I suffered a minor disaster last week. While at times I felt like Noah without an ark, in reality, it was just a considerable inconvenience: my room flooded. My stuff got wet. I got kicked out of the room. I had to pack up. I needed a beer.

As I trekked toward south campus to put half my worldly possessions into cardboard boxes, I stopped at Gibson’s to pick up a six-pack. I’m not sure why, but the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter from Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Co. jumped out at me. This tasty porter is named after the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, which was a lake freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1975, killing 29 men. 

Sometimes, a lighter, more watery beer is what you want while you do work. If it had been summer, I would have chosen a Hocus Pocus from the Magic Hat Brewing Co. of South Burlington, VT. But on this February night, the rich taste of a porter sounded right.

Porters are dark beers. The malt used to make them is roasted at very high heat in rotating drums, a process similar to that used for roasting coffee, which gives them their opacity. They evoke dark tastes and smells, from burnt wood to chocolate.

The first thing you experience when you sip the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter is a strong coffee smell. But once the beer has passed your tongue and you realize that it isn’t Italian Splendor, it leaves you with a pleasant flowery taste.

When I was done moving, I sat on a cardboard box full of my damp sheets and finished off the last bittersweet sips. I looked at the picture of a boat on the label and my minor disaster didn’t seem that bad.

Max Strasser can be reached at The.hOp.Ed@gmail.com.