a Baltic Porter style beer, which is a beer style that not many people make and was one of their most popular. This beer was so popular that after they closed Victory came up with a way (bought the rights?) to re-brew the beer to make it still available as a Victory product. Well, all of this happened in the middle of 2007. After about six months of legal nonsense of name issues, and label issues, and bottling issues Victory finally released Baltic Thunder their Baltic Porter beer brewed in honor of Perkuno’s Hammer.
So yesterday at the event it was the official release of Baltic Thunder plus one of the last kegs of Perkuno’s Hammer was also tapped. Like most people I did a side-by-side tasting of the two beers to see how the original has held up and to see how similar the new one was. Unfortunately the Perkuno’s Hammer didn’t fair too well, it was slightly oxidized and sour, but the Baltic Thunder was fantastic. The Baltic Thunder was very rich and malty with a slight chocolate note in the back. I picked up a couple 22oz bottles at $8 a piece to only later find out they were selling them at Victory for $3, suckage.
They also had a lot of other really great beers on tap suck as Seven Threads Symposium Ale, Heavyweight’s Baltus, Heavyweight’s Lunacy, Victory’s Harvest Ale and Pils, Victory’s Abbey 6, Victory’s Hop Wallop on cask, and a bunch of very limited Heavyweight bottles. The Symposium Ale was blended for 2005 Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia, this amalgamation consists of Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale, Flying Fish Porter, Independence Oatmeal Stout (RIP), Iron Hill Pig Iron Porter, Nodding Head Grog, Stoudt’s Fat Dog Stout, Victory Storm King and Yard’s IPA. If you ask me that’s eight breweries not seven, go figure. Anyway it was a really neat beer that I’m sure will never be reproduced again.
I got lucky and Dave, Catherine, Lyric, and Colin came down and joined me for lunch. I called them to see if they were interested in grabbing lunch not really having any idea how far Exton was from their house or knowing if they were available. Lucky enough they were around and able to come down. I think everyone had a good time, I know my time was better because they were there. Overall it was a really cool little beer event, I wish there was a Drafting Room or similar type place closer to home.
January 8th, 2008 at 7:59 am
We had a great time. Not often we get to do a “beer trip” nowadays.
Thanks for thinking of us, made my weekend.