The official Service of the State Meteorological Agency for time and climate, known by friends as AEMET , has warned us that a cold front is arriving that will fill a large part of Spain with snow. The truth is, the news has made us quite happy, because there are beers that are perfect for the cold. And there is no better plan when it is snowy outside than to be at home, warm, enjoying a strongblack beer .
This is why we also want to talk to you this month about one of our favorite stout styles, the Porter . The father of black beers as we know them today.
Porter beer: the pioneering style
And it is that this style is considered the origin of all the black beers that we drink today. It arose in London at the beginning of the 18th century and from the beginning it was associated with the working classes. However, this popularity was a great advantage for this style of beer, since it is the first to be industrialized, that is, the first style that began to be produced on a large scale in factories.
But in addition, he was also the pioneer in traveling from one continent to another. And it makes sense: it is the preferred brewing style of the English, and they take it with them in their colonial and mercantile expansion. So the Porters will land in the USA, Sweden or Russia. And in these new countries is where they will become new styles: American Porter and Baltic Porter . We will tell you more about these variants in future posts .
How did the Porter style come about?
The first English Porters were born as an aged variant of the Brown Ales of the time. Legend has it that it was the brewer Ralph Harwood who "invented" this style, although current studies deny this. But in any case, what is interesting is that this style is the first to be matured in the factory, since until then, the beers were sold freshly brewed.
And this new way of consuming beer enchanted the London popular classes. So much so that this style took its name from its main consumers, the porters of the Thames docks, or porters . But like all brewing recipes, the Porters consumed then are not exactly like the ones we drink now, as records indicate they were stronger and more bitter than today.
What is the difference between a Brown and a Porter?
These two styles are sometimes confused because Porters started out with 100% Brown malt. Once again, historical circumstances influenced beer recipes: with the Napoleonic Wars there was a huge increase in taxes that made this production very expensive. English brewers found that the newer Pale malts, though more expensive, gave better yields and, combined with a small addition of the very dark Black Patent (newly created by Daniel Wheeler in 1817), gave the right color. This was the historic moment when the Browns (who continued using this classic malt) and the Porters (who switched to the new blend of Pale with Black Patent) parted ways.
Over the decades, the Porters began to lower their proofing and hopping. In parallel, the Stout Porter appeared, which was created by amplifying these characteristics. This is how this other substyle was created, the Stout, which reached its maximum popularity in the World Wars.
Meanwhile, Porters fell out of style in England… until the American craft movement rescued the recipe in the 1970s. Today, the Porter style is in good health, both in its English and American versions, and its changes historical have left us as many variants in the recipes.
But we want to focus on the American Porter and the Baltic Porter, do you know the characteristics of these styles? Stay tuned to our blog, we will contact you more, because, as you already know, one of our main objectives at Beer Sapiens is beer disclosure. Although now the important thing is to prepare for this cold, don't you think?