Darker Than Your Average Beer: Ice Bear by Third Space Brewing

Erratum. In my last review of a Third Space product, I wrote that it – their Cranberry Gose – was my first taste of their beer. This was incorrect. I have since discovered that I had tasted one of their brews back in the olden times before Covid, about 11 months ago.

Mea culpa.

Milwaukee's Third Space Brewing is a relative newcomer having opened in 2016. But my impression is that they are generally well-liked. Or their beers seem to be, anyway. And I have at least a modicum of respect for any brewery that makes a Baltic porter, a style that doesn't seem to be in favor these days since A) it's (generally) a lager and B) it is fairly resistant to hops that taste like mangos.

Long ago when I first heard about Baltic porters with their high alcohol content and black color, I figured this beer had been consumed in the Baltic region since time immemorial. In my mind's eye I saw medieval Latvians ripping off their furs to wrestle reindeer and bears naked for sport and, afterwards, chugging down a flagon full of the heady brew. Later I would discover that the truth was a little more mundane.

Without meaning to get overly epistemological, I suppose I should put an asterisk next to "truth" because I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the origin story of the style is partly (or mostly) apocryphal. The tale imparted to me is that the genesis of the Baltic porter lies in the pleasant pastures of Albion.

Well, more likely the dark satanic breweries of London. Porter brewers began exporting extra strength versions of their beer to the Baltics in the late 18^th century. The Russian imperial court developed quite an affinity for it and the brew became known as Russian Imperial Stout in some quarters. Locals started to brew it and, when the lagering craze hit the area in the late 19th century, they started to lager it. Fast forward another hundred years and you have English beer lover/writer Michael Jackson swing through the region and quaff a bunch before proceeding to label them "Baltic porters".

There's nothing outrageous in this account, no Dan Brown-esque conspiracy between an obscure Lutheran sect and the Hanseatic League forcing English brewers to have their product shipped north over to Murmansk and thusly requiring an extra strength brew with extra hops to survive the overland trips south to Riga. So, until I hear differently from someone like Ron Pattinson or Martyn Cornell, I am sticking with the above account.

Ice Bear looks like what I expect Baltic porters to look like – full on stygian gloom. Sure, if you hold your glass up to the light and twist your neck to just the right angle you can tell it's a very dark reddish brown but, if you look at the glass like a normal person, then it's black. As in no light gets through. The head was a lovely tan color and rather rigid. I moved my glass but it more or less remained in place.

The beer smelled really nice with coffee and dark/bitter chocolate being most prominent. I caught a hint of herbal hoppiness too.

For a beer that looks like a glass of Valvoline, it was medium bodied. That coffee and dark chocolate from the nose was present on the tongue but so was a nice plum-like sweetness. A little roasted grain bitterness was joined by a smidgeon of smokiness. Ice Bear is 9.5% A.B.V. and there was just a hint of booze. A bracing dose of spicy/grassy hops linger after the beer has gone down the hatch and makes for a pretty dry finish.

Ice Bear really hit the spot on a recent winter night. I adore the coffee and chocolate flavors from highly roasted grains and they're here in spades. The sweetness wasn't cloying but rather provided a fine foil for the bitter elements. It was nicely carbonated with just enough for a little tongue tingling fizz and a hint of the dryness to come on the finish.

It brought back nice memories of eating at Arbat Russian Restaurant (R.I.P.) in neighboring Fitchburg where I used to wash down plates of pelmeni and chebureki with a Baltika 6. I'm glad to see someone offer this style in these parts as it seems to be a rare sight in liquor stores. Perhaps it's where I shop, but I don't recall seeing any of the usual suspects like Okocim, Żywiec, or Baltika lately. And Vintage doesn't seem to have brewed their Baltic porter this year.

Third Space is probably having a rough time being a third space right now. (A third space being somewhere to socialize other than home or work.) But, if I were to go visit their beer garden, Ice Bear would be the perfect choice for standing outside in the Wisconsin winter trying to get my Gemütlichkeit on.

Junk food pairing: For a hearty brew like this, be sure to have a bag of beet chips on hand along with horseradish & bacon dip for, well, dipping.