Porter vs Stout

The origins of the Stout is as the Stout Porter (i.e. a stronger version of the porter), so I guess it's to be expected that they have similar flavour profiles.

 

Sierra Nevada brews both a Stout and a Porter. Get one of each and do a side by side. They are somewhat different beers but in the same style. The difference between Torpedo and Celebration is much greater and they are both IPA's.

 

No. by tradition ales were brewed by ale brewers and stout was not.Two entirely different families of brewing.Hence signs all over the place advertising "Ales and Stouts" or "Ales and Porters"
There never was any difference except sometimes a matter of strength.Guinness sometimes called the same beer by both names.Many brewers in the inter war years relabelled their Porters as Stouts and discontinued the stouts.
There are many myths around such as the use of roasted barley or malt though neither was used for the first 100 years or so of porter/stout brewing.
Those who think they can tell a difference do so from a very limited data base.They only know from their own experience and that may well not reflect the overall situation.

 

Can we just accept we've blurred the lines? I mean I can argue that there are IPAs now that could be considered DIPAs and pale ales that could be considered IPAs.

 

This is a beer website that attracts beer lovers. Frequently, those beer lovers are going to have a similar question they want to ask the community about or a similar experience they want to share with the community. We should plan on seeing similar topics and themes over and over again. If you've already talked about it, then move on, no need to chime in with a complaint about how frequently the topic comes up. Honestly, I think this is all a thinly veiled humble-brag, ie "I have been here long enough to know that this thread comes up a lot and I want recognition for that, so rather than participate in this conversation again I am going to make fun of how frequently it comes up so that I can show everyone how knowledgeable I am."

It's like being a on a forum related to the NFL and getting aggrivated when you see threads pop up about bad officiating. It's a football forum man, what do you expect?

 

I in no way meant my statement as a "humble brag." Its just that this particular topic stresses me out and is rather confusing. To further complicate the matter, I start thinking about where black IPA, imperial porter, imperial stout, milk stout, baltic porter, robust porter, etc fall in to the mix. What about a milk porter, has this been done?

 

Here in Serbia, we have just lager beers! shit!

 

just keep them both coming, bartender!

 

I couldn't agree more. The snarky comments are such a turn off!

 

No need to apologize . A forum should be friendly and it should be perfectly acceptable to re-visit topics. It is those making patronizing comments who should be apologizing to you!

 

I usually try to not chime in on these threads but they r basically the same! A porter is a porter and a stout is a "stout" porter or a double! In brewing (I am an avid home brewer) sometimes u set out to brew a porter and your palate or homade recipe may be a hair off and sometimes in someone's eyes be a stout.... There isn't much room in the beer world for a style ****, that being said just trust the label, for it is more right then some guy who just drinks beer and negativity comments on OP's
Porters are generally a little thinner and more of a dark brown, more hop character, still earthy, slightly different head and less sweet and chocolatey, again just trust the label errybody different!!!

 

For me, Two Hearted is floral and Torpedo is piney. Surely they can't be the same beer type. Is that where the "extra" comes in?

Porter goes back centuries and is brewed around the world.

It has been: entire, brown, beer, ale, plain, bottom-fermented, lagered, imperial, export, stout, common, best, yadda, yadda.

Porter brewers didn't always have a monopoly on the term stout (meaning strong). Today, the most common "stout" (consumed at the supposed rate of 10 million glasses per day) is weaker than most of the "porters" that craft aficionados drink, and is at odds with the "idea of stout" that is in the minds of those aficionados.

Anyone who is convinced that it is possible (or perhaps appropriate) to make an identifiable distinction is looking at the picture through a very narrow lens - either that of limited personal experience or a specific historical snapshot. People can't even agree if porters are ales or not.

That being said, if someone claims that stout is their favorite style but that they hate porters, I probably wouldn't trust that person to babysit my kids.

What porter?

 

What is the difference between a porter and a bellhop?

 

One wears a funny hat?

 

If the bellhop is thicker, he could be a stout bellhop. He could also be a porter. If he were a Scot, of course, he would be wee heavy.

 

Marquis above has it right. Historically, there is no difference except the term stout, originally "brown stout" when used in relation to brown beers, meant often a stronger form of porter. I can give you a 1000 references from the days much closer to the origin of these beers which state so.

Today, due to Michael Jackson highlighting that Guinness uses roast (unmalted) barley, a practice has emerged to consider average-gravity black beer with roasted barley stout while all-malt black beer (top-fermented) is called porter or robust porter.

Guinness's use of flaked (raw) barley in the grist is also a hallmark of "Irish stout" in many beers which carry that description today, or Irish-style in America, but again that is simply use of an adjunct which many non-Irish stout or porter brewers would or could have done as well. Guinness's prominence and survival as the main stout brewer in the 1970's led many to think, therefore, that using flaked barley and roasted barley defined a drier, specifically "Irish stout" but it isn't so at all in historical terms.

These are recent stylistic inventions which do not correspond to history. In the 1800's, Guinness itself used roasted malt, not roasted barley (there is a taste difference, IMO), to colour the beer and used no flaked barley. Correspondingly, many English brewers used roast barley too once it became legal to do so (around 1885). There is nothing Irish about it other than by the early 1970's, Guinness was the only well-known stout left and so because it used roast barley, people thought that defined a kind of stout different from the English: it wasn't so.

A beer sent to eastern Europe from London might be called double stout, Imperial porter, Imperial stout, Extra double stout, etc. It's all the same stuff with the same origin in the development of why become "entire" or "entire butt beer" in the 1700's.

P.S. The reason stout is under 5% ABV in Ireland and not called "porter" is simply that gravities fell in the 1900's so that what Guinness used to call porter, it later called stout. That's all it is… Guinness's new West Indies Porter is about 7% ABV, so a reversal in terminology of the original understanding of strengths associated to the terms porter and stout but once again, terminology was never fixed in stone, from day 1 these black beers of different strength might be called one or the other even though in general, stout tended to describe the stronger beer.

 

Correction: "...with the same origin in the development of what became "entire"…".