Porter vs. Stout

A topic that's come up plenty of times; now days there really isn't much a difference. As far as good porters, two of my favorites are Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald and Founders Porter. If you don't like those then I would give up.

 

Are you talking BJCP style guidelines?

Generally I find porters a lot more thin in mouthfeel and to have less roasted malt flavor than stouts.

 

They are very much alike in many aspects. I think many/most porters are usually a bit thinner though.

Give Victory at Sea a try. A world class porter imo.

 

Water is to porters as milk is to stouts.

 

Porters are lighter generally, in mouthfeel, Less flavorful, abv. I Like imperial stouts the most. But after drinking them constantly a nice porter is amazingly light and refreshing!

 

Had this last night for the first time, the vanilla one. A-fuckin-mazing! One of the best beers I've ever had. 10% and drinks like 5.

 

Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
Anchor Porter
Sierra Nevada Porter

 

OP: please read this recent thread. All of the 'answers' (and non-answers) are there.

http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/porters-and-stouts.58422/#post-781344

 

The stout we know is short for stout porter, if that gives you a little more insight on their shared heritage.

 

This came up quite recently. There is no reason for there to be a difference , the original style was Porter and if a stronger one was brewed it was a Stout Porter, later shortened to stout. Records make it clear that the only difference was strength. More recently the names have been used at random.But Mackeson Stout at a whopping 3% ABV and Guinness Stout at massive 4.something % , both very long established beers, should counter most arguments that Porters are thinner with less mouthfeel.
There have been many cases (including Guinness) where EXACTLY the same brew has been labelled as a Porter at one time and a Stout at another.Martyn Cornell has analysed a lot of Stouts and Porters, taken at random, and found no distinguishing features between them. Differences are assumed and made up but that's true of so much that's written about beer styles.

 

What was the first porter you had? Was it god-awful? I ask this because it seems as if, and no offense here, it's all in your head. It's hard for me to imagine someone liking stouts and not porters for any real taste reason, as they are so similar. It's as if someone said "I love high alcohol DIPA's but hate West-Coast style Barleywines." You know what I mean? Anyway, I can only imagine it is a perceived dislike of porters based on perhaps, a lousy first experience. I could be way off base here, maybe it is a taste thing. They are definitely different and are certainly not identical.

 

I tend to see them as lighter fair, but obviously the lines do blur.

Some favorites of mine are Taddy Porter, Fuller's London Porter and Anchor Porter.

The only "Porters" I have yet to wrap my taste buds around are Baltic Porters.

 

The only reason people are saying, "Porters are thinner" is because most BA's are drinking Stouts in the 8%-15% abv range, while most Porters drunk are between 5%-7% abv.

Do a blind taste test with 4 porters and 4 stouts in the same abv range. You will find the only difference is what the brewer decided to name that particular beer, porter or stout.

 

Did you by any chance catch this quote from marquis: “It depends on the definition of define if you will allow that!”

All that I could think of was Bill Clinton’s response when being questioned by an attorney during the Monica Lewinski debacle:

"It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is." –Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair

Cheers!

 

This article is linked in every discussion about stouts vs. porters. It's a good read. http://www.beerconnoisseur.com/porter-versus-stout

 

Just the name of this beer should blow some people's minds: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/395/36167