When you name a beer “Perfect Porter”, you’ve certainly set a high expectation with your customer, one that may not be easy to meet. If there is one man who can meet such a claim, however, and have little trouble in doing so, it’s Bert Grant. If you look up the word eccentric in the dictionary, you’re liable to see Mr. Grant’s picture as a definition, no doubt sporting the kilt he is notorious for wearing at his brewpub in Yakima, Washington.

Bert Grant may be eccentric and famous for thumbing his nose at the strict constructionists of the beer world, but he has earned that right by opening America’s first brewpub back in 1982 and brewing great beer ever since that day. He’s a firm believer in the notion that the brewer should have the ultimate say in how his beers are made, and I concur wholeheartedly.

Back in 1995 Grant sold his brewery, but insisted on creative input. Today at the age of 72 he’s still very active in the promotion of his beers and they certainly have not suffered for the transition. You can take Bert out of the brewery, but you can’t take the brewery out of Bert. In reality, you can’t get him out of the brewery for long either, as he’s well known for popping in to the brewpub and sharing a pint with a patron or two.

Grant’s Perfect Porter is a smoked porter. The beer uses peat-smoked malt as an ingredient, one much more common to American Scotch Ales than it is to porter. This gives the beer a unique flavor and a character all it’s own. The smoke is much more subtle than in Alaskan Smoked Porter, another very famous smoked porter that has a phenolic character not found in Grant’s Perfect Porter. It works nicely with the roasty notes here.

Grant’s Perfect Porter pours to a deep black color with light head formation and a smoky, chocolatey nose. The palate is bold and roasty and packed with notes of prune, chocolate pudding, smoked peat, espresso, plum pudding, and licorice. The finish has a wonderful roasty bitterness to it that lingers nicely on the tongue. This is a wonderfully complex beer that I enjoy very much.

I’m enjoying this beer as a nightcap this evening, but I can imagine it going wonderfully with chocolate pudding, cake, or perhaps a chewy fudge brownie. Whatever you drink Perfect Porter with, raise a glass in toast to Bert Grant, a true pioneer in the American craft beer movement.