Right: Export Marketing Coordinator Joe Soriero (Image: Ben Droz)
Beer Mail is a series celebrating all of the beers that various members of the Brooklyn Brewery family are sent, swap for, or just stumble upon with the help of friends. If you have a beer you’d like to see reviewed in Beer Mail, send it our way. We’re not picky.
Welcome to our first installment of Beer Mail. For our inaugural issue, we cast our eyes on Export Marketing Coordinator Joe Soriero. More specifically, we were looking at his desk earlier this month, which is home to a sizable beer hoard from around the world (to be fair, most of our desks contain a party’s worth of random bottles.) We asked Joe about how he came across a particularly prized bottle of Nya Carnegie Krakatau and were rewarded with a quite the story:
“Last month, The Swedish Consulate General was throwing an opening bash here in New York City, and Nya Carnegiebryggeriet, our sister brewery in Stockholm, was bringing the beer. The brewers raided NCB’s cellar, sending us a few cases of their rarest ale -a beer that was as dark as scorched earth and warmed like fire.
We had long heard legends of a mighty stout aged in charred bourbon oak in the depths of Nya Carnegiebryggeriet’s brewhouse– Krakatau. Named for the steaming, active volcano off the coast of Indonesia and forged of dark malts along with a heaping amount of Javanese coconut palm sugar, the potent brew seemed the perfect way to end the week.
We quickly skimmed a bottle of the top and poured a taste for all the brave souls who remained at 6:30PM on a Friday [editor's note: Joe, myself, and one other person-- everyone else had smartly gone to the bar], for a meeting-filled day deserves a good bit of intrigue. All in all, we can happily report that Krakatau lives up to its ancient ancestor. The stout displays a rich, yet balanced body and evokes aromas of espresso, dark chocolate, sweet molasses and graham cracker crust. The beer’s warmth shines mid-taste, finishing with touches of coconut, palm and macadamia nut.
We’ve drank our fair share of Krakatau here in Brooklyn and are fresh out – but something tells us we’ll be sharing a bottle over a few Swedish drinking songs in Stockholm sometime soon.”