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  I was eagerly eyeing a bottle of brown sour ale when my eyes were distracted by heavily branched cervidae (elk? caribou?) parading across the label of a bomber of 2016 Smoked Porter from the Alaskan Brewing Co.

   Sorry, sour brown, but I’ll have to see you later because it has been way, way too long since this particular smoked porter has passed my lips. Alaskan Brewing’s Smoked Porter was famous and largely unattainable in the early days of the craft beer evolution/revolution. We here could only read and fantasize about it. I don’t know if it had distribution outside of Alaska at that point, but it was definitely an unknown beer in this region.

   Then one day out of the blue I was contacted by a guy who had a connection. I forgot if he went or someone he knew went, but someone had gone to Alaska and brought home some Alaskan Brewing products, including Smoked Porter. I’d never met the guy who contacted me, but he invited me, a complete stranger, over to his house to drink some Alaskan beer. It was a very sweet gesture, but so many years ago I can’t remember if it was this century or the last. Worse yet, I can’t even remember the guy’s name, which doesn’t seem right when a guy offers you a rarely seen beer.

   What kind of cad drinks a man’s rare beer and then forgets his name? Me, I guess. Sorry, guy! This 2016 iteration of Smoked Porter is incredible. The label tells us that the brewery “applied the Alaskan tradition of alder-smoking to the malts” used in this 6.5 percent porter. Apparently alder produces a lighter smoke that is suited for fish, which, I understand, they eat a lot of in Alaska. Alaska’s Smoked Porter is nowhere near as smoky as the classic German Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier (which is a bit like drinking liquid bacon), but the smokiness is ever-present in the rich dark malts of this beer. It makes me think of Earth and the elements. Magma. Times have really changed.

   Twenty-five years ago we beer lovers fantasized about easy access to excellent beers, but never in our wildest dreams thinking someday we could walk into the local supermarket or even gas station to buy Alaskan Smoked Porter from among the miles of aisles of craft beer. How far we have come in my lifetime!

   Maybe the human race isn’t as backwards as I thought.