WILK Friday BeerBuzz – 1 Feb 2013 Ballast Point Victory At Sea w/Yuseff Cherney

In the dead of winter, you can either kick and scream and hold you breath, or you can embrace the cold.  The key to embracing the cold, is having the appropriate vehicle to embrace it with, and of course that means beer.

Today the beer we chose will not only embrace the cold weather, but it will embrace with such intensity, that it squeezes the life out of any memory you may have of winter and make you feel nothing but warmth.  Our beer style is a Baltic Porter….perfect for a long winter’s night in the Baltic, and a great beer for Northeastern PA in February.

Ballast Point has always been a favorite brewery of mine, and their Victory at Sea Imperial Porter has to be one of my favorite Baltic Porters.  Victory At Sea is loaded with vanilla and caramel flavors, but it finishes clean with a coffee-backbone,  Victory At Sea is loaded with complexity, and if you can resist drinking it fast, let it warm up and you’ll find even more complex and dark flavors.  At 10% ABV, this is a sipper for sure, but you’d be surprised at how well it carries the 10%. 

Victory At Sea is also a tremendously flexible beer…and it was used in an experiment at Ballast Point called One Barrel – 3 Products.  You see Ballast Point is also a distillery, and after aging their 3 Sheets Rum, the barrel was used to age a special version of Victory At Sea, which was subsequently removed and once again 3 Sheets Rum was added to the very same barrel.  This resulted in 3 unique brews…all of which I’d love to try.  Victory At Sea was also part of a special day in Dec where Ballast Point release 12 versions!: 
Pumpkin Pie Victory At Sea – Gingerbread Victory At Sea – Peppermint Victory At Sea – Oak Aged Victory At Sea – Maple Bourbon Victory At Sea – Chocolate Ghost Pepper Victory At Sea – Firkin of Toasted Coconut Victory At Sea  – Firkin of Double Vanilla Bean Victory At Sea – Victory At Cereal – Peanut & Chocolate Victory At Sea – Mole Victory At Sea – Ballast Point Three Sheets Rum Barrel Aged Victory At Sea…hell they even have a cask they added Captain Crunch cereal to!

Sampling a Ballast Point beer would not be complete without their Head brewer and Head Distiller (and co-founder) Yuseff Cherney…and Yuseff was kind enough to wake up early to talk beer with us.  It was a lot of fun talking about how Ballast Point got it’s start and especially fun talking about their growth and expansion news.  Yuseff has a unique perspective on the beer world as he definitely has one foot in the craft beer world and one foot in the distilling world.  His knowledge has me not only excited to try more Ballast Point beers but some of their spirits as well.

Be sure to get out and try Ballast Point Victory At Sea Imperial Porter with Coffee for yourself…and if you can, be sure to try Ballast Point spirits as well.  Victory At Sea is a tremendous example of an imperial porter and a style perfect for winter.

Thank you to Yuseff Cherney from Ballast Point Brewing, Nancy, John & Joe for yet another
fun Friday.
The Friday BeerBuzz…bringing good beers and good people together. As always you can check out the video on-line at the WILK Friday BeerBuzz page by clicking HERE.