After a month’s break from writing articles, I am back, albeit with a shorter post. I do apologize in advance for the brevity, but life is surprisingly good at getting in the way of my drinking.
So, porters. To my underdeveloped tongue, porter isn’t much different than stout. Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that stout is, in some cases, just an outgrowth of porter. For the uninitiated, porter is a dark, malty beer. It tends to be lighter than stout, though; few people would consider porters to be ‘chewy’, a term which I often use to describe my favorite stouts.
As I did my research (the real kind, not the drinking kind), I discovered that a good lot of the history of the drink is considered controversial. Most of the popular history is derived from a single writing, the sources of which have come into doubt. A common story, which may or may not be true, is that porter was derived as a blend of new and aged ales (the aging gives the color). Other stories indicate other origins. What does seem likely is that porter may actually be a kind of reversed evolution, with many different recipes converging into what we know today.
Next month: Mead!
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