Porters: why bother?

Because they are Fucking Delicious!!!

 

This should change your mind if you haven't had.

 

3 words: Hill Farmstead Everett.

 

Very well said. I think that this is the best reply in the thread! This "what is the difference between a Porter and a Stout" theme has popped up several times on BA...you have described it the best for sure! Are you a beer scholar?

 

except when it is not true, lol

 

In this case you should explain what is true then! Its one thing to say its not true information without an explination; and another thing to tell everyone viewing the forum why its not true and provide the correct information. I would like to know.

 

Kolsch yeast isn't an ale strain as far as I know.It may be mislabelled and misunderstood as one because people have convinced themselves that ale is the same as top fermented beer.
Regarding the OP, it is a matter of record that there is no difference between stouts and porters. It isn't a matter of opinion and it might well be that an individual has indeed experienced a difference in the ones actually sampled. But nobody has sampled anything like a representative number.Some stouts are stronger than some porters. Some are not. Some are roastier, others are not.You can only begin to differentiate when all stouts are this and all porters are that.

 

humm i did not write that jack did. wrong reply?

 

no the statement stands for itself. unless you want me to provide HB recipes? or beer history? the brewers do not usually list the stuff they use on web sites. actually this thread and the 200 before it have proved my point, so please read those first. thanks!

 

JackHorzempa already explains it in the post you replied to...

 

No 1 doubts that you can brew a porter and stout totally different if you reallys wanted to. But so many have NOT wanted to. and the name is just a random thing. again 2 blogs have proven this one over and over again.
http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/so-what-is-the-difference-between-porter-and-stout/

 

They're crap. I don't know why people even bother. OMG, just watery, thin chocolate, mirite?!?

Funky Buddha has Maple Bacon Coffee Porter going on tap tonight and I'm going to skip it. Why bother with this crap when I've got stouts to drink?

Last weekend, while driving, my girlfriend wanted to get lunch, and I told her to forget it, lunch is just a poor man's crappier dinner. She walked home learning a valuable lesson that day.

Also, this thread is my favorite.

 

The roasted barley theory is as widespread as the urban legend that Scottish Ales contain peat smoked malt.

From the beers you picked, your side-by-side is going to prove your point 100%...but the experiment is inherently flawed. Founder's Breakfast Stout is a delicious outlier and cannot be compared to any stout, porter, or stout porter on the market. My suggestion is to expand your geographical sampling area...I think you'll find that Sierra Nevada and Deschute's offerings are also outliers in this new worldview - and very tasty outliers at that !

 

Those responding to this by saying that bold porters can be just as thick as imperial stouts completely miss the point of porters, IMO. Not every beer is supposed to be cranked to 11. I didn't really fully appreciate this until a few years ago when I began to love well-made pilsners and lagers. There is a genuine beauty to complex subtlety. And, though I would say I prefer stouts as a style, there are a lot of things you can do with porters that you flat out can not do with stouts. You can bring out flavors much more prominently because they're not so crazy malted.

It's been mentioned a few times, but Victory at Sea is a near perfect execution of a beer. All of the flavors come out perfectly and I don't think Ballast Point could have accomplished those same marriages of flavors in a stout.

 

Baltic porters!

 

I myself cannot really distinguish the difference between the two.
I do know that you cannot go wrong with a BBC Drayman's Porter!

 

Because as legend has it Porters were what got the Porters (human mules who carried baggage, food, goods etc) around London through their day. Working man's beer.

Closing remarks: Fuller's London Porter.

 

facebook/twitter-style "tagging" is now enabled in the forums, btw

@jesskidden

 

Ha, nice. I didn't bother reading up on the new site updates.