Beer Styles: Porter

[mongo_jones]

i love beer and think i have a very good beer palate, but i am not by any means an authority on it; hence this question:

what exactly makes a porter a porter? how does it differ from stout?

and what is everyone's favorite porter?

[rgruby]

They're related.

Stouts used to be called stout porters. Although that story has detractors (do you want to get into the entire butt?? - the story of porter and stout is not entirely clear or without controversy!). There was a real good story about this in one of the beer mags maybe two or three years back. I'll try and dig it up in the next day or tow or three.

For me, a stout has a distinct roast - almost burnt - if not taste, then aroma. It has a bit of that kind of "sharpness" to it. Bitter. From the barley, not necessarily the hops. To me porter can have a more rounded flavour with some caramel notes. It is still kind of "roasty" but doesn't have that sharp bitter that I might want in a stout.

However, I live in a land where stout means Guiness (Beamish and Murphy's are seen occassionally) and porter is all but unknown (I think Fuller's Porter is on tap at exactly one bar in a city of five million. Really).

I can also probably pull up the style guidelines on stout and porter - if no-one beats me to it. But the next couple of days are gonna be nasty, so patience please.

Cheers!

[mongo_jones]

However, I live in a land where stout means Guiness (Beamish and Murphy's are seen occassionally) and porter is all but unknown (I think Fuller's Porter is on tap at exactly one bar in a city of five million. Really).

i'll await the detailed info.

i'm guessing the land in question is the u.s? i don't drink porter outside of microbreweries. have had a couple of stunners here in boulder, co.

[paul o' vendange]

They really have become blurred in modern practice. Porter used to be the working person's drink - hence, Porter, and as rgruby alluded to, it was called Stout Porter. It was typically made with black barley, amber barley, and, eventually, pale malt.

The textbook difference is that stout has raw barley, roasted brown. Porter has barley malt, roasted black - "black patent malt." Under this strict regime, stouts tend to have a dry, coffee character, unless they are other than the Irish type stouts (Guinness, etc.), in which case they have various other malts added, i.e., crystal malt or even lactose (think English "Milk Stouts"), and may be quite sweet. Porters usually have a fair amount of crystal malts so, in addition to a certain acrid foreward taste contributed by the (essentially) burnt black malt, they can be quite sweet. Traditional porters also use black barley, which is, like roast barley, raw, unmalted barley roasted black instead of brown - for an even drier, ash-like or burnt-note taste.

Move further afield from the textbook versions and all bets are off. In my porter, I use a modest amount of black patent malt, but mostly use de-husked black malt, typically from Germany or Belgium. By de-husking prior to kilning, this black malt is less bitter than true black patent malt, as it is in the husks where the tannic-substances mainly lie. I seek a very smooth, rich, roasty porter, and it is a big porter - 6.75% alcohol. I also use prodigious amounts of dark crystal malt.

In my stout, for the dark component, I use a good amount of roast barley, but add a touch of black malt for depth.

I don't know where you are, but if you are in the States, we have many wonderful Porters. Just a few: Anchor Brewing's Porter, Summit's Great Northern Porter, Sierra Nevada Porter and Bell's Porter are all good, and all different.

Happy hunting!

Paul

[mongo_jones]

I don't know where you are, but if you are in the States, we have many wonderful Porters. Just a few: Anchor Brewing's Porter, Summit's Great Northern Porter, Sierra Nevada Porter and Bell's Porter are all good, and all different.

Happy hunting!

Paul

i don't know if you were asking me paul but i am in boulder, colorado where the microbrewery to beer-belly ratio is quite high. the best porters i've had are in bars here. they have that mix of bitter-ness and sweetness you mention. the ones i'd tried in los angeles (where i lived before) tended to be much more on the bitter side. i take it the more bitter porters are closer to the traditional.

i'll try the mass-market porters you mention--any thoughts on their particular characteristics? your own porter sounds very good--where is your brewery located?

[paul o' vendange]

I don't know where you are, but if you are in the States, we have many wonderful Porters.  Just a few:  Anchor Brewing's Porter, Summit's Great Northern Porter, Sierra Nevada Porter and Bell's Porter are all good, and all different.

Happy hunting!

Paul

i don't know if you were asking me paul but i am in boulder, colorado where the microbrewery to beer-belly ratio is quite high. the best porters i've had are in bars here. they have that mix of bitter-ness and sweetness you mention. the ones i'd tried in los angeles (where i lived before) tended to be much more on the bitter side. i take it the more bitter porters are closer to the traditional.

i'll try the mass-market porters you mention--any thoughts on their particular characteristics? your own porter sounds very good--where is your brewery located?

Hi Mongo - actually, I was responding to rgruby, don't know where he/she comes from...

If you're in Boulder, my friend, I'm jealous, as you know you're in heaven. Avery Brewing is an outstanding company, one of my favorites.

Most of the bigger craft beer companies (mass market? God, would that it were. If the mass drank craft beer, we'd all be a helluva lot happier ) I mentioned have a nice bite of black malt in them. I can't give the breakdown of malts used as I don't know them, but outside of Bell's, they all have a black-balance, and a great hop presence. My friend is the quality control director at Bell's, and he has told me they shoot for more of a traditional style Porter - not deep black/ashy, but a good dose of chocolate malt (d'oH! Forgot to mention in my initial thread that chocolate malt is usually seen in porters, whereas not typically in "textbook" stouts). Bell's is a huge dark ale producer, so my guess is that they wanted some relief from the deep black richness of many of their other products...

As to my own efforts, they are contained to Ugly Betty, the 1/2 barrel hand-welded contraption I built and abuse regularly. I am a trained brewer and formerly worked for Goose Island Brewing Co. in Chicago, and at one point I sought to open the first production craft brewery in the Upper Peninsula. But life took a turn and we are fortunate to be soon opening a restaurant. I still have fun - I have a microlab dedicated to capturing, propagating, and storing yeasts, and I run biological and other assays on other brews - but, mostly, I put them on tap or cask for friends who come out of the woodwork regularly.

Cheers!

Paul

[mongo_jones]

for people wondering about the avery brewing company and if their beers are available in your area: http://www.averybrewing.com/avery/Home

[rgruby]

[Hi Mongo - actually, I was responding to rgruby, don't know where he/she comes from...

I'm in Toronto. Black Oak makes a seasonal porter on tap in a few places in the winter. Forgot about it as I didn't manage to try any this year.

Due to our arcane liquor laws (and probably several other factors as well) we don't get much international, even US stuff, and almost nothing from the UK that isn't Guiness or Interbrew owned. I believe there are still restrictions on importing from other provinces - so even Unibroue is not widely available (although that seems to be changing). Of the major breweries, I recall Labatt's making a "Velvet Cream Porter" that disappeared from Ontario about 20 years ago. I believe it carried on in Quebec for a bit longer, but I could be wrong. I don't think any of the micros bottle a true porter, but Mill Street, a new Toronto brewery, is making (and bottling) a coffee porter that I have yet to try.

I'll try and look up a bit more stuff on porter in a couple days - there's some interesting history behind its creation and production (was it a porter or stout flood that killed quite a few people? I'll see if I can find out)

[rgruby]

Ok, what follows - in much abbreviated form - is from an article by Roger Protz in the Jan 2002 issue of Zymurgy magazine.

Porter likely acquired its name in the early 1700s due to its popularity with the street market porters in London at that time. It was known by brewers as three threads, or entire butt.

The legend that brewer Ralph Harwood of Shoreditch invented porter in 1722 is probably false - but he did manage to brew a beer similar to the three threads beer that was popular at the time. (Three threads was a blend of beers from three different kegs - essentially a beer made with brown malt (which was cheaper because it was kilned over wood - which wasn't taxed - rather than coal, which was), pale, and stale - a sour, lactic beer which was popular at the time.) Harwoods beer was served from only one cask, or butt, and he dubbed his brew "entire butt". These brews were almost certainly brown rather than black.

Guiness started brewing in 1759, and by the 1800s was producing two strengths of porter, the stronger version known as Extra Porter Stout. To avoid paying taxes, Guinness started using unmalted - and untaxed - roasted barley. And stout - or at least the dry Irish variety, started to branch off from the porters of the time to become a distinct style. One of which I enjoyed perhaps one too many last night.

Cheers!

[rgruby]

Just a little more about porter.

In the 1700s there seemed to be a competition among the brewers to see who could build the biggest storage vats - the largest one capable of holding 860,000 US gallons. Contrast this with the largest aging tank at the Coors brewery in Golden Colo which is just under 49,000 gallons.

And there was a porter flood! A vat at the Meux brewery ruptured in Oct, 1814, immediately killing 8 people. Another dozen died due to the injuries from the flood or by being crushed by the crowds surging in for a free drink.

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

[beans]

Alaskan Brewing Company's Smoked Porter is heavenly. Always my favourite.

[mongo_jones]

Ok, what follows - in much abbreviated form - is from an article by Roger Protz in the Jan 2002 issue of Zymurgy magazine.

Porter likely acquired its name in the early 1700s due to its popularity with the street market porters in London at that time. It was known by brewers as three threads, or entire butt.

The legend that brewer Ralph Harwood of Shoreditch invented porter in 1722 is probably false - but he did manage to brew a beer similar to the three threads beer that was popular at the time. (Three threads was a blend of beers from three different kegs - essentially a beer made with brown malt (which was cheaper because it was kilned over wood - which wasn't taxed - rather than coal, which was), pale, and stale - a sour, lactic beer which was popular at the time.) Harwoods beer was served from only one cask, or butt, and he dubbed his brew "entire butt". These brews were almost certainly brown rather than black.

Guiness started brewing in 1759, and by the 1800s was producing two strengths of porter, the stronger version known as Extra Porter Stout. To avoid paying taxes, Guinness started using unmalted - and untaxed - roasted barley. And stout - or at least the dry Irish variety, started to branch off from the porters of the time to become a distinct style. One of which I enjoyed perhaps one too many last night.

Cheers!

so, if i understand correctly--porter and stout are descended from the same ancestor? or is it more accurate to say that contemporary stout is descended from porter?

[rgruby]

so, if i understand correctly--porter and stout are descended from the same ancestor? or is it more accurate to say that contemporary stout is descended from porter?

I think both statements are correct.

Porters seemed to have developed in and around London in the early 1700s. In Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels, he notes that both stouts and porters have undergone changes in character and strength over the years. Changes in technology have changed the grain bill and tax changes and other factors have influenced alcoholic strength. But inasmuch as stouts - or at least the dry Irish type - seem to have derived as a version of porter, if you will, that was begun as an attempt to get away from the taxman, they both have a similar ancestry.

The Protz article also mentions that as Porter Stouts (a brewery's strongest porter) began to drop in alcohol (due in part to a change in tax laws that taxed alcoholic strength) the difference between the strongest brew and those of lesser strength diminished, and the term porter in respect of these beers gradually dropped from usage. This suggests to me that beers that use roast unmalted barley (i.e Irish stouts) and those that do not (i.e. modern porters) may have existed at the same time and been known as stout. Some view porters then as merely a lower alcohol stout - and historically this does seem to be the distinguishing factor. There may also be beers labelled porters that also contain roast unmalted barley - although this goes against the homebrewers association guidelines.

So, in short - porter and stout have the same lineage, and porter was there first - so contemporary stout is descended from porter.