Stout or Porter?

For American craft brewers, the difference between a porter and a stout is the label.

Unless they are barrel aging, in which case they are always stouts.

Sometimes I prefer the porter label, sometimes I prefer the stout label.

 

Not every dark BA beer is a stout. Plenty of BA porters out there.

 

No. The lines are not becoming blurred. The distinction above isn't accurate. Stout was simply the name given to porters above standard strength. That particular line got blurry a long time ago as brewers reduced both gravities and the number of beers they produced.

All modern stouts are porters.

 

I'd argue that the line *is* becoming blurred, due to the fact that there never used to be a line between them, and now there is...

For the OP: Stout originally was a term that merely meant that the brew was stronger than usual. Any distinction between Stout and Porter as two separate styles of beer is a modern development.

 

I like stouts better. Seems like most porters are a little thinner. I prefer a thick beer with a higher abv.

 

That's not true in NJ. Cricket Hill and others call the BBA brews Porters.

 

That old rule :
Roast unmalted barley = stout
Black patent malt = robust porter
Chocolate malt = brown porter

was really just a homebrewer's guideline. It may have even come from Charlie Papazian for all I know. But the brewers never got the memo .

 

The original Porters/Stouts contained neither,they were simply brewed using brown malt.Guinness refused to use roasted barley until at least 1930.
Ron Pattinson ( @patto1ro ) has examined thousands of brewing records and found that almost always a brewerys porter and stouts used identical recipes but the stout used less water.

 

Yeah, and from what I've read, the more 'modern' recipes came about because the brewers finally realized that they weren't getting as good a yield with the brown malt compared with pale malt plus some roast barley.

 

It's been a long time (at least 2 months) since this subject has come up. So far it's going just about the same way it always does. I hope someone has a new point of view this time!

 

1. It depends.
2. It depends.

 

The difference cant be Roasted Barley VS Malted Barley. Since stouts have been brewed roasted barley was an illegal ingredient. It wasn't till after 1880 and the Free Mash Tun Act that they were allowed to use Roasted Barley.Stouts were being brewed for just about a Century Prior to this Act.
Originally Stout or "brown Stout" was given to the name of the strongest porter in the brew pub.

When the "small brewer revolution" started in Britain and the United States in the 1970s, there was more than 250 years of different styles and strengths of stout and porter to choose from, and different brewers picked different sorts to recreate. The result is that, in some cases, some brewers now brew "porters" that are stronger than their stouts. The need to categorize beers for brewing competitions in the U.S. has meant a plethora of micro-managed style descriptions, few of which, however, have any historic validity.

The answer to the question: "What's the difference between a stout and a porter" is that originally a stout was simply a strong version of porter: today the difference is whatever you want it to be.

Some Help form the Beer connoisseur with this one

 

Could you clarify this a bit? It's not clear what you mean by "small brewer revolution" in Britain that began in the 70s.

It's long been my understanding that brewing in Britain was both begun and maintained for years by small brewers and local pubs, and that even during the 70s when the growth of the tide of large scale commercial lager brewing began to threaten cask ale and many of those small brewers, there were still many small brewers active. IIRC, the whole reason CAMRA was created was to help preserve cask ale, and, if only as a side effect, the breweries that made cask ale and the pubs that carried it, against the inroads being made by large, international lager brewers.

 

Can we just agree that nowadays there is NO difference between Stout and Porter?.

 

This is the internet, we will never agree.

 

We could spend all day discussing history and BJCP definitions and our own personal opinions, but, in the end, brewers call beers whatever they want to call them. Right or wrong, that's what defines modern beer.

 

Porters are usually lighter and less rich. It depends though because some porters are higher alcohol and more robust and dark tasting, like a stout. Stouts usually tend to be richer and darker for me.

 

I'd like to see more Milk Porters

 

Give me a stout over a porter, any day. Specifically RIPS. I want it thick like blood.