Beer Style(s) of the Month - Porters and Stouts
Even with global warming in full swing, those of us in the northern climes are getting a winter preview. It’s dropping into the mid-forties (Fahrenheit) at night and we are reaching for our thermostats to take the chill out of the air. This isn’t really the time of year for a pale ale or a pilsner. You want a beer that is robust, roasty, and thick. But it isn’t so cold that you have to start breaking out the high alcohol stuff like the Imperial-style beers. Just after Oktoberfest, I start developing a thirst for darker beers like porters and stouts. So the style (or styles) of the month for November are these English/Irish coffee colored brews.
Thanks to beers like Guinness, Murphy’s, and Beamish most people know what a stout tastes like; however, there are few examples of mainstream porters and so only your craftbeer enthusiasts will likely know the difference between a stout and a porter. But the difference isn’t so obvious and is a subject of debate amongst beer enthusiasts.
Historically, a stout was just a stronger alcohol version of a porter; however, over the years this distinction has been blurred and brewers have focused on other aspects of the beer to differentiate a porter from a stout. Some brewers feel that porters should be thinner bodied versions of a stout. Terry Foster, in his classic book on porters, focuses on “balance” as the defining characteristic of a porter. Whereas stouts can range between the extremes of sweet and dry, a porter is fully balanced. Foster admits that balance is a subjective gauge and difficult to define, but balance in a beer is achieved when all the ingredients work together to produce one flavor impression. The hops don’t dominate the malt; sweetness shouldn’t dominate dryness.
As I mentioned stouts are easy to come by, but porters might be more difficult to find. If you want a classic example of an American-style porter, try Yuengling’s porter. It’s America’s oldest porter. It was brewed prior to Prohibition and a version still survives today; however, I have no idea how much the beer has evolved since then. Other versions that are readily available in the States are Samuel Smith Taddy Porter, Fuller’s London Porter, Anchor Porter, and Sierra Nevada Porter.
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