Baltic Porter - Ale or Lager?

Interesting - I was just wondering this after this was just released.
www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/417/310372/

 

It's a misnomer for brewing regardless of time period andshould be put to bed. Temperature of fermentation is the biggestdifference, and even that has been debunked by current trends in brewing.

 

Guess I don't really care whether they are ale or lager. Ever try Empyrean Carpe Brewem Barrel Aged Baltic Porter? It's like jam beer.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1880/271802/

 

Also to define beer classes by yeasts used is looking at things back to front. The yeasts we have now are the results of brewing techniques used over long periods.They are the results not the causes.

 

What do you call a person who is of British (Ale) heritage but raised as a German (Lager)...?

Same question really.

 

Well put, I have never thought about it that way, but the yeast banks we have today may be the largest case of eugenics in human history.

 

Anglo-Saxon-Norman-Nordic-Celtic-Iberian Slavs. Plus others......The answer could also be younger British and Irish generations. Or even the rest of the world.

 

So some Baltic Porters use lager yeast and bottom ferment and some use ale yeast and top ferment. Are there any common examples of beers from each that anyone can provide so we can see any noticable differences/trends from the two camps?

 

Exactly. So.... A lagered Ale?

 

European.

 

No!!! Porters were NOT ales. They arose from a different industry altogether.
Practically every pub here has a brewery sign on the wall stating "Ales AND Stouts" or "Ale AND Porter" denoting that a brewer made both beverages.When the popularity of Porter collapsed and Mild Ale became king the Porter brewers were forced to start brewing Ales as well.
Lumping Porter into the Ale camp is the result of either lack or worse still disregard of knowledge.But beer writers carry much blame for this by not looking at original or contemporary sources ,preferring to regurgitate each others' material.
An analogy is describing the UK as England. Although most of the people are indeed English ,to lump in the Scots,Welsh and Irish as English is just plain wrong.
So the OP asked the wrong question. Baltic Porters are just beers regardless of fermentation method.

 

But porters were never part of the British Ale heritage. Ale and Porter brewing were two entirely separate industries each with its own brewers,breweries and trade guilds.
Arthur Guinness was an Ale brewer who was not making a success in his Dublin brewery so he imported a London Porter brewing family,the Pursers,to brew Porter for him.
This whole thread is an example of the confusion brought about by the widespread misuse of the word "ale"

 

Shall we get into the whole U.S. designation of Ale by alcohol content?

I think not -- that seems to have finally been put to rest... at least until all of the old labels have been used up.

 

So, attempting to learn a bit about this whole thing, I headed over to the good ol' Wiki to try and determine the differences in heritage. @marquis , if there is a better source for this sort of thing, I'd be happy to read it.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why Ale is something different than a type of Beer, but there are plenty of places that use both words in the same sentence to mean different things, and it appears not to be in reference to Lagers. All that said, it looks like some of the first usage of the word Porter was to refer to a longer-aged, stronger version of a Brown beer (Brown Ale? If not, why?). Alternately, by a single other account, it was originally made to replicate the flavor a blend of 3 different types of libation, Ale, Beer, and Twopenny(A more expensive strong beer). The Porter business eventually exploded in popularity, and increased their strengths with Stout Porters and such.

Baltic Porters seem to have been originally made to recreate the flavor of Imperial Stouts, while using Baltic-state local ingredients and brewing traditions(Cold fermentation). This makes them related to Stout Porters by flavor profile, and related to modern Lagers by brewing process. This makes them hard to classify on any chart that tries to divide things in a two-column, Ale vs. Lager way, so I would slap them right in the middle, being the product of two heritages.

Ale and Beer are both terms with origins in antiquity, being used interchangeably at times, while at others being something separate.

With all this in mind, it looks to me that Porters and Stouts got their start as an 18th century offshoot of the Ale industry, one that gained its own legs quickly and was able to stand apart from the rest of the Ale industry, which at the time focused on very young, unaged beer. In terms of brewing process and flavor, I personally see a large connection to Ales, and if I were to be attempting to classify them in order to describe them to a customer, I would see no issue in placing Porters and Stouts as a subset of Ales, albeit a rather large one.

If I'm wrong or have some misconceptions about any of this, please feel free to correct me.

 

I was at a taproom Saturday afternoon, interesting this topic came up. there Baltic Porter is 100% Lager. Lager yeast brewed at cooler temps.

 

After reading this thread I have concluded that baltic porters are... beer, probably.

 

That is not the case for most of US brewing industry history from around mid-19th (with the rise of lager beer) through to the beginning of the "craft era". The phrase "Beer and Ale" was understood to mean the brewer made both lager beers and ales and it was common within the US industry, pre-Pro, to divide the brewers into "Lager Brewers" and "Ale Brewers" (sometimes "Ale and Porter Breweries") --- occasionally adding the much smaller Weiss Beer Brewers as a third category.

Sure, there were some exceptions to the definitions that survived (notably the top fermented "common beer" of the Ohio River valley) but, in general, in the US, that was the dividing line between beer and ale.

Also, by Repeal, "Porter"(as well as "Stout") in the US was considered a type of ale, based on their being fermented at warmer temperatures, usually with an "ale" yeast but sometimes with a brewer's house "lager" yeast.

The US industry was founded, primarily, by immigrants from the British Isles and then from Germany, but the history of brewing techniques and methods, the styles, the ingredients, the terminology, etc., all evolved very differently from their original sources. You can't judge current US beer terminology by UK, German or other European coutnries' brewing history.

 

...hopefully.... maybe... I don't know anymore!

 

This conversation about nomenclature and classification relative to beer and ale reminds me of the modern non-standardized weights and measurement practices amongst many countries. It gets confusing.

 

Yes? Tastes great! More Filling!