Home > RateBeer Archives > Styles & Seasonals

Beer Style - Porters

Styles & Seasonals June 23, 2005      
Written by Oakes


Richmond, CANADA -

Porter

Porter is one of the beer styles with the most interesting histories. Randy Mosher stated in Radical Brewing that the character of porter has changed every generation or so since its inception, a claim that seems to have some merit. This adds to the style’s charm, and confuses its history.

Though dark ales have been common throughout history, the name porter has only been around for a couple of centuries. The style is said to trace its roots to a blend called Three Threads in London. This was made at the pub, blending the product of three different casks in one mug - a fresh ale, an old ale and a pale ale. Three Threads was a pain for publicans to produce, so in 1722 a brewer named Ralph Harwood developed a brew to replicate the character of Three Threads. This was dubbed Entire Butt, with butt being a type of beer barrel and entire referring to the fact that the entire beer (three threads) was contained in one butt. Now, this is almost three hundred years ago and the beer scene in London at the time would unrecognizable to any but the most dedicated beer historians, and those folks are not overly convinced that this story is the full story at all – remember of course the dark brown ales existed before Entire Butt and that E.B. was itself a mutation of a contemporary product. Thus, while it is perfectly reasonable to draw a direct lineage from present-day porter back to Harwood’s Entire Butt, it has to be recognized that the ancestry of porter goes back further, to the antecedents of three threads and their antecedents as well.


In his excellent book Beer: The Story of the Pint, Martyn Cornell tries to refute the above story but in the process provides more evidence of the story than of his own ideas, which are highly speculative. One thing that he does raise, though, is the issue of Ralph Harwood being the creator of porter. He’s right in that there is no unbiased source of information to demonstrate this, but it’s neither here nor there, as to the best of the beer world’s collective knowledge, the rest of the story is pretty close to being true, irrespective of any role Mr. Harwood may have had to play.

For reasons we don’t fully understand, Entire Butt became colloquially known as porter. The most popular legend is that the beer was especially popular with porters. This seems as reasonable as any, given the oblique ways in which slang terms develop, but there is no specific proof to lend definitive credence to the story.

Porter is the basis of an entire family of beer styles. Porter begat stout, which begat imperial stout, which begat Baltic porter. Stout also begat oatmeal stout, foreign stout and sweet stout. Porter itself can be found in at least two main forms today. Some style guides list these as "brown porter" and "robust porter", but form some reason have trouble pinning down what each of these terms really means. Mosher writes this breakdown “is somewhat arbitrary” and I wholeheartedly agree. After all, I can sit down and draw a line in the sand between the two, but when I look at other style guides it becomes clear that my line in the sand is not in the same place as other theorists’. Mine is farther to the sweet, non-roasty side of the spectrum. In any event, the two terms may be recognized amongst homebrewers and certain beer aficionado circles, but their usage has not spread to beer labels nor to the general public. They are helpful, but have limited recognition as distinct beer styles to the average drinker.

To me, brown porter is the traditional form. There are few of these in existence any more. This type, which may be labeled "traditional", "old-style", or with references to Three Threads or Entire Butt, is a dark brown ale of moderate strength (4-5%) and low hop rates. The character is of brown malts - toffee, raisin, perhaps some toast. There was a malt called brown malt that was a key element of porter at one point. That malt has been produced again in recent years and brewers have used it to lend a dryish, dusty-tasting character to their porters. Brown porters are sometimes slightly acidic, which is a nod to tradition given that the old ale that once when into Three Threads was typically acidic. There are a few examples in North America that have withstood the years and they may be bottom-fermented, as they survived in breweries producing mainly lagers.

The robust form is a more modern innovation. As porter was in its death throes, in the early 1980’s, already extinct in its native Britain, its adopted home of Ireland, and available only in a handful of dying brands made by Labatt, Molson, Stegmaier and Yuengling in North America, it rose from the dead. The miraculous recovery began with Anchor Porter (actually born in 1974) and soon many US microbreweries were reviving the style. As such, they put their own stamp on the style, infusing it with more hops, and often lending it a darker character - roast, chocolate and coffee - from darker malts, and more of them, than had been found in porters since the style split off from stout (discussed in more detail in that section). This porter was distinctly different, but quickly became the model for this generation of the style. Today, there are plenty of porters that blur the lines between a hardcore robust porter with its stout-like qualities and the sweet brown porters that it can be tough at times to place individual examples in either one class or the other with any definitive authority, as much as one might pretend that this is what they are doing.

Most porters today are near black in colour, with roasty, toasty, chocolatey notes. They have plenty of hop character (over 30 IBUs is not uncommon), including flavour and aroma. They are still session beers, though tend to be stronger than "brown" porters (4.5-6%). They are complex, flavourful ales of distinction and versatililty.

Most popular examples: Anchor Porter (USA), Fuller’s London Porter (England), Samuel Smith Taddy Porter (England), Sierra Nevada Porter (USA), Rogue Mocha Porter (USA)

Some of my favourites: Jämtlands Oatmeal Porter (Sweden), Fat Cat Porter (Canada), Fuller’s London Porter (England), Smuttynose Robust Porter (USA), Avery New World Porter (USA)

Colour: 3.75 – 4.75
Flavour: 2.5 – 4
Sweetness: 2 – 3.5

Baltic/Imperial Porter

Almost literally the bastard son of Imperial Stout, Baltic porters are the remnants of the burgeoning Baltic trade in strong stouts. After WWI and the fall of the tsars in Russia, the trade in strong English stout disappeared. The taste for these beers remained to some extent, however, and local breweries continued to produce the products. Most of the breweries making this style ended up, sooner or later, in the USSR. Porter brewing gradually died out in the Soviet Union, but remained strong in both Poland and Scandinavia. As the producers of these strong porters were mainly lager breweries, the porters began to be brewed with lager yeast, Koff Porter being a notable exception.

Baltic Porter has for decades been a minor regional style. The fall of Communism was a double-edged sword as well, with the style being reintroduced successfully in St. Petersburg, but coming under pressure in its traditional stronghold of Poland as international brewers enter into that market, buy and consolidate breweries and rationalize product lines. Moreover, in most Baltic countries, porter is decidedly untrendy, as consumers rush to embrace Western-style swill over the well-made native beers. The style is facing a similar situation in another traditional stronghold, Denmark.

Baltic porters are strong - no less than 7.5% would suffice and the norm is more like 9-9.5% in Poland. Alcohol flavours mix with a depth of dark malt notes and dark fruits. They are sweet beers, with bitterness mainly coming from roast. Some examples are fairly roasty, but others only have this character in limited quantity. Body is thick and chewy. Flavours are intense, and the finish is long.

I have allowed myself one rant in the course of this style guide, and here it is. If you don’t want it, skip this paragraph. It won’t be pretty. Carnegie Porter is not a Baltic Porter. Almost every style guide in existence claims that it is, but they are all wrong by a wide margin. Some justify this by drastically altering the style’s guidelines so that Carnegie is included. Some claim that because it is a porter continuously brewed in the Baltic since the 1800s that qualifies it to the name, but there are other porters brewed in the Baltic region, too - Huvila, Jämtlands, Nynäshamns among them. Those are not Baltic Porters, either. Styles are defined by flavour, aroma, body and strength, not by geography. Without these, it is not in the style, and tinkering with the guidelines dramatically to allow the inclusion of one example is reckless and stupid. End of rant.

An recent innovation to the style has emerged in the US. This is more often known as Imperial Porter, rather than Baltic, which is fair enough because these add different twists, such as top-fermentation, perhaps some American-style hopping, though this would tend to lean the beer towards the Imperial Stout class. Not that there is anything wrong with that given the style started out as Imperial Stout in the first place. They also might be roastier than the normally sweet examples from Central & Eastern Europe. To put it simply, they taste like big porters, rather than Baltic porters.

Most popular examples: Koff Porter (Finland), Heavyweight Perkuno’s Hammer (USA), Zywiec Porter (Poland), Baltika 6 (Russia), Aldaris Porteris (Latvia)

Some of my favourites: Koff Porter (Finland), Limfjords Porter/Double Brown Stout (Denmark), Zywiec Porter (Poland), Boss Porter (Poland), Krolewskie Porter (Poland)

Colour: 4 – 4.75
Flavour: 3.75 – 4.75
Sweetness: 3 – 4.75

Comments

No comments added yet

You must be logged in to post comments

Anyone can submit an article to RateBeer. Send your edited, HTML formatted article to our Editor-In-Chief.