Saranac Caramel Porter

good porter!

I didn't think it lacked body, it was pretty thick and sweet. Caramel flavors near over-bearing but I liked it, but I tend to like the Saranac beers alot more than most other beergeeks that I know.

I dunno, do people tend to be biased against Matt's because its such a big brewery?

truly good porter!

Yes. Absolutely. You bet. Uh-huh. Durn tootin'.

Oh, yeah. 'Course 20-25 years ago people tended to biased against it because it was such a small brewery. That was before Pabst, Schlitz, Schaefer, Rheingold, Schmidt's, Ortlieb, Falstaff, Genesee*, Koch, Heileman, Stroh, etc. bit the bullet (letting West End nee Matts start it's climb up the latter as they fell away), and the micro-boom redefined "small brewer". They used to make some real interesting draft only products (Utica Club Sparkling Ale or something like that comes to mind, they had a porter, too), the UC Cream Ale was pretty nice for a cheap beer, Maximus Super was one of the most drinkable malt liquors around (HEY! It was pre-micro days, so we had to be less picky), Matts draft was always a nice site in an upstate NY bar and the brown deposit bottled Matts was a regular house beer of mine, circa 1978 (along with deposit bottles of the "old" dark amber colored version of Genny 12 Horse Ale, before it was reformulated to be a psuedo-Canadian ale.) I recall the thrill of finding Matt's first Christmas Ale (somewhere around Syracuse) in the 80's...

(*Well, sorta...)

Oh, yeah... "12 Horse" was a fave of mine back in Ohio around 1980, and I remember "Black Horse" (different brewer) well also.

remember "Black Horse" (different brewer) well also.

Yeah, wasn't Black Horse an Iroquois(sp?) brand?(IIRC, they messed around with early versions of malternatives, the bastards) They had that here for a few years.(1980-1982?)

Best regards, Bill

Black Horse Ale was one of those labels that got kicked around to assorted small brewers (started out as a Canadian brand, IIRC, and was made in Massachusetts at some point, too). At the end, it was brewed by Koch (which had acquired the rights to the Iroquois brands) in western NYC *and* Champale (aka Iroquois Brands) in Trenton, NJ. Koch got bought by some small UK brewery in the 80's and had some real interesting brews coming out for the time- can't recall the names, but they had a real strange porter and a very English-ly ale.

And, yeah, I guess you can call Champale (and Pink Champale) early "malternatives" but I'd don't know if that makes them "bastards"- they are hardly to blame for Smirnoff Black Ice (which is clear, go figure), et. al.