PORTER
“Porter was truly the first ‘industrial’ beer. Rather than being a natural product of the brewing ingredients, it was ‘engineered’ to meet specific consumer needs. Once established, it was subjected to the powers of the industrial revolution, giving rise to the first mammoth, breweries known to society.”
- Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels
Whereas most beer styles evolved over the years and changed incrementally by trial and error, porter was created by brewers. It was born in the year 1722. It was actually a blended beer where the brewer mixed older stale “aged” beer with “mild” or fresher beers. The reason brewers blended beers like this was to create a more mature taste in the beer. Most beer historians agree that the primary malt used in these beers was brown malt. To create brown malt, barley was dried over a wood fire and some of the kernels would burn and explode during kilning, leading to a roasty or bitter flavor to brown malt, giving porters their distinct flavor. It was a hearty strong beverage and became a favorite of the working classes.
“…Another kind of beer is called porter….because the greater quantity of the beer is consumed by the working classes. It is a thick and strong beverage, and the effect it produces if drunk in excess, is the same as that of wine;”
M. Cesar de Saussure, Letter to his family
Part and parcel with the Industrial Revolution in England was the massive production of the Porter beer style. By 1812 at least four London brewers - Whitbread, Truman, Meux, and Barclay Perkins - were producing more than 120,000 barrels of Porter each per year. (At the time most brewers produced about 20,000 barrels of beer annually). In the early 1800s brewers began to use hydrometers which allowed them to accurately measure the alcohol level in their beers. They soon discovered that brown malts had much lower levels of alcohol conversion than lighter or pale malts, so they began to make porters with blends of pale and brown malts. Eventually they used predominantly pale malt and used brown malt only to color the beer. But Porter was about to be transformed. In 1817, Daniel Wheeler invented a device that allowed you to darkly roast malts without catching them on fire. The result was a black malt called “black patent malt” which was used to make Porters. These intensely dark Porters were often referred to as “stout” porters, meaning strong porter. Eventually they were just called Stouts which brings us to Stout history.
STOUT
An almost mystical character surrounds the stout style for some reason. Perhaps it is the blinding blackness of the brew as it sits in the glass - a sort of barroom black hole so intense that it might absorb everything around it. Of course, the flavor is just as striking. Those who finish their first glass often become converts..” - Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels
There is a famous quote in music that says, “the blues had a baby and called it rock and roll.” The same can be said for the famous style of beer called stout. “Porter had a baby and called it a Stout.” Stout emerged from the Porter style. At some point in the evolution of porters, patrons referred to strong porters as stout porters. For a long time stout porters looked identical to standard porters but as they got stronger the stout porters got darker in color because it would take more malt per barrel to achieve higher alcohol levels. Beer drinkers began to associate darker beer color with higher alcohol levels in beer. It was not until the early 1800s with the creation of kilning techniques that created black patent malt and roasted barley that we began to see stout porters that are almost black in color. You see this beer lineage in the original Guinness which was called Extra Stout Porter, eventually they dropped the word Porter as redundant and called their beer Guinness Extra Stout.
So for the American beer drinker until 1973 the only Stout or Porter they could drink was imported from Ireland or England.
In the early 1980s thanks to the Craft Beer Revolution in America, now beer drinkers had some exceptional Porters and Stouts to choose from. Both styles became favorites of craft brewers and today Americans have the best Porters and Stouts in the world to choose from. Cheers to that !