Although we jumped from the area around England for the last beer, we are going to head down to London town for this next style.  I’ve spoken about Porter and Stouts once before on this site, but I’m going to go ahead and post this one as part of the style series.  I am going to talk about Porter first and post about stouts at a later date.  Here goes!

Defining porter as a beer is somewhat illusive, so I’m going to offer what seem to be some agreed on principles about what a porter is.  First of all, a porter is an ale.  What I mean by calling it an ale is that it is brewed using ale yeast at ale temperatures.  I’ve provided some links for those who wish to read up on what these terms are referring to.  A porter is dark but not as dark as a stout.  Porter as a style tends to use darker grains but avoids roasted barley, which often gives a stout its coffee, roasted, and burnt grain qualities.  So, this is one other aspect that a porter might have. 

Porters can be either robust or brown by name with varying degrees of sweetness and hop content.  I tend to think of porters as being at least slightly sweet and pretty smooth in nature.  Beyond this, people will argue about exactly what else defines a porter as a beer.

But from where does the name come?  Allegedly, the name comes from the fact that this style of beer was wildly popular among the working class in England, especially porters.  There, you have the supposed origin of the name.

But what about the mad genius behind the style?  Well, here is how the story goes.  In England, there were essentially three types of beer to be had in the 1700s.  “Ale” was strong, “beer” was a weak version (probably weak in alcohol, grain content, and harsh/young), and “two-penny,” which was the in-between ale.  Within these there were varying pale, amber, and brown versions of each.  Since many people couldn’t afford the best ale but hated the youngest (and were not too fond of the two-penny), they would call on the landlord to mix the various ales: “Give us three-threads,” they might say.  This could be time consuming and irritating for a bar-man to have to do, so (ostensibly) a man name Ralph Harwood basically made this product at the brewery.  Thus, the beer known as porter was born.  I’m sure there is a lot of truth to this account, but we will probably never know.

What we do know about porter is that it was wildly popular, at least until the lager revolution.  The style actually almost became extinct until revived by homebrewers and others who cared about this wonderful, historic style.  Porter was actually George Washington’s favorite beer.  I guess if you like porters, you are in good company.