Dominion Baltic Porter

AFFORDABILITY: I did not buy this six-pack, but the process of buying it was quite stylish. My boy D and his ol' lady Stace were at the house for my middle kid's birthday party, and they ended up hanging. I ordered pizza from town and D drove, in a big ass but clean hooptie sitting on some shiny 20-inch rims that made me feel gangsta as fuck sipping on my beer in the wide vinyl passenger seat, with plenty of legroom for even a big, long dude like myself. At the store, like a solid bro would be like, D offered to chip in on the pizza. I says, "Just buy some more beer, I got the pizza," and he does so. This is what he got, although basically his ol' lady technically pays for it all, since D is a dreamer, which doesn't always equal a whole lot of punched clocks. 5 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: Well, it's been almost a year since I swore off east European porters because of the impending double bass drum effect they put on your brain. It is no coincidence that berserkers and death metal dudes who make necklaces of their best friends shatttered skulls come from that part of the earthball. But like I said, my girl Stace bought this, through the actions of her man D, so we drank it. I like Dominion beers, I do, partially because when I first got into homebrewing, they were the most affordable 12-packs you could get locally that had pop top bottles instead of screw top. Alas, Dominion kicks the screw caps nowadays. And this Baltic Porter did not fill me with the joy their other beers used to. This seemed to fringe-y for the sake of being fringe-y. Not enough chocolate taste, and lacking the chocolate is fine if you can kick the 8.0% or so that the for-real Eurotrash porters offer up. But none of that either. Oh well, I didn't buy it. 2 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: The Dominion Baltic Porter label is actually a swank label, with a central seaside image, almost like a Bob Ross painting, in a snazzy bordered frame with all the brand details on the outside. Dominion usually has a tight style. Their other beers I used to drink just have the outline of a deer on their caps, no name or nothing. Plus, like I said, they used to hook us up with some good homebrewing bottles. And they’re located in Ashburn, where the Redskins are located. These are all things I can get behind, which makes me wonder if maybe they don’t really exist and it’s a set-up. It’s hard for me to trust the real world, much less cyberworld, because everything is a result of our own brain processing it, and I’m sure if they can shoot people to other planets and split atoms apart, then they’ve figured out how to tweak brains to process things that aren’t there. And we drink beer to alter reality, which may already be altered anyways. Probably is, in fact. We’ve been having some issues with a faulty damper on our woodstove, which I need to fix two days from now when it’s really warm that morning so I can let the fire burn completely out and open up the pipe and get it straight. But last night, from somewhere inside the stove, it started humming. And it didn’t sound like wind coming through the chimney either because there were strange, barely legible melodies bouncing around, like some sort of carnival music was playing somewhere inside the woodstove’s firebox. Open the door to the stove and it was gone though. Shut it and it came back. I wondered if it could be HAARP beams, but that wouldn’t be so recognizeable, no matter how hyper-aware you make yourself. I figured it was some targeted electronic chatter. They put me to sleep and inserted metal into my face years ago, and I’ve never been comfortable with the fact I didn’t have someone observing the whole process to make sure they didn’t do no shady shit. Because they do mad shady shit on this earth, especially on the scientifically advanced side of the fence. 4 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: I could look up the Dominion Brewing Company, located in soul devoid Northern Virginia, but then that would just learn me things that would ruin the joy. I'm sure it's a company started like seven years ago by a couple of guys who worked for the federal government in some sort of barely appreciable role. And they were part of a homebrewing club, but then saw an opportunity to make money make money money while doing something they enjoy, so they made a power move into some strip mall building that probably used to be where The Spaghetti Warehouse was, and they started making their beers. In my time of having run across them, usually at first in the Giant super grocery markets, but eventually many places including the local Country Blessings store where the dude is all about some state of Virginia brew doggies. They have not disappointed me, in beer, in price, in style, so why would I look it up to find out they're a bunch of assholes of one sort or another, like all beer company ownership types end up being? It's like finding a girl you date, nothing serious, and you have tons of fun, living out fantasies, pulling positions most women are uncomfortable opening up to, and you ruin it by asking her her sexual history. Why bother? Let it go, and don't ruin the joy. 4 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: I am confused as to how Baltic style porters suddenly became a microbrew craze. It was last fall, 2008, that I first came to know of the Okocims and the Zwykiecs (or whatever it was), and they were good and head pounding, which is what I'd expect from those Slavic types. The long history combined with the Soviet years seems to have been the perfect environment for about as berserker as a modern white man can be born. But there's been three or four fauntleroy beer companies of America that I've seen offer up seasonal holiday "Baltic porters" this past year. Being the great grandson of Polish immigrants, I don't necessarily mind this, but at the same time, these sudden consumer memes kinda creep me out. That being said, I fully support Dominion in their quests to make beer that more people drink. I don't think this was their best beer, and this is nothing compared to an actual 24 ounce bottle of Okocim, but in the lightweight world of American fancy lad beer companies trying to rock a fake ass Polish lunkhead porter style, I guess they win. That's like winning the special ed spelling bee, I know, but somebody has to win it, and get that HP Inkjet certificate with the fading color cartridge making the border look semi-opaque with your teacher's name signed in some sweet ass cursive. Cursive handwriting on a line in American society, even in 2010, still means that it's some serious ass official shit going on. 4 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 3 & 4/5 STARS!