Differentiate Porter and Stout

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weiht

Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by weiht » Thu Nov 01, 2012 5:33 pm

Its like asking myself if i'm a father or a son lol... Like others have mentioned, historically speaking stouts are a stronger porters, and over time ppl drop porter from stout. The major 2 turning points are the rise of burton ales and the demise of porters, and how the war basically gave Guiness the chance to define what stout is for most parts of the last century.

I'd like to thank the american craft movement for bringing back porter as a style. Today however, its pretty confusing when I see porters starting at 7% yet the stout from the same brewery is 5%ish. There isn't anymore relevance on stout being the stronger abv and roasted beer anymore. In fact, many porters tastes like stout and many stouts taste whimpy :P, but I guess maybe its trying to make ppl accept a beer that was once thought of as a MAN's drink.

Before I started drinking, I always thought that stout were harsh and bitter and a proper man's drink, but when I had my first guinesss on draft I was really disappointed, the FE fared better but still.. So maybe its gotta do with trying to repackage it and make it more approachable? I'm sure it was harsh and bitter and burnt maybe in those days due to inefficient malting? But sure isnt the case today.

I guess from a recipe point of view, the rule of thumb or norm has always been more chocolate and black patent for porters, and majority roasted barley for stouts. The last few years, we have seen more emphasis on brown malt as a key component in brown/english porters. Most good porters tend to have a stronger chocolate notes while stouts are very coffeeish. What is really interesting lately is how many breweries are trying to brew historical recipes on stouts and porters, I believe St Austell has recently discovered a relic lol, and Kernel has been doing their thing, meantime as well has some historical porters...

Porters and Oatmeal stouts are my go to beers. Its always on tap at home, along with 2 ever changing taps but this one stays the same :).

What's your favourite porters or stout? I really like Rogue's mocha porter, elysian dragon tooth is nice, anderson valley barney flats oatmeal stout is not bad as well, of course fuller's london porter never disappoints.

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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by patto1ro » Thu Nov 01, 2012 6:46 pm

Blackaddler wrote:Like lots of other thing to do with beer and brewing, the boundaries have become blurred, along with history itself.
The history of Porter is pretty clear.

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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by seymour » Thu Nov 01, 2012 6:55 pm

patto1ro wrote:
Blackaddler wrote:Like lots of other thing to do with beer and brewing, the boundaries have become blurred, along with history itself.
The history of Porter is pretty clear.
Is it? I've heard it's named after men who laboured as porters, the working class dock workers who favored it. I've heard elsewhere that's patently wrong, and numerous other explanations for the name. I've heard it was always a blended style of old and new batches, of light and dark batches. I've heard elsewhere that's wrong, and that it was always brewed straight-up as it is. I've heard it was 100% brown malt, because that's all there was back in the olden days when they had to dry malted barley in wood-fired or inefficient coal-fired furnace rooms... I've heard elsewhere that's wrong, it was mostly pale malt plus some caramel/crystal malt plus some roasted unmalted barley. I've heard that's wrong, they used almost entirely roasted barley so they could avoid the tax on malt... I could go on and on. This whole topic is fascinating to me. It seems the more we know the more we realize we don't know...

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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by Barley Water » Thu Nov 01, 2012 7:03 pm

Interesting topic which has caused me some problems related to classifying and judging beers in competitions. Of course, being an American/Texan I suppose my opinions are not likely to be as valid as someone born and bred in the birthplace of the styles under discussion. Anyway, I see dark British/American ales as somewhat of a continum starting with Brown ales and progressing up to really big stouts with porters generally (but not always) being somewhere in between.

Just to make things more complicated, there is a difference supposedly between so called Brown Porter and Robust Porter, and I have pretty good recipes for both which have won metals in contests in the past. The Brown Porter I make is very similar to Fuller's London Porter and has alot of brown malt in it and a fair amount of crystal as well. The effect I am trying to achieve with that beer is a roasty beer with a fair amount of caramel/toffee flavor and if I'm lucky, just a touch of diacetyl. The Robust porter is a clone of Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, it's a bigger beer (O.G. around 1.061), is hoppier and also has more roast character than the Brown Porter because there is some roast barley in the grist along with a big helping of crystal malts. The Robust Porter is damn near an American style Stout, I would be hard pressed to tell the difference in a blind tasting although theoretically anyway the porter should be sweeter due to the high crystal malt content. Anyhow the problem I run into in contests is that the Brown Porter can sometimes loose points for being too "robust" and the Robust Porter can sometimes loose points for being too "stout like". What's interesting is that Fuller's London Porter is listed in the judging guidelines as being an example of a brown porter and Edmund Fitzgerald Porter is listed as an example of Robust Porter. Anyhow, when I drink a Porter (either Brown or Robust) I expect a good bit of roast but I also expect caramel/toffee; most stouts do not have that doing on.

I personally think Irish Dry Stout is an abberation, mostly because of the very low gravity and that style is what causes many a discussion just like this one. I think the reason that it is included as a Stout is because of the sucess our friends at Guiness have had selling that particular beer. The other substyles of stout are all bigger beers and all have that distinctive flavor that only roasted barley adds to a beer. Although some can be very sweet (like milk stout for example) the sweetness is not caramel-like as it is in a porter. Anyhow, all the confusion is really just a result of having to classify beers for purposes of competition, a necessary but at times evil endevor.

I am personally a "Porter Man" and although brew Dry Stout from time to time generally perfer a nice pint of Brown Porter. I think that when made correctly, a Porter should be a very multi layered drink, roasty (but not too much) as well as caramel/toffee and bitter but not over the top. I realize my ramblings do nada to correctly classify the beers but these are some of my favorites and I love discussing the topic; take all this for what it's worth. :D
Drinking:Saison (in bottles), Belgian Dubbel (in bottles), Oud Bruin (in bottles), Olde Ale (in bottles),
Abbey Triple (in bottles), Munich Helles, Best Bitter (TT Landlord clone), English IPA
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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by Blackaddler » Thu Nov 01, 2012 7:40 pm

What I was trying to say was, that these days, with so many micros brewing all manner of stout/porter like beers, there doesn't seem to be a clear definition any more. All sorts of beers are labelled as either stouts or porters.
patto1ro wrote: The history of Porter is pretty clear.
Considering the amount of research that you do, Ron, I'll take your word for it, though. [Yes, I do read your blog].

The thing is, that there's too much rubbish talked and written about beer, and it's difficult to know and/or remember what's true.
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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by seymour » Thu Nov 01, 2012 7:56 pm

Blackaddler wrote:What I was trying to say was, that these days, with so many micros brewing all manner of stout/porter like beers, there doesn't seem to be a clear definition any more. All sorts of beers are labelled as either stouts or porters...
+1

A perfect example of the silliness: Ratebeer and other sites have separate style listings for Imperial Porter and Imperial Stout! C'mon, WTF?! This nullifies any insistence that one is stronger than the other, at least with regards to the modern versions. Whatever...they all taste damn good.

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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by timbo41 » Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:35 pm

So..just to stir the hornets nest a bit, should many on here,including myself,now extoll the many virtues of DITCH'S PORTER :twisted:


Fascinating and divisive debate by the way..didn't realise a pint of the dark stuff would be such a bone of contention
Last edited by timbo41 on Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by patto1ro » Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:39 pm

seymour wrote:
patto1ro wrote:
Blackaddler wrote:Like lots of other thing to do with beer and brewing, the boundaries have become blurred, along with history itself.
The history of Porter is pretty clear.
Is it? I've heard it's named after men who laboured as porters, the working class dock workers who favored it. I've heard elsewhere that's patently wrong, and numerous other explanations for the name. I've heard it was always a blended style of old and new batches, of light and dark batches. I've heard elsewhere that's wrong, and that it was always brewed straight-up as it is. I've heard it was 100% brown malt, because that's all there was back in the olden days when they had to dry malted barley in wood-fired or inefficient coal-fired furnace rooms... I've heard elsewhere that's wrong, it was mostly pale malt plus some caramel/crystal malt plus some roasted unmalted barley. I've heard that's wrong, they used almost entirely roasted barley so they could avoid the tax on malt... I could go on and on. This whole topic is fascinating to me. It seems the more we know the more we realize we don't know...
OK, the history of Porter is pretty clear to me.

Most of what you said is wrong.

The original Porter was a brewery-aged Brown Beer, brewed from 100% brown malt. The brown malt came from Hertfordshire and was kilned with straw. Brown malt wasn't the only malt around, there were pale and amber malts, too. Beers were usually brewed from a single malt. At the end of the 18th century, when the malt tax went up to pay for the war with France, brewers started using a mix of pale and brown malt because pale malt worked out cheaper. After the invention of patent malt in 1817, London Porter was mostly brewed from pale, brown and black malt, though sometimes there was some amber, too. Roasted barley was Illegal to use in brewing before 1880. (Guinness didn't start using it until the 1930's.) After 1880 or so, sometimes crystal malt was used. In the 20th century, up until the 1950's, London Porter and Stout was breed from a combination of pale, brown, crystal and black malt. Though the crystal malt was optional and Whitbread used chocolate malt instead of black malt.

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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by seymour » Thu Nov 01, 2012 8:47 pm

Well, there you go. Thanks patto1ro, great information.

millmaster

Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by millmaster » Fri Nov 02, 2012 11:15 pm

New member - thanks for letting me in !

I use The Durden park Beer Circle book "Old British beers and how to make them", this has a short history of beers backed by recipes that ( as I understand it ) came from original brewery papers/books

I wouldnt wish to question anyone elses sources without knowing what they were, but the author of the OBB book references several recipes that use roast barley where the recipes are dated from before 1880 which infers ( but not proves ) roast barley could be used in England ( at least ) at that time

There is a chart of the history of the development of porter, from 100% ( smoked ) brown malt circa 1720, to 1:1:1 pale/amber/brown malts to 7:2:1 pale/brown/black malts by 1820 so significant changes in recipes over that time period.
These changes partially driven by the cost of pale malt being less than darker malts and also the ability to get more fermentables out of a kilo of pale malt vs a kilo of brown or amber malt

I'm not sure there is anything to clearly distinguish stout from porter, except possibly stouts were higher OG than porters in "The Good Old Days"

Dr. Dextrin

Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by Dr. Dextrin » Sat Nov 03, 2012 12:34 am

Just an observation, really (and based on modern brewing), but I'd say that as well as stouts generally being biased more towards roasted barley as opposed to the darker malts that are typical of porters, there's also a bias as regards hopping and yeast character.

I'd say stouts tend to have less hop flavour and aroma (as opposed to bitterness) and also more neutral yeast character. Whereas in porters, hop and yeast flavours and aroma can be quite strong. There are exceptions, of course, and I'm sure this hasn't always been the case historically.

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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by patto1ro » Sat Nov 03, 2012 10:24 am

millmaster wrote: I wouldnt wish to question anyone elses sources without knowing what they were, but the author of the OBB book references several recipes that use roast barley where the recipes are dated from before 1880 which infers ( but not proves ) roast barley could be used in England ( at least ) at that time
The book has got it wrong. Using unmalted barley was a serious offence before 1880. If a brewer did risk doing it, they wouldn't have noted it down in their brewing book that an excise man might ask to see. I can understand how they've made the mistake: in many old brewing records it says "roast" or "roasted". It actually means roasted malt, not roasted barley.

My sources are principally old brewing records. I've probably looked through more of them than anyone else. I've done the full set of Whitbread Porter records from 1805 to 1973, most of the Barclay Perkins ones and a good selection of Trumans. I've almost 30,000 photographs of brewing records in total.

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Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by oz11 » Sat Nov 03, 2012 2:22 pm

For anyone interested in this I would refer you to Ron's blog ( patto1ro).

Put aside a few hours/days/weeks but there's loads interesting stuff and you'll see where he's getting his information from.

It's a staggering volume of work and I can only applaud =D>

musojohn

Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by musojohn » Mon Nov 05, 2012 7:10 pm

oz11 wrote:For anyone interested in this I would refer you to Ron's blog ( patto1ro).

Put aside a few hours/days/weeks but there's loads interesting stuff and you'll see where he's getting his information from.

It's a staggering volume of work and I can only applaud =D>
+1
i spend many hours a day pouring over that site !!

I didn't know you were on here Ron, be great to see more of you on here dispelling the myths with 30000 K + records (!!) in tow. I've just started your mammoth Porter book and am loving it.

Graham

Re: Differentiate Porter and Stout

Post by Graham » Tue Nov 06, 2012 1:42 am

seymour wrote:Is it? I've heard it's named after men who laboured as porters, the working class dock workers who favored it. I've heard elsewhere that's patently wrong, and numerous other explanations for the name.
The idea that Porter was named after street porters is based upon just one source, the famous Obadiah Poundage. Later sources, such as Feltham (1802), who many modern beer writers regard as a de facto historical source, is merely paraphrased Poundage with a few inaccurate embellishments. A single source is dangerous, and there is so much in Poundage that is of questionable accuracy that one has to be very careful in trusting any of it. In my view, the probability of Porter being named after street porters is about as likely as it being named after computer programmers. If porters had anything to do with it at all, it would have been the "pot boys" who, in the larger establishments, filled the tankards from the cellar and carried the beer to the customer and were also called porters in the parlance of the day. The little circumstantial evidence that exists supports the pot boys more than street porters, but there are other explanations that are just as likely.
seymour wrote: I've heard it was always a blended style of old and new batches, of light and dark batches. I've heard elsewhere that's wrong, and that it was always brewed straight-up as it is.
By the time the term "porter" was adopted, porter was always a blend, and blended in the pub at that, because it would have been cost-ineffective to blend porter in the brewery or brew it "straight up". There are at least two reasons for blending; one is to improve the flavour of a cheap beer; the other is to reduce the cost of a draught. Porter was blended for both those reasons, but mostly to reduce the cost. The reason for this, as always, was beer tax.

A brewer was taxed on the wholesale price of his beer, but there were just two rates of tax; one for ale or strong beer and another for small beer. There was a four or five times difference between the ale rate and beer rate. At the start of the 1700s the duty on ale was four shillings per barrel and the duty on small beer was one shilling per barrel. As time went on this was progressively increased and by the late 1700s the duty was ten shillings per barrel on strong beer or ale sold at twenty-four shillings or more per barrel, and two shillings per barrel on beer sold below twenty-four shillings.

There were no intermediate rates of duty so, on the borderline of what was deemed to be an ale or strong beer and what was deemed to be a small beer, there was an abrupt tax bump where the duty suddenly jumped by five times. There was no sliding scale; no proportional relationship between duty and strength. This restricted the range of beers that a brewer could produce at a price that the public would pay. The brewer could supply a cheap and cheerful beer and also a strong beer that was somewhat expensive. However, if the strongest beer that a brewer could produce for less than twenty-four shillings per barrel was (say) O.G. 1.045, it would be difficult for him to produce a 1.050 or stronger beer because the sudden tax jump would make the beer poor value for money; the price of the beer would suddenly jump by about thirty-five per cent. The imbiber would expect a considerably stronger beer than 1.050 for such a price hike (not that they could measure O.G. in those days of course).

For a brewer to brew an affordable beer, he had to keep his wholesale price below that barrier of 24 shillings per barrel. Beers were aged for long periods (as opposed to ales that normally were not), and ageing costs money. To age even a weak beer in the brewery could push the wholesale price above that magic 24 shillings per barrel. One way round this was to produce a strong aged beer, sold expensively, and a weaker mild beer sold cheaply, and let the imbiber mix the two in his pot to suit both palate and pocket.

Any suggestion that Ralph Harwood, or any other brewer, made a beer to imitate three threads, or that porter was a partially aged beer, is sheer nonsense. It would have been impractical to do so, and would have made a brewer silly enough to attempt such a thing non competitive.
seymour wrote: I've heard it was 100% brown malt, because that's all there was back in the olden days when they had to dry malted barley in wood-fired or inefficient coal-fired furnace rooms...
The original porter was 100% brown malt, kilned over hornbeam, not straw. After the late 1700s the percentage of brown malt was reduced progressively, being replaced with pale and amber malts, until the standard grist was equal parts brown, amber and pale. Eventually the amber malt was dropped, but 30% brown was still retained by the best brewers. This was not done because brown malt had a particularly low extract, as expounded by many, so-called, beer writers, but because it reduced the ageing time; the time from brewing to consumption, and proper pale malt was beginning to be produced cheaper on an industrial scale. Reducing the time from brewing to consumption lowered the price even further.

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