Of course there is a market for it. They wouldn’t do it otherwise. Like I said, revenue.
mmm
You’re missing out on a lot of wonderful Belgian beers. But, you’re right, they don’t taste like generic “beer.” Still, something like a Witbier, which typically has coriander & bitter orange peels, is worth trying.
I don’t know. A friend of mine once brewed up a porter and fermented it in a vessel that had previously been used to make a peppermint schnapps. He thought he had cleaned it well, but there was enough mint residue left to subtly flavor his porter. It tasted like an unsweet York patty, if that makes sense. Was absolutely delicious, and a once-off. He could never duplicate it.
A few years back my brewing partner and I won Best of Show with a porter. I took a couple of gallons of the batch before bottling and infused it with some raspberry extract. That beer won Best of Category in Fruit Beer the same competition. You just have to be subtle, which most brewers ain’t when it comes to added flavors.
Good comments, feels like we’re mostly on the same page here.
Mind you, I don’t think they all taste the same on a subtle level. There are good ones, better ones, and bad ones.
But for example, Three Floyds has three APAs in six packs: Alpha King, Zombie Dust, and Space Station Middle Finger–all quite different due to their hops and malt profiles. It’s hard to imagine a brewery having three porters/stouts in six packs differentiated without added flavoring. 3F only has one dark beer in a six pack: Robert the Bruce, a Scotch ale.
If you look at Founders, they have in six or four pack form their porter (hoppier than most), Imperial Stout, their Breakfast Stout (flavored), and Backwoods Bastard (barrel aged). That’s what I’ve seen in Indiana, and that’s more that most breweries. Ballast Point, same kind of thing, almost all their dark beers that reach us here are flavored.
Someone mentioned Breckenridge. I like their oatmeal stout.
So yeah, some breweries do better at stouts/porters than others, but few put out a lot of stouts/porters at once, and most are differentiated by flavors beyond hops/malt.
Well, at my local store, I see five different Bell’s stouts in six packs; three are flavored, two are not: Expedition, Double Cream, and Kalamazoo; then there’s a Java and Cherry for the flavored ones. But only one porter.
Honestly, with the IPAs and APAs, as much as I love them, they all started blurring together for me. You’re right that breweries tend to concentrate on this end of the drinking spectrum and therefore put out a lot more variety, but I think it’s the market following the demand. If there was more demand for stouts and porters, there’d be more variety. I really think it’s more a matter of the marketplace than any lack of variety within the style.
I kind of think of it the opposite way around… pale ales tend to taste pretty much the same, so they added a bunch of stuff to them so they taste like… something. Grapefruit? Vanilla? Really? Who puts that in beer?
Porters & Stouts, on the other hand, taste exactly like they’re supposed to taste: like dark beers.
If you go back to the Reinheitsgebot, they were only allowed the three ingredients (that they knew of) in beer, so they had to come up with different styles of beer by using some fairly specific brewing techniques. They didn’t have 97 different kinds of beers, because they didn’t have that kind of specificity in their process. We ended up with the six or seven main types of beer, and a few others that are seasonal, and the unending drive to Be Different has made them toss all kinds of stuff into their pale ales, since it’s so easy to make them taste like something else.
That vast majority of pale ales on the market are not flavored with anything. Vanilla you’re more likely to find in a porter or a stout than a pale ale (at least in my experience. While I’m sure a couple must exist somewhere, I can’t think of a vanilla pale ale off the top of my head, nor how vanilla would work well with the flavor profile of an APA, but I can think of Breckenridge’s Vanilla Porter and Big Muddy’s Vanilla Stout.)
That’s a good selection. Are you in Michigan? I bet some/most of these have reached Indy, but I’m not a huge Bell’s fan and thus haven’t looked for them (I think they’re OK–no hate–in fact drank their Rye IPA recently).
Me too. I find myself burning out on hoppy stuff lately. Rather unfortunate, as pretty recently I was going apeshit over the stuff.
I half-agree. Craft beer junkies have been, for the past 10 years or so, really enjoying what different hops at various intensities can do. But I don’t think I’m the only one burning out, as I’ve looked for and found articles online indicating the same type of feeling.
But different hope varieties really can do a lot and differentiate beers. I don’t see a switch to porters now, since hops don’t play as much of a role. I think that’s why all the flavors and whatnot have been tried: to try to lure the craft beer junkies in. And it’s worked to a certain extent but will never reach the APA and IPA heights.
So yes, it is the market, but I do think the style has some limitations too.
Yup.
In reality, there are really 3 stout/porter traditions- the English, the Irish and the American.
The English is more centered on porters, as that’s what came first, and stouts were more of an outgrowth of that. Something like a Fuller’s Porter is a pretty representative example. Stouts are just more of the same, with an Imperial Stout being the ultimate example. The roasted flavors are more or less balanced/in-check in all of them, as they’re primarily using roasted malts in judicious quantities.
The Irish tradition is pretty much Guiness, and is pretty much defined by the use of unmalted barley and roasted unmalted barley in the mash (originally for tax reasons), and at least for Guinness, with a certain sour flavor which is rumored to be derived from using soured beer as a blending ingredient. These give it a unique sort of body, flavor and mouthfeel.
The American tradition is derived from the other two, but with the typical “more is better” attitude of American brewers who (IMO) use too much of the roasted malts/malted barley, giving their beers a harsh and bitter flavor out of proportion to the amount of malt and hops. Not a style I typically enjoy.
But yeah… I tend to agree with the OP. there’s only so much you can do with roasted malts, and they tend to overpower subtleties of hop variety, yeast variety and malt variety, giving you some surprisingly similar beers. Of course, there are well done and poorly done variants, but by and large a well done porter is much like another.
Good info, thanks!
Yes, I feel that porters/stouts should be smooth. The Victory porter is an example of what not to do: I read someone describing it as motor oil brewed with a handful of corroded quarters. Pretty much nailed. Harsh, metallic, and disgusting.
I love Three Floyds, but they take this approach on a few dark beers, like Blot Out the Sun (I’ve never had Darklord). To me, it’s just viscous and unpleasant. But the aforementioned Backmasking is really smooth, rich, and nice.
Yes, to the point where I’ve had one bartender describe their house porter as “just a porter.” And this is a pretty darn good brewery (Crown in Crown Point, Indiana).
I’m in Chicago, but Bell’s is my favorite brewery particularly because it does a wide range of beers really well (my favorite APA in the world is their Two Hearted, and I love their Oberon in the summer. Their porter is fantastic, too–though Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald is my go-to, and I like all of their stouts.) I also love their fun commemorative beers (Batch 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, etc.) They’re all one-offs, though. Their Batch 7000, which was an imperial stout, was one of my favorite beers ever. Unfortunately, that was brewed in 2005 (I think) and I didn’t pick up enough to cellar. (And at 12 years on, probably past its prime, anyway.)
There’s also the Baltic porter tradition. (I’m not sure if you were leaving them off because there’s no stout continuum there or not.) Those are almost syruppy sweet, viscous porters, usually quite high in alcohol, around 7-9%. They are also typically bottom-fermented (lager yeast, not ale, like porter), so they’re kind of a weird mish-mash of styles that’s more like an imperial stout than a porter, and brewed with lager yeast typically, rather than an ale yeast, so maybe kind of doppelbock-y as well.
Black & Tans are nice on occasion.
You and I agree on that, sir.
And you can add a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a special treat. (I do this on both St Practice and St Patrick’s Days)
Yeah, I wasn’t sure where to put them… in my mind, they’re in the same sort of neighborhood as a schwarzbier and the Czech dark lagers. I do like me some Baltika #6 though.
The Okocim or Zywiec Porter is nice from time to time, although I haven’t seen Okocim’s version in a while (which is my yardstick for the style.) We also get some brands from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania here, but so far, my favorite version is that Okocim one from Poland.
ETA: Yeah, it looks like my beer superstore doesn’t stock Okocim Porter anymore, so I"m guessing it’s not in-market (or perhaps not even being made anymore?) and explains why I haven’t seen it in several years. That’s too bad. Exemplar of the style, as I said.
The pretty decent off license down the road mentioned they have that in, I’m glad I don’t have to go in and walk in circles weighed down by the choice next time.
Its funny you should start this thread now. I love a good porter or stout, especially in the winter. I’ve had some that I love but can’t remember who made them. So, lately I’ve been on a quest. The local sports bar as an impressive craft selection on tap including around five porters. Except for one, they are all flavored with something. Thanks, but no thanks. I recall really liking Fullers but I can’t find it locally anymore. I enjoy that toasted/smokey flavor so any suggestions are welcome. I also agree that the Left Hand Nitro is good stuff. Nothing wrong with Guinness, either. Or Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout or Taddy Porter.
I know it’s flavored (coffee & vanilla), but I was surprisingly impressed with the Ballast Point “Victory at Sea” porter. (plus the bottle art was sweet!).
To flog a local brewery (very local; they’re 3 miles east-southeast of my home!) the Lakewood Brewery “The Temptress” stout is a very good specimen.
Wasatch’s “Polygamy Porter” is another pretty good example of the style.
I actually had an extended stretch of stouts and porters; after the birth of our second kid, my wife was having some issues with milk production, and decided that maybe that old wisdom of drinking stouts and porters couldn’t hurt, so we had all sorts of stouts and porters for a year or so there. Kind of tired of them now, but those three above, along with the Left Hand Milk Stout (nitro and regular) stood out as the best of the bunch.