The long awaited Black Walnut Porter is finally on cask and available for tasting at Manor Hill Brewing.

For those not following this saga, I provided the black walnuts to head brewer, Kurt Krol. He and his staff cracked open the very hard walnuts using a table vise, then primed them for a week or so in their porter. To learn about the origins of this slightly crazy idea came about, click Black Walnut Porter origins and more.

We headed to the Ellicott City farm brewery to taste this exotic cask creation. I made reservations for 4:00 PM a few days ahead of time as required by Manor Hill. The neighbors along Manor Lane worry about the number of cars traveling along their small country lane, so requiring reservations is a simple way to limit traffic.

We meandered through the crowd to finally get a taste. Crowd is a slight exaggeration. Besides the 8 of us, there were maybe 5 other people in the tap room.

This porter was surprisingly delicious! It had nice roasted coffee/cocoa flavors, a chewy mouth feel and a nutty taste with just a hint of that characteristic black walnut bite at the finish. I was pleasantly surprised!

Many thanks to Kurt and Manor Hill for trying this unusual experiment. Unfortunately, the labor to extract the nutmeat is too much for a future big batch. A small batch of maybe 50 walnuts for five gallons of beer is one thing but cracking enough black walnuts for 15 barrels (465 gallons) would take weeks. Maybe I’ll try making my own black walnut homebrew one of these days.

Cheers!

Warren