Some breweries chase trends. Others bend them until they snap.
And then there’s Põhjala Brewery, born from the frostbitten imagination of Tallinn, Estonia — a place where winter doesn’t end so much as deepen, and beer must learn to survive the dark. Founded in 2011 by four Estonian homebrewers and Scottish brewer Chris Pilkington (of BrewDog lineage), Põhjala emerged not as a copy of Western craft ideals but as their obsidian reflection. From the start, they brewed with a fierce Baltic sensibility — cold-fermented, oak-aged, richly malted, threaded with birch, rye, and bog berries. In 2018, they built a new temple in the forest district of Noblessner: part brewery, part smokehouse, part fever dream — a cathedral of stainless and smoke where Baltic porters became gospel and darkness a dialect.
By 2025, Põhjala has mastered the long night. Their beers don’t shout; they resonate — deep, decadent, elemental. Each release feels like a solstice offering: brewed for firelight and slow silence, aged like folklore, remembered like old spells. And today, Peaks & Pints honors that lineage with a four-beer flight worthy of Estonia’s black gold — a journey from silk-smooth porter to bison-grassed ritual, from cognac-aged serenity to coconut confession finale.
These aren’t just stouts and barleywines; they’re sermons from the North — proof that even in the coldest corners of the world, heat and wonder still rise from the glass.
Peaks & Pints Pohjala Beer Flight
Põhjala Brewery Must Kuld
7.8% ABV | Baltic Porter
Must Kuld — “Black Gold” in Estonian — is Põhjala’s velvet incantation to darkness, the beer that purrs instead of roars. Brewed with lactose and a choir of roasted malts, it glides across the tongue like a midnight confession: milk chocolate melting into honeyed coffee, blackcurrant shadowing raspberry, a faint curl of smoke at the finish like candle soot on glass. It smells like dessert snuck into a cathedral and tastes like it got away with it. Silky, indulgent, unhurried — this is the kind of porter that doesn’t ask you to sip, it asks you to surrender.
Põhjala Baltic Porter Day (2025)
11% ABV | Imperial Baltic Porter with Bison Grass | Tallinn, Estonia
Once a year, on the coldest, most defiant Saturday in January, Põhjala throws open the gates of winter and pours pure resurrection. Baltic Porter Day 2025 arrives as both tradition and transgression — an imperial ode steeped in bison grass, chocolate, and midnight patience. It pours like oil on velvet, aromas of roasted malt and cocoa rising with a ghostly whisper of mint and meadow from that wild Estonian herb. The flavor is cathedral-dark yet herb-gilded — molasses, espresso, vanilla, and a grassy shimmer that flickers like frost in candlelight. It’s a beer that tastes like the Baltic itself: ancient, black, briny with myth, daring you to drink until the darkness hums.
Põhjala Winter Smooth
12% ABV | Cognac Barrel-Aged Barleywine
Here’s a beer that dresses winter in silk, lights a fireplace in your chest, and refuses to apologize for its elegance. Winter Smooth from Põhjala is a barleywine born in cold light, aged in cognac barrels until everything softens—the fruit, the grain, the oak, the world. It pours deep mahogany, lighting up with amber reflections like candle flames in snow. The aroma seduces with caramel liqueur, dried plum, and a whisper of oak-aged brandy; the sip unfolds in deliberate waves of raisin-rich malt, toasted twig, cognac glow, and a finish that drifts away as quietly as snowfall. Serve this still; let it settle; then lean in. Winter Smooth isn’t a beer you drink fast—it’s one you remember while the night wraps itself around you.
Põhjala Cocobänger
12.5% ABV | Imperial Stout with Coffee & Coconut
Cocobänger doesn’t whisper darkness — it slow-rolls it across your soul, rich as midnight espresso and twice as smooth. Põhjala, Estonia’s high priest of the abyss, brews this imperial stout as both seduction and sermon: roasted Costa Rican Caturra coffee fused with toasted coconut and a cathedral’s worth of dark malt. The aroma is pure noir—molten chocolate, burnt sugar, and the faint echo of rum-soaked oak—while the sip unfolds like silk on fire: coffee bitterness giving way to coconut cream, smoke, and black fruit hush. Each swallow lingers oily, decadent, alive, the flavor of dusk refusing to fade.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
