Differences between an American Porter & an American Stout

if a brewer makes both, the stronger one will be the stout

 

Otherwise what? The style police will come and close the brewery down?

What's funny is that the use of roasted barley is fairly recent. Totally illegal in Britain before 1880. Guinness didn't use in their Stout until well into the 20th century

 

Not necessarily. Fuller's London Porter is 5.4%, whereas their Black Cab Stout is 4.2%. Obviously those aren't American, but still...

 

The BJCP omitted to note that Dry Irish Stout only dates back to the 1950s.

 

BJCP never let the truth or history interfere with their "styles". I love how even pro brewers can NOT fit their beers to half the "styles" as they defined them.

 

I also love that the BJCP lets brewers enter beers that are clearly out of style into certain categories and awards them medals anyway. The biggest offender probably being Troegs who enters their double-bock, Troegenator, into the [regular] bock category and walks away from GABF with a medal almost every year. (Troegenator is an awesome beer, but it's stupid they get away with this year after year.) http://www.troegs.com/our_brews/troegenator_double_bock.aspx

 

Please, the GABF style guidelines are written by the Brewers Association. You are giving the BJCP blame for something that is not what they do, which is homebrew competitions.

There are 23 beer categories in the BJCP guidelines. There are 84 for the GABF, maybe Troegenator fits into one.
http://www.greatamericanbeerfestival.com/the-competition/beer-styles/
The .pdf containing the descriptions is at the top.

 

Porter - a dark beer with the word porter on the bottle.

Stout - a dark beer with the word stout on the bottle.

 

You're right I am mistaken about about the BJCP.

I'm glad you posted that GABF category list though, because it proves half my point, albeit not regarding the BJCP. GABF has bock and double-bock categories, but Troegenator, which Troegs calls a double-bock on their own website, keeps walking away from GABF with bock medals.

 

The game is to enter where you think it will do best. I think they entered it as a Doppelbock in the WBC 2010. I like that beer a lot, when I can find it. Troegs is not the only brewery that enters the beer into different categories. When judging beer you can get some color from charts that are used on the table, but ABV and IBU are up to the judges palate.

 

Bingo. Sierra Nevada have entered Bigfoot into the DIPA category before and won big time, just as one example. I'm sure there's plenty of breweries who have entered DIPAs into the single IPA category for the same reason.

 

The search function on the GABF site does not verify your claim. Got any information to back your claim up about Bigfoot in a DIPA category? Enter Bigfoot as the keyword.
http://www.greatamericanbeerfestival.com/the-competition/winners/

 

I wasn't specifically talking about GABF competitions, just beer festivals in general. They did it once (at least) about 2 years ago for a relatively new festival.