Bending Tradition part 1: Baltimore MA

There is something inherently authentic about Pratt St Ale house in downtown Baltimore. Partially it the location; the bar is in an old brick building just far enough away from the harbor to avoid a lot of tourist traffic, but close enough for convenience.
Its partly because of its unassuming nature. Their beer clearly follows a traditional English theme, but it doesn't beat you over the head with that fact.
Most of all it is a traditional bar for the same reason a dirty dive bar named McLeary's is more Irish than the big Irish-themed bars with Guinness cocktails and waitresses wearing plaid skirts. It's traditional, not because it tried to be. It just is.
I had the rare opportunity to make this bar my home for the better part of three days. Normally time constraints only allow me enough time to stop by for a single evening, have cross section of interesting beers and wrote up some pithy comments that make it sound like I know what I am talking about.
This time I a actually got to spend quite a but of time and, it should be noted, I still didn't have time to wade through all of their creations. Pratt Street Ale house is not a brewery per se, rather they serve beer from Oliver Brewing Ltd. The also pour a great deal of beers from other local breweries. What I am saying is that there is quite an extensive menu to get through. So grab a beer and let's get started.

Merry SOB

I started with a seasonal beer known lovingly as the Merry SOB. It's actually a cooperative brew with two other local breweries, the Brewers Art and Stillwater. This is a dark Belgian style holiday beer. It starts rich and malty with a lot of tropical fruit, citrus and raisin flavors. It tries to blend that with slightly spicy bitter hops. It finishes a little dry and the combination leaves a strange aftertaste. Not bad but I don't see myself drinking a lot of it.

Pagan Porter:
Not a lot to say about this one. Light roasted malt aroma. Malty and roasted off the top and finishes dry with bitter English hops. Very simple beer, but it's everything a porter needs to be.

3 Lions

3 Lions: In the porter they went for simplicity, in their English Brown Ale they... er... didn't. It had a very sweet,, nutty aroma. Flavor starts with caramel and light fruit, like apple or pear. The hops add a touch of balance with some pine, herbal and some liquorice flavors. Medium bodied drinkable beer. I liked this one.


Daft Punk: This ale is "American as it gets.". The idea is that they took an American IPA and, as Americans are want to do, made it bigger stronger and faster... or at least hoppier.  It has hops during the boil, hops added after and hops during fermentation.  Let it be known that while I enjoy IPA's, when brewers start adding hops as if it were an Olympic event, I usually have to bow out.  From the description provided by the bartender, I was pretty sure this was going to be one of those.  The aroma suggested something different.  There were, of course, Northwest hops in the aroma, but they were very slight.  The flavor was pretty well balanced.  Though I am not sure if this is the quintessential American IPA that they advertised that it was, it was pretty good.  It started off with Northwest citrus hops and slowly blended to spicier English hops towards the end.

I am going to leave this as it is for now.  More to come later.  Cheers.