California is once again on fire, so let’s raise a pint to Finland. I hear they have great, year-round Baltic beach resorts there.

The Finnish language is harder to learn than all of the Elvish languages combined. 

Let’s see, this is another porter. 33 CL of 7.2% strength liquid redemption. Why not a full liter? This makes me sad. I cannot read the ingredient label.

How does it pour? 

It pours like beer.

Väinämöinen is a curmudgeonly old man but I admire his ability to make musical instruments from the carcasses of mighty fish that have been violently slain.

33 CL is not a pint. Not a pint at all. 

I shall blame the Swedes and the Russians for this deficiency.

The color is dark like the deepest night of Rovaniemi in wintertime. The head is almost frothy but mostly restrained, like the fracturing of the sisu-temperament of the Suomalaiset folk when it just barely bubbles up over the otherwise stoic surface. And the mouthfeel. The mouthfeel is smooth like the slippery snow blades of Santa’s super sleigh.

I lament the loss of the sampo.

Damn that winged woman of Pohjola!

Like the sampo, Sinebrychoff’s Porter is robust and bold; full of awe and wonder. Unlike the sampo, it is not an abstract magical machine that produces untold riches from nothingness. 

I’ll drink to that. 

Rowdy Geirsson unsuccessfully attempts to promote Leif Erikson awareness and barely maintains Scandinavian Aggression, a mediocre blog about Vikings. He is the editor of Norse Mythology for Bostonians and is a regular contributor to Metal Sucks, McSweeney’s, Points in Case, and Slackjaw. Follow him on Twitter @RGeirsson, or don’t.