Hops

How bitter is Baltic Porter? Less than the dark color suggests. The style guideline puts it at 20 to 40 IBU, the scale used to measure a beer's bitterness—a Pils, for comparison, sits at 22 to 40. Thanks to the generous malt bill, the bitterness barely registers; sweetness and roasted notes mask it.

Hops are rarely grown around Gdańsk or anywhere in Pomerania. Poland's hop fields lie mainly in the southeast, around Lublin, and that's where some of the hops used by Polish breweries come from. Well-known varieties include Lubelski, Marynka, and Magnat. For the beer brewed in Danzig, local cultivation never mattered—trade did.

The Hanseatic League spread hops across northern Europe, and Gdańsk was one of its trading cities. Hops help beer keep longer, and anyone exporting across the Baltic needed exactly that. In Porter Bałtycki, hops provide the counterweight to the sweetness, keeping the beer from turning cloying, without ever stepping forward as an aroma.

Brewers typically add hops early in the boil to extract their bittering compounds. Later additions, which bring fragrance and aroma, are rare in this style. You'll pick up chocolate, coffee, and dried fruit, but seldom citrus or grassy notes. Anyone chasing a big hop aroma is better off with an IPA. In a Porter, hops play a quiet supporting role, drying out the beer and giving the finish some backbone.