February 10, 2020 • 45 mins
The porter/stout family of beers has risen, and fallen, and risen again. Anney and Lauren dive into the winding history of stouts and porters – and the roasty, toasty science behind them.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome saber protection of I Heart radio and
stuff Media. I'm Any Ray and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
today we're talking about stouts and porters. Yes, come with
us to the dogs so beer. Yeah. Yeah, we were
like goodbye trying January. Intersouts and porners um as always
(00:30):
drink responsibly. Yes, absolutely, and shout out to the porter
in Atlanta's one of my favorite places. Oh yeah, it's
a lovely, lovely restaurant and bar. Yes. And they have
a lot of stouts and porters. Oh gosh, they have
a lot of everything they do. That is true. I've
actually been really hesitant with stouts and porters for a
long time. Every time I get one, it's almost always
(00:51):
a really pleasant surprise. I Yeah, I forget how much
I like them sometimes because I feel like they're going
to be heavy. Them can be, but a lot of
them are just really like, like just crisp and refreshing. Yeah,
in a bitter way, And I'm like, gyirl, they are surprising.
I find a lot of them, at least in my case.
And we're going to talk about this a little more
because I know it's a pet peeve A lot of
(01:12):
people who make these beers. I find them surprisingly light.
I I too, am like I'm going to be drinking bread.
And it's not no, not, not all the time, not
a lot of the time. I did get Um. I
toured Guinnis a few years ago when I was in
Ireland and it was seven floors, very impressive. UM, and
I got my perfect poor certificate. Oh dang, yes. If
(01:37):
you don't know what this is, it is a whole thing.
As they say. UM. Say you're a bartender and you're
going to pour some Guinness undraft. You grab a glass,
you tilted under the spout at a forty five degree angle,
pour until it's about full. Then you pause for a
few seconds, let that settle, then you top it off,
adding a creamy layer on the top. According to Imbibe magazine,
(02:00):
every second of every day, somewhere around the world, a
bartender pours againness in this method. Guinness sometimes sends out
ambassadors to teach bartenders how to do this. Yeah, and
and there is I think a time in which the
perfect point is poured. It's like twenty nine points something seconds,
Like there's a point, like there's a decimal point there is.
(02:21):
I was really nervous when I did, it was like shaken,
as if my whole reputations at steak or something, they'll
never let me drink again. Is again like Ireland was
going to call America be like Eddie is fired when
you're out of here, never let her in a bar again.
That did not happen. It was. It was a delight actually,
(02:42):
And there is a myth. I I never heard this,
but there's a myth that stout supporters are made up
of the much stronger sludge left at the bottom of
the barrel wind brewing other beer types. No, not true,
definitely not true. That's not that's not how brewing works. No,
what we'll get into in a second. Oh my gosh,
we will. We will. We have to on a couple
of episodes on beer. If this is something you really into,
you We've done sour beers, craft beer of Asheville and
(03:06):
i Pas so see those if you care to. And
in the meanwhile, this brings us to our question stouts
and borders. What are they? Well? Uh? Stouts and porters
are a related family of beers that feature dark coloration
and roasty, rich flavors created by roasting the grains used
(03:30):
to make them until they're a rich chocolate brown or
even darker. Okay, quick beer overview, quick is a loose term,
a relative it is. Beer is an alcoholic beverage made
from malted grain, usually water, and yeast. You boil the
malt in water to release its sugars, then add yeast,
(03:52):
which eats those sugars and poops carbon dioxide, alcohol and
flavor yeased pool. Oh man, it's been a while since
I've gotten to do that. Cool um. Yeah. You can
also add other stuff to flavor beer, like hops um
to balance the sweet flavors from the malt and the yeast.
And most beers these days do contain some amount of
(04:13):
hops stouts and porters included. But today we're kind of
focusing on the grains and on the malting process. And okay,
malted just means germinated and dried, meaning that you you
take a grain and create an environment where it will
start to germinate. I mean, you know, like grains are seeds, right,
They contain proteins that code for growing a plant, plus
(04:34):
starches to feed that hypothetical growth, all wrapped up in
a sturdy, portable package. So, given moisture and a pleasant
enough temperature, a seed of grain will start to grow
a plant, one of the very first steps of which
is breaking down those starches into sugars for easy processing.
So when you malt grains, you're using that natural process
(04:56):
to do some work for you, creating those sugars that
you want your yeasts to eat so that they'll create alcohol. Nice. However,
because you don't want a whole plant um, you stop
the germination process by drying out the grains in a
process called kiln ng um and killing is a whole
complex art slush science, but very basically um. You can
(05:18):
you can dry the grains out quick so that they
remain pale and clean tasting, or you can do it
slow and hotter so that the proteins and sugars in
the grains undergo a couple reactions, caramelization and the mayyard reaction,
and these are at work. When you see here a
steak or toast bread like like in caramelization, sugar is
decomposed in the presence of elevated temperatures, creating all kinds
(05:41):
of like toasty fun flavor compounds, think like toffee or butter,
or jam stone, fruits, cotton candy. In the mayard reaction.
Amino Acids react with sugars, usually at elevated temperatures to
create all kinds of roasty, fun flavor compounds, think like
toast or citrus or currants or cho glitter coffee yeah um.
(06:03):
To control which reactions happen and how much and producing
what flavors. A maltster which is a name of a
profession that you can have malts love it um. They
may toast or roast the grains before drying them um.
And that's where you get the flavors and colors of
stouts and porters by by starting with manipulating your malt
(06:24):
or sometimes you're unmalted grain. But the resulting malts are
are roughly categorized by color pale amber, brown, chocolate, black, um.
And this is also where smoky flavors can come in
by using wood fires or wood smoke in the toasting,
roasting kilning process m hm so um. These malts can
(06:51):
have very powerful flavors, so usually only a small portion
of the malt that goes into a stouter porter may
have been toasted or roasted um. Even for like a
very dark beer like a Russian Imperial stout, recipes usually
only call for about of the malt to be brown
or black, the other seventy will be pale. Shout out
(07:11):
to Martha Harpson writing for Popular Science for her excellent
breakdown of all of these um breakdowns. Also just out
of saying, y'all, um, this episode was supposed to come
out last week and the reason that you didn't get
it last week was that I was running up against
the deadline and trying to understand the history of malt
and ran across this article in Brew your Own magazine.
(07:35):
It was written by one Christian England and the lead
of the article was, if there ever was a malt
equivalent of the crazy uncle that lives under the stairs,
black malt also called black patent malt would be it.
And I just stop, Like my brain just stopped, and
I was like, I've got any more time. I'm gonna
need more time on this one. Yeah. It's a very
(07:55):
we were very aspirational in in in this episode combined
them both um and uh, you know here we are.
I I remember this guy. I was at local establishment
woods and this guy I was looking at the milkshakes
and they have malted milkshakes there. Oh yeah, yeah, and
(08:18):
he I didn't know what it was, and I swear
for an hour he explained to me why were superior?
So I understand there's a lot going on, a whole
lot going on. I do agree malted milkshakes are way better.
If you're listening Kyle with the motorcycle. I still remember
(08:40):
very clearly this whole thing that's this has clearly made
an impact. It did because I remember thinking it was
one of those moments where you're like, is this really happening?
Why is sleep and dreaming? Nope, nope, nope, that's what's
up right. Okay, back to the beer, so yes, anyway, Um,
(09:01):
the result of all of this will be a beer
that's dark brown to black in color, with a roasty
and toasty flavors ranging from dry to sweet and flavor
um from from very low alcohol to very high alcohol content. Um,
but usually with low hop content and uh thus less
bitterness than a lot of other beers. Are like a
different variety of bitterness from burnt flavors instead of like
(09:24):
like grapefruit juice, Like you kind of get pine or
grape fruit from from something like an I p A
that has a lot of hops. This is more like
a coffee. Yeah, yeah, and here I need to we
need to talk about nitrogen. Okay, um because because some
stouts and porters like Guinness Um employ nitrogen to give
(09:45):
the beer a creamier mouth feel and in that thick
foamy head. Um Because okay, most beers contain carbon dioxide
to give them fizz. It's also a natural result of fermentation.
But you can also add nitrogen, which creates time and
a little bubbles as opposed to carbon dioxides like big
snappy bubbles. UM. Nitrogen is also less soluble than carbon dioxide,
(10:07):
so instead of a continuing phizz that you get with
CEO two, you get this rush of of nitrogen escape.
And this is why also thanks to some complex fluid dynamics,
the bubbles in a pint of Guinness Um or other
nitro beer what will settle down the sides of a
glass and then rise up from the center to form
(10:28):
that foamy head over the course of a few seconds. Um. Also,
since the gas in the beer will be a blend
of c O two and nitrogen, heavy on the nitrogen,
maybe you wind up with with a relatively still glass
of beer once the bubbles have settled into that foam.
To maximize that effect, you need to help the nitrogen nucleate,
which is why nitrogenized beers are poured from special tap
(10:51):
faucets that's slow and agitate the poor. And it's why
canned and bottled nitri beers contain a widget or some
other specialized what that is designed and seeds the nitrogen bubbles. Yeah,
and we will have to talk more about that some
other time. It's really cool, weird fluid dynamics and uh
and seating of the bubble nucleation, so it's wild. Yeah.
(11:17):
A couple of years ago, I had one of those
canned Guinness drafts, yeah, and it had I was like,
something's in here, yeah, yeah, And I was like all right,
mr so yeah yeah yeah. Very basically, what's happening with
the widget is that um uh, it's attached to the
(11:37):
to the pulley tab of the can and uh and
it releases this burst of nitrogen into the beer when
you open the can, um, which seeds nucleation of the bubbles.
Very cool. Very basically. I'm probably screwing that up a
little bit in the telling, but in that general ballpark,
got it. Huh. There are a lot of varieties of
(12:02):
porters and stouts, UM with different things added during the
brewing process to play with the resulting flavors. Oatmeal stouts
are brewed with oats in addition to barley, as you
might imagine. UM Milk stouts include lactose, which are milk
sugars to add sweetness in a kind of creaminess. Yeah,
didn't we discuss how we both thought that they like
we had never put together. That's that's why, yep, yep,
(12:25):
I had no idea to like a few weeks ago. Yeah,
me too. I thought it's just because they were kind
of because they're creamy. I'm like other creamy for a
reason exactly. UM Oyster stouts include whole oyster shells during
brewing to get some of those minerals in there. You
can add coffee or peanuts, rup, cinnamon or whatever you like.
(12:46):
You can age your stouter porter in bourbon barrels to
add those flavors to the mix. UM Imperial stouts and
Baltic porters are styles with stronger flavors and higher alcohol content.
There's a whole world out there. Oh my heck. There
is so important question sub question question too. What's the
(13:06):
difference between a stout and a porter? Struggle that's essentially
the difference. Loves it up yeah these days? Yeah, like
not much. Um. The two terms are used pretty interchangeably
by different brewers within this family of beers. UM official
designations tend to include the word creamy in stouts description
(13:29):
and not in porters description. Some modern brewers defined stouts
as containing unmolted roasted barley in addition to, or instead
of the usual malted roasted barley that porters use. But
even that is an industry wide yeah, and people are
very passionate and opinionated about it. They certainly are. If
(13:51):
you would like to read about this argument on the Internet,
google it, and so many humans will give you their opinion,
pages and pages and pages of it. Huh. There's a
popular story that the name porter came from the fact
that porters of London loved this beer type so much
way back when it first got started, or that it
somehow derived from entire butt Okay, all right, that that
(14:14):
is from the type of cask that may have been
used to mature porters in the early seventeen hundreds. The
story goes that dark beers were then made by combining
multiple beers made during like successive mashings. Over the course
of an entire brewing run and matured in these casks
that were known as butts. So the beer may have
been called entire butt beer before it took on the
(14:37):
name porter. Um. I'm not sure whether this is apocryphal
or not, though partially because it's just I'm I know,
I'm like twelve, but like entire butt beer is so funny. Yes,
And I'm trying to imagine where porter would come from
from that? Yeah, I don't. I don't think so. Maybe
(14:58):
the accent was very for back then. We don't know
that's true, I wasn't there. One thing giving credence to
this theory that porters are named for porters is in
a letter written by a man living in London. Quote.
Another kind of beer is called porter, meaning carrier. Because
the greater quantity of this beer is consumed by the
working classes. It is a thick and strong beverage, and
(15:20):
the effect it produces if drunken excess is the same
as that of wine. This porter costs threepence a pot.
That letter is the first known instance of the word
porter in print. It is indeed as for stout. That
might be because high gravity porters were frequently called stout
porters in the late seventeen and early eighteen hundreds, and
(15:41):
from their stout became a descriptor for a good dark
beer and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah that stout meaning
like strong. Um. The antonym was sometimes a slender beer
or small beer to mean low alcohol beer. Um and yeah.
At the time, the only difference in recipes for stouts
versus porters was often the amount of water involved, like
(16:02):
less was used for stouts, so they would be stronger. Um.
But these days porters can be stronger than stouts. Reverse history,
mystery present mystery exactly doesn't rhyme not as fun okay
cool cool. Another theory suggests that Porter derived from a
(16:23):
beer that came to Britain from the Netherlands called Porter,
which dates back to century and yeah. Both of these
were considered beers for the working classes, like porter also
means a person who hauls or delivers things. Yeah um,
And these are also dark beers with roasty flavors, though
I get the idea that they tend to be on
the sweeter side of the porter spectrum like to this day,
(16:47):
Okay cool still exists. Oh yeah, that's always a pleasant
okay test that out out. What about nutrition? Drink responsibly. Um. Generally,
the lower the acohol content of a beer, the fewer
calories it will contain, meaning that Guinness at four point
one percent alcohol by volume, is actually one of the
(17:07):
lightest beers you can drink outside of things that are
like brewed specifically to be low calorie UM, like Corona
is four point six but is five. So this blew
my mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, that's a
that's certainly a factor. But certainly those roasty flavors can
also like really mask the taste of higher volumes of alcohol.
(17:28):
So some porters and stouts are exactly as heavy as
they look. Drink responsibly, but again, water is always good.
Oh gosh, yeah, I just have some watter. Yes, yes,
we do have a little bit some numbers for you
a couple. Yeah. As of porters occupied a small percentage
(17:50):
of the American beer market share just zero point three
percent UM, but they were on the rise. Sales had
increased UM by zero point seven percent over the course
of the year. Stouts also had a good year. They
grew to one point one percent of the overall market
and sales rose by four Yes, um, they are definitely.
I feel like they're on the As we're in this
(18:10):
craft beer renaissance here in the US and in other places,
you're kind of on the tail end of that, Like
education is still happening with lighter beers, and as we're
going to talk about South importers pretty much disappeared for
for a minute, for a long time. Yeah, and and yeah,
like we've we've gone through the I P. A craze
(18:32):
and the sour craze. So I'm wondering maybe maybe STU
supporters are next. It sounds like they might be. It
sounds like they might be. Oh, but before we get
to that, we have a lot of history for you. Um,
and first we've got a quick break forward for a sponsor,
(18:55):
and we're back. Thank you spots, Yes, thank you. Okay,
here we go. Uh huh. This is a big history section,
and it took a little bit of untangling because as
with anything that people like talking about so much, and
also as with anything from which like a lot of
the early history was not recorded because no one thought
(19:15):
it was important. Right, Um, there's a lot of weird
apocryphal stories out there, yes, which are delight Yes, And
we will get to a number of we, well, we will,
and we'll try to make clear which ones are and
which ones are not, or at least from the best
that we could understand. Yes, yes, so all right. Porters
go back to London circu the eighteenth century, the first
(19:39):
industrially produced beer, in part because brewers began taking aging
and metration into their own hands. The use of thermometers
in the seventeen sixties also helped. Before that, beer was
mostly brewed in homes, or it was brewed with the
intent it would age on the journey to wherever it
was going. One popular story goes porters were invented out
(20:01):
of a practice wherein London bartenders commonly blended three beers
for customers, a mix of cheaper and more expensive beers
with different characteristics. In the seventeen twenties and thirties, beer
named Ralph Harwood decided he wanted to brew a beer
with that mix of characteristics, but that could be dispensed
from one cask. Londoners loved it and it became the
new it thing. However, there aren't really records to back
(20:25):
this off repeated story. It's called the three threads theory.
If you do any research of your own After this,
you will see that in a lot of places three
threads theory. Yeah, yeah, probably apocryphal. Probably porters were definitely
being enjoyed by seventeen thirty, when the grub Street Journal
wrote highly of a quote sound generous porter without further explanation.
(20:47):
That's it, and early American homebrewers once America a game
of thing, really dug porters, including folks like George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson. As usual, Russian orders and staffs emerged
around the same time that the British variety did imported
from England. Russian beer houses were even frequently called porter houses.
(21:08):
It was viewed as a fancy beer on the same
level as wine. However, what porter exactly entailed at this
time is a bit murky, because to make a porter
in our current understanding of them, you need that black malts,
something that didn't exist until innovations and malt roasting technologies
in eighteen seventeen and the Black patent Malt. Yeah, the
(21:32):
the story of the porter's development is a story of malt,
which is also a story of heating technology. Um, for
most of beer's history, you had malt ranging from pale
to amber to brown before black malts were invented. Dark beers,
like porters, employed brown malts heated to a to a
good toasty color with a wood or charcoal fire, which
(21:54):
imparted a smokiness. To let that smoky flavor mellow out
involved a month long aging process and it in casts
or vats, allowing for the propagation of wild yeast. Meaning
these original porters were quite different than the porters of
today and probably way more filling. Porters were viewed as
a working person's drink and even seen as nutritious. Yeah,
(22:16):
mostly sweet styles were made at the time. Um brewed
to have a lower alcohol content and more residual sugar,
so they were higher in calories and would give you
a little little boost energy. Um. Part of the reason
they're probably is that brown malts would have added this
stringency to the beer that not all drinkers really favor.
And I said brown malts, but um, but most brewers
(22:38):
were probably using a blend of brown and amber malts
because that extra cooking process made brown malt more expensive
than paler malts at the time. Yes, but that was
going to change starting around the early seventeen hundreds. M
maltsters gosh, I love that word. Monsters started working with
a new fuel called coke. Uh. Folks working with coal
(23:01):
had drived it back in the sixteen hundreds, and it
burned hotter and cleaner than anything anyone had ever used before.
It drove industrial development um from ironed steel to glass,
and also made its way into brewing. Using this malt
could be finished without so much smoke. Um. It was
paler and tasted cleaner than malts roasted with wood or whatever.
(23:21):
The resulting pale malts and pale ales that they produced
were more expensive, but very posh um and let the
flavor of any hops you added shine through more clearly,
as we discussed in our I p a episode Um,
and this is part of how porters came to be
considered working class beers versus those posh pale ales developing
(23:41):
around the same time. Oh, speaking of those vats that
they would age porters in though, Oh yes, here's a
story Brewer Richard muh Um. I believe it's constructed the
largest vat in existence, and it became something of a
celebrity vat. People were writing about it. It could hold
(24:01):
up to twenty thousand barrels, but tragedy struck in October
fourteen when it corroded hoop Burst, releasing seven thousand, six
hundred barrels of porter, flooding the basement, destroying the brewery walls,
and surging into nearby houses. Eight people were killed due
to quote drowning, injury, poisoning by porter, or drunkenness. Yeah, yeah, gosh,
(24:27):
I mean I forget sometimes how dangerous brewing can be
even today. Oh. Absolutely, it's a it's a chemistry experiment
all the way. It is, well adding in something else
extremely childish, because that's the theme of this episode. I
just want to mention and this article. I found a
brewer named Richard rams Bottom rams Bottom ms Bottom. That
(24:52):
is a spectacular name. It is, and I'm glad that
it exists. I am to okay, if we step back
to and pivot to sta out. Samuel Johnson referred to
stout as a slang word for strong beer in the
Dictionary of the English Language. It wasn't uncommon for beer
inventories to list both pale stouts and brown stouts at
the time, but since porters were the thing back then,
(25:15):
brewers started expanding their portfolio by offering higher gravity stout porters,
and so the story goes. The porter part was eventually
dropped so that they were just called stouts. The recipes
for porters and stuffs were virtually the same again, other
than the stouts calling for less water. In three the
Times of London reported on a case over stolen contents
(25:36):
from a cask of quote porter of superior quality called
brown stout, called in court remarkably fine old porter and
very strong and excellent brown stout. So both terms same beer,
yes cool, always making it easy for us. In eighteen tens,
(25:57):
a General Dictionary of Commerce, Trade and Manufacturers quote porter
maybe divided into two classes, namely brown stout and porter.
Properly so called brown stout is only a fuller bodied
kind of porter than that which serves for ordinary drinking.
A great deal of this is exported to America and
the West Indies. So there you go, Yeah, there you go.
(26:18):
Oh I'm seventeen fifty nine a man named Arthur Guinness,
and yes that one least a brewery at St James
Gate in Dublin, Ireland for nine thousand years. I had
never heard this before and I love it. Yes, this
is a big part of their tour. The location was strategic,
(26:40):
with accessible fresh water and the country's barley growing areas
all pretty close. Since porters and stouts were the popular
styles at the time, that's what Guinness went with. Decade later,
in seventeen sixty nine, Guinness's stouts were being exported to England,
and by se Guinness decided to focus solely on porters
and stouts. Originally their product went by the name Extra
(27:02):
Stout Porter, but in eighteen twenty they dropped the porter
Extra Stout Extra Stout. According to their website, after the
death of Prince Albert in eighteen sixty one, a bartender
and London decided that champagne was too bright to drink
for the occasion, so he added some Guinness. Thus the
Black Velvet was born. We could have done a whole
(27:23):
episode on Guinness. They oh, certainly that can still happen.
At some point, I was trying to remember what episode
we talked about where they they had they had somebody
invent refrigeration. They were like, we need this thing for
go invent it, and I too, ran out of time,
but maybe one day we'll return. When Edward Cecil took
(27:45):
over in eight he doubled the size of the bird
to the point it was nicknamed a city within a city,
complete with its own medical department, fire brigade, and railway.
And they established their first research lab in nineteen o one. Huh.
But meanwhile, we need to talk about an innovation that
(28:09):
Guinness made great use of black malt. I'm ready. So
there was this guy, Daniel Wheeler, British engineer, and in
the eighteen tens he was inspired by the way coffees
were roasted in revolving metal drums. This kept smoke out
of the product and let you dry it more evenly
into a more precise finish. He applied for a patent
(28:30):
for his improved method of drying and preparing malt in
eighteen seventeen. And um, this is what allowed the creation
of lots of different styles of beer, cleaner, pale ales,
roast your porters, all kinds of things in between. Um.
Because before this, um, if you cooked malt too hard,
it would go past brown to charcoal and just catch
on fire in your kiln. Bad. Yeah, But with this
(28:53):
new process, you could cook malt or straight barley or
whatever all the way to black without setting anything unintentional
me on fire. That's good. Yes, I like intentional fires
be there. Valentine's Day is coming up. I'm pretty sure
(29:14):
that the term patent malt arose for black malt because
there was a patent on the process. Yeah, um, but yeah.
This dropped the price of pale malts and allowed brewers
a lot of leeway and precision in creating darker beers.
Guinness was an early adopter um by they had entirely
replaced brown malt with black malt in their recipe smart,
(29:39):
which brings us to another innovation. In the seventeen nineties,
and English chemist by the name of William Nicholson developed
a practical and affordable hydrometer um, which is a device
that measures the density of a fluid, which is useful
in brewing because the density of beer is directly related
to its sugar and alcohol content um So, using hydrometers
(30:00):
in the early eighteen hundreds, brewers realized that paler malts
gave off more sugars than darker breasted maltsum, meaning that
the yeasts have more food, meaning that you can make
a stronger beer using less malt. Um So. Coupled with
Wheelers new killing method, this innovation meant that brewers were
coming up with all kinds of new recipes. Right, some
(30:21):
mid nineteenth century brewers in Ireland use up to nine
pale malt in their stouts and porters. Complicating all of this,
as with a lot of alcohols we've discussed in the past,
some less than reputable brewers added all kinds of additives,
especially for color, but also some pretty dangerous things. Yeah.
(30:41):
I mean some of these things were nicer than others,
like things involving like boiling down leftover wart which is
unfermented beer soup, or caramelizing sugar or roasting unused malt holes. Um,
but yeah, they were also brewers using less wholesome things,
and so there was this general public push against any
any traations period Right. During the later half of the
(31:03):
nineteenth century, records show that the recipes for stouts and
porters in London began to diverge, with doubts getting less
patent malt as compared to porters. There's a popular myth
that Ireland embraced the stout and unmalted barley to evade
a British tax on malted barley. However, unmalted barley was
illegal in both Ireland and Britain until eighteen eighty. Guinness
(31:27):
today does use unmalted barley in their recipe. During the
Great Famine from eight to eighteen forty nine, many Irish
immigrants arrived to the United States, and they brought their
beer preferences with them. Some historians believe that this is
how stouts got associated with the Irish in America and
in particular Guinness. Britain's freemash Ton Act of eighteen eighty
(31:48):
permitted the use of roasted barley, although folks weren't super
inti it at first. It also required brewers to purchase
a brewing license and shifted taxation from malt to original gravity,
which is a way of Yeah, this is another rabbit hole,
which is a way of predicting the alcohol content of
the final product based on the fermentable and unfermentable substances
(32:09):
in the word before fermentation. Yea great Also of note.
By this point, the oatmeal stout was common, but soon
milk stout passed it in popularity and almost led to
the oatmeal stouts extinction. Yeah. Um, milk stouts are sweeter
and at the time they contained milk added during fermentation,
(32:33):
and we're marketed as being like healthy or um or
restorative um. They are also considered easier on the palate
because they're less better than dryer stouts. Okay h. A
late nineteenth century high sugar, low alcohol sweet stout called
Invalid stout was marketed as essentially a health drink. Some
breweries marketed their porters even to nursing mothers and the ill. Yeah.
(32:58):
Breweries often permitted stouts like heavy and healthy and nutritious
through World War Two, famously the Guinness is Good for
You campaign in the uniteteen twenties. Yes. Yes, the midt
to late nineteenth and early twentieth century was around the
time the porter encountered some serious hardship. Once the most
popular beer in the UK. In the US, dark beers
(33:18):
took a huge hit when Pilsner came along in two,
and pale all a little bit before that to a
lesser extent um. Yeah, all that. All that work in
controlling the malting process allowed for pale beers with different
flavor profiles to develop, and simultaneously, more work was being
done to understand yeasts. Um. A lot of beers throughout
(33:40):
history wound up with a sour barney weird flavors from
wild yeasts and bacteria that got into them, but no
one knew that microbes are what causes those flavors into
like the middle of the eighteen hundreds, even though brewers
had like figured out ways to help control for them,
certainly by the seventeen hundreds. But uh yeah, Louis Pastor
figured out that it wasn't some weird chemical process but
(34:02):
rather a biological process. Around eighteen fifty six, um, he
discovered the yeast is a living organism and that different
yeasts produce different flavors. Um. He was commissioned by folks
in the wine industry to figure out why their booze
was going sour. We might not have pasteurization if not
for booze, what do you know? So yeah, so he
developed pasteurization, which is the process of heating stuff for
(34:24):
the right amount of time and at the right temperature
so that you kill off any of microbes without like
ruining the stuff, right. But it wasn't until the experiments
in Carlsberg's laboratories in the eighteen eighties that anyone isolated
and cultivated pure yeast strains that would produce alcohol with
like really reliable flavors. So between these two innovations, the
(34:46):
beer world exploded with all of these super light, super
clean tasting beers. Yes, not so great news or stouts
importers another thing, not so great news so ambitious. Yeah,
that thing ninety America and those taxes aforementioned taxes on
British taxes around original gravity didn't help either, although World
(35:10):
War One and malt restrictions lightened up the porter closer
to what we're more used to today. Um, yeah, that's
because the the UK government limited the alcohol content of
English beers during wartime because they were trying to conserve
grain stores so less grain, less alcohol content. However, they
(35:30):
were not so prohibitive in Ireland, perhaps to avoid angering
the Irish, meaning Ireland could keep churning out porters and
stouts while the British really couldn't. Post war, when the
restrictions were dropped, many British brewers decided to turn their
focus elsewhere, ditching porters and stouts except for the popular,
the still popular sweeter milk stout variety. But that meant
(35:51):
there was this beer vacuum and Ireland happily stepped in
to fill it. Meanwhile, that other famous thing, the Guinness
makes Guinness Book of Records, Um, got its start in nine.
The story goes that the then managing director of Guinness
Brewery UM one Sir Hugh Beaver which is another great name,
(36:13):
Hugh Beaver. Um. Yeah, he attended this hunting party at
in Wexford and UM. During that hunting party there was
this friendly argument about what the fastest game bird in
Europe is, um, and the party failed to find an
answer in any of the hosts reference books. So Sir
Hugh got the idea to promote Guinness with a book
meant to help settle pub arguments, and that book morphed
(36:35):
into the Guinness World Records that we know and we
frequently referenced today. Their website has the answer to that
original question. By the way, Um, the fastest game bird
in Europe is the golden clover. Ah, yes, the golden plover.
So there you go. Well, do you know that is
(37:00):
very enriching. My patronis is a swift and that is
the highest classisfying bird. But I guess it's not a
game birds not a game bird, so different things. Yeah, Okay.
In ninety nine, to celebrate two hundred years of brewing,
Guinness dropped one fifty thousand bottles in the Atlantic Ocean.
Inside the bottles are a variety of things like instructions
(37:22):
on how to make the bottle into a lamp, Guinness story,
a gold Guinness label and a certificate for the Office
of the King of Neptune. Yeah, all right, they've done
some really interesting marketing campaigns, that is for sure. Yes.
But also in yes, a scientists employed by Guinness named
(37:42):
Michael ash came up with the Guinness Surgeon Settle, the
world's first nitro beer. As America emerged from the dark
cocktail times of the eighties, new beers looking to revive
porters and stout's turned to the UK for inspiration, but
they were only able to find about three dozen stouts
(38:03):
three dozen steps being produced in all of England, and
most of those were the sweet Stop variety, which had
by then earned the death knale of a nickname Old
Fashioned Lady Drink. Oh No, No. One. Event did help
bring back porters and stoubts when English brewery Samuel Smith
(38:25):
combined forces with an importer for Washington States, merchant have
been named Charles Finkel to recreate the oatmeal stout, specifically
to sell to Americans. Finkel grew interested in them after
discovering vintage labels proclaiming their healthfulness. He went to then
beer authority Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter, UM, wondering if
(38:47):
he had tried one. Jackson hattn't, but he gave Finkle
his suggestions our ideas on what it might have tasted like,
and Finkel passed those notes on to Samuel Smith. The
resulting product laid the foundation for what we now call
traditional style oatmeal stouts. And Yeah, as we were going
through this craft to be a revival here in the
(39:09):
US and other parts, UM, porters and stuffs are very
much hard of that. And I know some breweries specifically
are trying to educate people and focus on them and
and bring them back, and there's festivals around them, and
I know some do like a whole stout lineup or
whole porter lineup. So that's exciting. I'm glad. I'm glad
that it's making a comeback. It is absolutely. Yeah. The
(39:32):
thing that the like, the like phrase that I ran
across a lot in doing this research was like people
just going like, if you like coffee, you're gonna like
porters and stouts. It's the same flavors. Yeah, they're they're
not necessarily heavy. They are quite delightful if you if
you haven't tried any trial one yes, or if you
had a bad experience, maybe give it another go if
(39:53):
you want, if you want, do what you want. Don't
take our advice unless you sure do what you want
exactly exactly. So I feel like you know, that was
a massive endeavor, but we there was something cobbled together. Yeah,
that's that's the rise and the fall and the rise
(40:14):
yet again of the Porter and Stout Porter and Stout Resurrection. Yeah,
and we do have a little bit more for you,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsored, Yes,
(40:36):
thank you, And we're back with mal la la. I
don't know any drinking songs. Huh, Well we can fix that. Well. No,
I know the one from Lord of the Rings. But
that says more about me than perhaps I wanted to say. Annie.
Everyone already knew that about you. It's true. Why am
(40:58):
I hiding from myself? Sam wrote, I listened to the
Black Eyed pe episode this morning while at the blood
Bank for two hours straight. I get a lot of
pod listening then, and I bet you mentioned the Carolina
Low Country dish Hop and John, but somehow you admitted
it's relative Limp and Katie, which switches out the rice
(41:18):
for haminy. Another dish akin to these is Limp and Susan,
which involves rice, okra and bacon. Eating black eyed peas
is my pleasure alone in our house. As my wife
doesn't like them. I'm still working to convince my son
they're worth eating. Hanging there. I I a lot of
things I didn't like when I was a kid. I
came around to Yeah, absolutely, yeah. My dad loved hominy.
(41:41):
I don't know how I I didn't come across this ever,
but oh yeah, yeah. My my grandmother loves it. Um.
She always a canned though, so I didn't like it
until like very recently. Cans am I right? I liked
canned food. I was an interesting In some cases it
(42:04):
can it can lend a texture quality that is pleasant,
and in other cases I find that is not accurate
to my experience. I feel that is a fair assessment.
Thank you, Steph wrote I was listening to your Pineapple
Redux episode and was reminded of a pineapple related experience
that I had in Thailand about a year ago. My
(42:24):
then fiance now husband congratulations and I were in Chiang
Mai in December. I'm a huge fan of tropical fruits,
pineapple in particular, and so was on the lookout for
any street vendors selling pineapples. I was delighted to find
pineapples of all sorts. They're ranging from tina tin of
pineapples that were no taller than the length of my hand,
crown included, and large pineapples with comically small crowns. I
(42:47):
can't remember which type of pineapple I bought from the vendor,
but I do remember that it was the sweetest pineapple
I had ever tasted. It was incredible. I was so
happy I found my new favorite fruit. After that, I
decided I would buy some cut pineapple. I'm a street
vendor at least once a day during the rest of
our time there. I think it was our third day there,
after eating my daily dose of cut pineapple, that I thought, Wow,
(43:08):
these pineapples are so sweet. They're almost too sweet, like
unnaturally sweet. I started getting a little suspicious and even
tried searching on Google and trip Advisor for any accounts
of street vendors sweetening cut fruit in Thailand. I wasn't
able to find anything, but that thought still nod at me.
That night, on our way to a night market, we
(43:28):
passed by a vendor selling fresh cut pineapple. We noticed
that as he was cutting them, he placed them in
a tub of water. I had assumed it was some
solution they used to keep the cut fruit fresh and
prevent them from browning, but now I thought maybe there
was something more to within that. The vendor didn't speak
much English, so I couldn't ask him what the liquid was,
but we found out that he could speak Mandarin due
(43:49):
to a recent influx of Chinese tourists after a popular
Chinese film was shot there. This is where my husband
came in, being a Mandarin speaker himself. He asked what
he was putting the cut pineapple in, and the vendor
told him it was sugar water. My husband then asked
why he did that, and he answered because otherwise they
wouldn't be sweet, as if it was the most obvious
thing in the world. Duh. Sadly, my tie pineapple bubble
(44:13):
was burst and I didn't buy any more pineapples from
street vendors the rest of our stay in Chiang Mai.
Though I'm glad we were able to solve that mystery.
Part of me wishes I had never asked the question
and just stayed in blissful ignorance, because it just meant
I ate less pineapple than I would have on that trip.
It reminds me of the scene in the Matrix when
(44:35):
Cipher is eating the steak and it looks so good. Yeah,
he knows it's not real, but he fits into it,
and he says, ignorance is bliss. Oh that's a bummer.
That is a bummer. Or I don't know if it
was delicious. It was delicious. It's true if you liked
it sweet and pineapple. But you got a way, you know,
(44:56):
you do? You do? Yeah, you have to. You have
to find your own pineapple truth. We all do words
of wisdom where just to live by and we owe
it to these listeners, to you and you're quick with
Lauren if you thanks to both of them for writing in.
If you would like to write to us, you can.
Our email is hello at savor pod dot com. We're
(45:17):
also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at savor pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of I Heart
Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts on my Heart Radio,
you can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as
always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks
(45:39):
to you for listening, and we have that lots more
good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome saber protection of I Heart radio and
stuff Media. I'm Any Ray and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And
today we're talking about stouts and porters. Yes, come with
us to the dogs so beer. Yeah. Yeah, we were
like goodbye trying January. Intersouts and porners um as always
(00:30):
drink responsibly. Yes, absolutely, and shout out to the porter
in Atlanta's one of my favorite places. Oh yeah, it's
a lovely, lovely restaurant and bar. Yes. And they have
a lot of stouts and porters. Oh gosh, they have
a lot of everything they do. That is true. I've
actually been really hesitant with stouts and porters for a
long time. Every time I get one, it's almost always
(00:51):
a really pleasant surprise. I Yeah, I forget how much
I like them sometimes because I feel like they're going
to be heavy. Them can be, but a lot of
them are just really like, like just crisp and refreshing. Yeah,
in a bitter way, And I'm like, gyirl, they are surprising.
I find a lot of them, at least in my case.
And we're going to talk about this a little more
because I know it's a pet peeve A lot of
(01:12):
people who make these beers. I find them surprisingly light.
I I too, am like I'm going to be drinking bread.
And it's not no, not, not all the time, not
a lot of the time. I did get Um. I
toured Guinnis a few years ago when I was in
Ireland and it was seven floors, very impressive. UM, and
I got my perfect poor certificate. Oh dang, yes. If
(01:37):
you don't know what this is, it is a whole thing.
As they say. UM. Say you're a bartender and you're
going to pour some Guinness undraft. You grab a glass,
you tilted under the spout at a forty five degree angle,
pour until it's about full. Then you pause for a
few seconds, let that settle, then you top it off,
adding a creamy layer on the top. According to Imbibe magazine,
(02:00):
every second of every day, somewhere around the world, a
bartender pours againness in this method. Guinness sometimes sends out
ambassadors to teach bartenders how to do this. Yeah, and
and there is I think a time in which the
perfect point is poured. It's like twenty nine points something seconds,
Like there's a point, like there's a decimal point there is.
(02:21):
I was really nervous when I did, it was like shaken,
as if my whole reputations at steak or something, they'll
never let me drink again. Is again like Ireland was
going to call America be like Eddie is fired when
you're out of here, never let her in a bar again.
That did not happen. It was. It was a delight actually,
(02:42):
And there is a myth. I I never heard this,
but there's a myth that stout supporters are made up
of the much stronger sludge left at the bottom of
the barrel wind brewing other beer types. No, not true,
definitely not true. That's not that's not how brewing works. No,
what we'll get into in a second. Oh my gosh,
we will. We will. We have to on a couple
of episodes on beer. If this is something you really into,
you We've done sour beers, craft beer of Asheville and
(03:06):
i Pas so see those if you care to. And
in the meanwhile, this brings us to our question stouts
and borders. What are they? Well? Uh? Stouts and porters
are a related family of beers that feature dark coloration
and roasty, rich flavors created by roasting the grains used
(03:30):
to make them until they're a rich chocolate brown or
even darker. Okay, quick beer overview, quick is a loose term,
a relative it is. Beer is an alcoholic beverage made
from malted grain, usually water, and yeast. You boil the
malt in water to release its sugars, then add yeast,
(03:52):
which eats those sugars and poops carbon dioxide, alcohol and
flavor yeased pool. Oh man, it's been a while since
I've gotten to do that. Cool um. Yeah. You can
also add other stuff to flavor beer, like hops um
to balance the sweet flavors from the malt and the yeast.
And most beers these days do contain some amount of
(04:13):
hops stouts and porters included. But today we're kind of
focusing on the grains and on the malting process. And okay,
malted just means germinated and dried, meaning that you you
take a grain and create an environment where it will
start to germinate. I mean, you know, like grains are seeds, right,
They contain proteins that code for growing a plant, plus
(04:34):
starches to feed that hypothetical growth, all wrapped up in
a sturdy, portable package. So, given moisture and a pleasant
enough temperature, a seed of grain will start to grow
a plant, one of the very first steps of which
is breaking down those starches into sugars for easy processing.
So when you malt grains, you're using that natural process
(04:56):
to do some work for you, creating those sugars that
you want your yeasts to eat so that they'll create alcohol. Nice. However,
because you don't want a whole plant um, you stop
the germination process by drying out the grains in a
process called kiln ng um and killing is a whole
complex art slush science, but very basically um. You can
(05:18):
you can dry the grains out quick so that they
remain pale and clean tasting, or you can do it
slow and hotter so that the proteins and sugars in
the grains undergo a couple reactions, caramelization and the mayyard reaction,
and these are at work. When you see here a
steak or toast bread like like in caramelization, sugar is
decomposed in the presence of elevated temperatures, creating all kinds
(05:41):
of like toasty fun flavor compounds, think like toffee or butter,
or jam stone, fruits, cotton candy. In the mayard reaction.
Amino Acids react with sugars, usually at elevated temperatures to
create all kinds of roasty, fun flavor compounds, think like
toast or citrus or currants or cho glitter coffee yeah um.
(06:03):
To control which reactions happen and how much and producing
what flavors. A maltster which is a name of a
profession that you can have malts love it um. They
may toast or roast the grains before drying them um.
And that's where you get the flavors and colors of
stouts and porters by by starting with manipulating your malt
(06:24):
or sometimes you're unmalted grain. But the resulting malts are
are roughly categorized by color pale amber, brown, chocolate, black, um.
And this is also where smoky flavors can come in
by using wood fires or wood smoke in the toasting,
roasting kilning process m hm so um. These malts can
(06:51):
have very powerful flavors, so usually only a small portion
of the malt that goes into a stouter porter may
have been toasted or roasted um. Even for like a
very dark beer like a Russian Imperial stout, recipes usually
only call for about of the malt to be brown
or black, the other seventy will be pale. Shout out
(07:11):
to Martha Harpson writing for Popular Science for her excellent
breakdown of all of these um breakdowns. Also just out
of saying, y'all, um, this episode was supposed to come
out last week and the reason that you didn't get
it last week was that I was running up against
the deadline and trying to understand the history of malt
and ran across this article in Brew your Own magazine.
(07:35):
It was written by one Christian England and the lead
of the article was, if there ever was a malt
equivalent of the crazy uncle that lives under the stairs,
black malt also called black patent malt would be it.
And I just stop, Like my brain just stopped, and
I was like, I've got any more time. I'm gonna
need more time on this one. Yeah. It's a very
(07:55):
we were very aspirational in in in this episode combined
them both um and uh, you know here we are.
I I remember this guy. I was at local establishment
woods and this guy I was looking at the milkshakes
and they have malted milkshakes there. Oh yeah, yeah, and
(08:18):
he I didn't know what it was, and I swear
for an hour he explained to me why were superior?
So I understand there's a lot going on, a whole
lot going on. I do agree malted milkshakes are way better.
If you're listening Kyle with the motorcycle. I still remember
(08:40):
very clearly this whole thing that's this has clearly made
an impact. It did because I remember thinking it was
one of those moments where you're like, is this really happening?
Why is sleep and dreaming? Nope, nope, nope, that's what's
up right. Okay, back to the beer, so yes, anyway, Um,
(09:01):
the result of all of this will be a beer
that's dark brown to black in color, with a roasty
and toasty flavors ranging from dry to sweet and flavor
um from from very low alcohol to very high alcohol content. Um,
but usually with low hop content and uh thus less
bitterness than a lot of other beers. Are like a
different variety of bitterness from burnt flavors instead of like
(09:24):
like grapefruit juice, Like you kind of get pine or
grape fruit from from something like an I p A
that has a lot of hops. This is more like
a coffee. Yeah, yeah, and here I need to we
need to talk about nitrogen. Okay, um because because some
stouts and porters like Guinness Um employ nitrogen to give
(09:45):
the beer a creamier mouth feel and in that thick
foamy head. Um Because okay, most beers contain carbon dioxide
to give them fizz. It's also a natural result of fermentation.
But you can also add nitrogen, which creates time and
a little bubbles as opposed to carbon dioxides like big
snappy bubbles. UM. Nitrogen is also less soluble than carbon dioxide,
(10:07):
so instead of a continuing phizz that you get with
CEO two, you get this rush of of nitrogen escape.
And this is why also thanks to some complex fluid dynamics,
the bubbles in a pint of Guinness Um or other
nitro beer what will settle down the sides of a
glass and then rise up from the center to form
(10:28):
that foamy head over the course of a few seconds. Um. Also,
since the gas in the beer will be a blend
of c O two and nitrogen, heavy on the nitrogen,
maybe you wind up with with a relatively still glass
of beer once the bubbles have settled into that foam.
To maximize that effect, you need to help the nitrogen nucleate,
which is why nitrogenized beers are poured from special tap
(10:51):
faucets that's slow and agitate the poor. And it's why
canned and bottled nitri beers contain a widget or some
other specialized what that is designed and seeds the nitrogen bubbles. Yeah,
and we will have to talk more about that some
other time. It's really cool, weird fluid dynamics and uh
and seating of the bubble nucleation, so it's wild. Yeah.
(11:17):
A couple of years ago, I had one of those
canned Guinness drafts, yeah, and it had I was like,
something's in here, yeah, yeah, And I was like all right,
mr so yeah yeah yeah. Very basically, what's happening with
the widget is that um uh, it's attached to the
(11:37):
to the pulley tab of the can and uh and
it releases this burst of nitrogen into the beer when
you open the can, um, which seeds nucleation of the bubbles.
Very cool. Very basically. I'm probably screwing that up a
little bit in the telling, but in that general ballpark,
got it. Huh. There are a lot of varieties of
(12:02):
porters and stouts, UM with different things added during the
brewing process to play with the resulting flavors. Oatmeal stouts
are brewed with oats in addition to barley, as you
might imagine. UM Milk stouts include lactose, which are milk
sugars to add sweetness in a kind of creaminess. Yeah,
didn't we discuss how we both thought that they like
we had never put together. That's that's why, yep, yep,
(12:25):
I had no idea to like a few weeks ago. Yeah,
me too. I thought it's just because they were kind
of because they're creamy. I'm like other creamy for a
reason exactly. UM Oyster stouts include whole oyster shells during
brewing to get some of those minerals in there. You
can add coffee or peanuts, rup, cinnamon or whatever you like.
(12:46):
You can age your stouter porter in bourbon barrels to
add those flavors to the mix. UM Imperial stouts and
Baltic porters are styles with stronger flavors and higher alcohol content.
There's a whole world out there. Oh my heck. There
is so important question sub question question too. What's the
(13:06):
difference between a stout and a porter? Struggle that's essentially
the difference. Loves it up yeah these days? Yeah, like
not much. Um. The two terms are used pretty interchangeably
by different brewers within this family of beers. UM official
designations tend to include the word creamy in stouts description
(13:29):
and not in porters description. Some modern brewers defined stouts
as containing unmolted roasted barley in addition to, or instead
of the usual malted roasted barley that porters use. But
even that is an industry wide yeah, and people are
very passionate and opinionated about it. They certainly are. If
(13:51):
you would like to read about this argument on the Internet,
google it, and so many humans will give you their opinion,
pages and pages and pages of it. Huh. There's a
popular story that the name porter came from the fact
that porters of London loved this beer type so much
way back when it first got started, or that it
somehow derived from entire butt Okay, all right, that that
(14:14):
is from the type of cask that may have been
used to mature porters in the early seventeen hundreds. The
story goes that dark beers were then made by combining
multiple beers made during like successive mashings. Over the course
of an entire brewing run and matured in these casks
that were known as butts. So the beer may have
been called entire butt beer before it took on the
(14:37):
name porter. Um. I'm not sure whether this is apocryphal
or not, though partially because it's just I'm I know,
I'm like twelve, but like entire butt beer is so funny. Yes,
And I'm trying to imagine where porter would come from
from that? Yeah, I don't. I don't think so. Maybe
(14:58):
the accent was very for back then. We don't know
that's true, I wasn't there. One thing giving credence to
this theory that porters are named for porters is in
a letter written by a man living in London. Quote.
Another kind of beer is called porter, meaning carrier. Because
the greater quantity of this beer is consumed by the
working classes. It is a thick and strong beverage, and
(15:20):
the effect it produces if drunken excess is the same
as that of wine. This porter costs threepence a pot.
That letter is the first known instance of the word
porter in print. It is indeed as for stout. That
might be because high gravity porters were frequently called stout
porters in the late seventeen and early eighteen hundreds, and
(15:41):
from their stout became a descriptor for a good dark
beer and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah that stout meaning
like strong. Um. The antonym was sometimes a slender beer
or small beer to mean low alcohol beer. Um and yeah.
At the time, the only difference in recipes for stouts
versus porters was often the amount of water involved, like
(16:02):
less was used for stouts, so they would be stronger. Um.
But these days porters can be stronger than stouts. Reverse history,
mystery present mystery exactly doesn't rhyme not as fun okay
cool cool. Another theory suggests that Porter derived from a
(16:23):
beer that came to Britain from the Netherlands called Porter,
which dates back to century and yeah. Both of these
were considered beers for the working classes, like porter also
means a person who hauls or delivers things. Yeah um,
And these are also dark beers with roasty flavors, though
I get the idea that they tend to be on
the sweeter side of the porter spectrum like to this day,
(16:47):
Okay cool still exists. Oh yeah, that's always a pleasant
okay test that out out. What about nutrition? Drink responsibly. Um. Generally,
the lower the acohol content of a beer, the fewer
calories it will contain, meaning that Guinness at four point
one percent alcohol by volume, is actually one of the
(17:07):
lightest beers you can drink outside of things that are
like brewed specifically to be low calorie UM, like Corona
is four point six but is five. So this blew
my mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, that's a
that's certainly a factor. But certainly those roasty flavors can
also like really mask the taste of higher volumes of alcohol.
(17:28):
So some porters and stouts are exactly as heavy as
they look. Drink responsibly, but again, water is always good.
Oh gosh, yeah, I just have some watter. Yes, yes,
we do have a little bit some numbers for you
a couple. Yeah. As of porters occupied a small percentage
(17:50):
of the American beer market share just zero point three
percent UM, but they were on the rise. Sales had
increased UM by zero point seven percent over the course
of the year. Stouts also had a good year. They
grew to one point one percent of the overall market
and sales rose by four Yes, um, they are definitely.
I feel like they're on the As we're in this
(18:10):
craft beer renaissance here in the US and in other places,
you're kind of on the tail end of that, Like
education is still happening with lighter beers, and as we're
going to talk about South importers pretty much disappeared for
for a minute, for a long time. Yeah, and and yeah,
like we've we've gone through the I P. A craze
(18:32):
and the sour craze. So I'm wondering maybe maybe STU
supporters are next. It sounds like they might be. It
sounds like they might be. Oh, but before we get
to that, we have a lot of history for you. Um,
and first we've got a quick break forward for a sponsor,
(18:55):
and we're back. Thank you spots, Yes, thank you. Okay,
here we go. Uh huh. This is a big history section,
and it took a little bit of untangling because as
with anything that people like talking about so much, and
also as with anything from which like a lot of
the early history was not recorded because no one thought
(19:15):
it was important. Right, Um, there's a lot of weird
apocryphal stories out there, yes, which are delight Yes, And
we will get to a number of we, well, we will,
and we'll try to make clear which ones are and
which ones are not, or at least from the best
that we could understand. Yes, yes, so all right. Porters
go back to London circu the eighteenth century, the first
(19:39):
industrially produced beer, in part because brewers began taking aging
and metration into their own hands. The use of thermometers
in the seventeen sixties also helped. Before that, beer was
mostly brewed in homes, or it was brewed with the
intent it would age on the journey to wherever it
was going. One popular story goes porters were invented out
(20:01):
of a practice wherein London bartenders commonly blended three beers
for customers, a mix of cheaper and more expensive beers
with different characteristics. In the seventeen twenties and thirties, beer
named Ralph Harwood decided he wanted to brew a beer
with that mix of characteristics, but that could be dispensed
from one cask. Londoners loved it and it became the
new it thing. However, there aren't really records to back
(20:25):
this off repeated story. It's called the three threads theory.
If you do any research of your own After this,
you will see that in a lot of places three
threads theory. Yeah, yeah, probably apocryphal. Probably porters were definitely
being enjoyed by seventeen thirty, when the grub Street Journal
wrote highly of a quote sound generous porter without further explanation.
(20:47):
That's it, and early American homebrewers once America a game
of thing, really dug porters, including folks like George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson. As usual, Russian orders and staffs emerged
around the same time that the British variety did imported
from England. Russian beer houses were even frequently called porter houses.
(21:08):
It was viewed as a fancy beer on the same
level as wine. However, what porter exactly entailed at this
time is a bit murky, because to make a porter
in our current understanding of them, you need that black malts,
something that didn't exist until innovations and malt roasting technologies
in eighteen seventeen and the Black patent Malt. Yeah, the
(21:32):
the story of the porter's development is a story of malt,
which is also a story of heating technology. Um, for
most of beer's history, you had malt ranging from pale
to amber to brown before black malts were invented. Dark beers,
like porters, employed brown malts heated to a to a
good toasty color with a wood or charcoal fire, which
(21:54):
imparted a smokiness. To let that smoky flavor mellow out
involved a month long aging process and it in casts
or vats, allowing for the propagation of wild yeast. Meaning
these original porters were quite different than the porters of
today and probably way more filling. Porters were viewed as
a working person's drink and even seen as nutritious. Yeah,
(22:16):
mostly sweet styles were made at the time. Um brewed
to have a lower alcohol content and more residual sugar,
so they were higher in calories and would give you
a little little boost energy. Um. Part of the reason
they're probably is that brown malts would have added this
stringency to the beer that not all drinkers really favor.
And I said brown malts, but um, but most brewers
(22:38):
were probably using a blend of brown and amber malts
because that extra cooking process made brown malt more expensive
than paler malts at the time. Yes, but that was
going to change starting around the early seventeen hundreds. M
maltsters gosh, I love that word. Monsters started working with
a new fuel called coke. Uh. Folks working with coal
(23:01):
had drived it back in the sixteen hundreds, and it
burned hotter and cleaner than anything anyone had ever used before.
It drove industrial development um from ironed steel to glass,
and also made its way into brewing. Using this malt
could be finished without so much smoke. Um. It was
paler and tasted cleaner than malts roasted with wood or whatever.
(23:21):
The resulting pale malts and pale ales that they produced
were more expensive, but very posh um and let the
flavor of any hops you added shine through more clearly,
as we discussed in our I p a episode Um,
and this is part of how porters came to be
considered working class beers versus those posh pale ales developing
(23:41):
around the same time. Oh, speaking of those vats that
they would age porters in though, Oh yes, here's a
story Brewer Richard muh Um. I believe it's constructed the
largest vat in existence, and it became something of a
celebrity vat. People were writing about it. It could hold
(24:01):
up to twenty thousand barrels, but tragedy struck in October
fourteen when it corroded hoop Burst, releasing seven thousand, six
hundred barrels of porter, flooding the basement, destroying the brewery walls,
and surging into nearby houses. Eight people were killed due
to quote drowning, injury, poisoning by porter, or drunkenness. Yeah, yeah, gosh,
(24:27):
I mean I forget sometimes how dangerous brewing can be
even today. Oh. Absolutely, it's a it's a chemistry experiment
all the way. It is, well adding in something else
extremely childish, because that's the theme of this episode. I
just want to mention and this article. I found a
brewer named Richard rams Bottom rams Bottom ms Bottom. That
(24:52):
is a spectacular name. It is, and I'm glad that
it exists. I am to okay, if we step back
to and pivot to sta out. Samuel Johnson referred to
stout as a slang word for strong beer in the
Dictionary of the English Language. It wasn't uncommon for beer
inventories to list both pale stouts and brown stouts at
the time, but since porters were the thing back then,
(25:15):
brewers started expanding their portfolio by offering higher gravity stout porters,
and so the story goes. The porter part was eventually
dropped so that they were just called stouts. The recipes
for porters and stuffs were virtually the same again, other
than the stouts calling for less water. In three the
Times of London reported on a case over stolen contents
(25:36):
from a cask of quote porter of superior quality called
brown stout, called in court remarkably fine old porter and
very strong and excellent brown stout. So both terms same beer,
yes cool, always making it easy for us. In eighteen tens,
(25:57):
a General Dictionary of Commerce, Trade and Manufacturers quote porter
maybe divided into two classes, namely brown stout and porter.
Properly so called brown stout is only a fuller bodied
kind of porter than that which serves for ordinary drinking.
A great deal of this is exported to America and
the West Indies. So there you go, Yeah, there you go.
(26:18):
Oh I'm seventeen fifty nine a man named Arthur Guinness,
and yes that one least a brewery at St James
Gate in Dublin, Ireland for nine thousand years. I had
never heard this before and I love it. Yes, this
is a big part of their tour. The location was strategic,
(26:40):
with accessible fresh water and the country's barley growing areas
all pretty close. Since porters and stouts were the popular
styles at the time, that's what Guinness went with. Decade later,
in seventeen sixty nine, Guinness's stouts were being exported to England,
and by se Guinness decided to focus solely on porters
and stouts. Originally their product went by the name Extra
(27:02):
Stout Porter, but in eighteen twenty they dropped the porter
Extra Stout Extra Stout. According to their website, after the
death of Prince Albert in eighteen sixty one, a bartender
and London decided that champagne was too bright to drink
for the occasion, so he added some Guinness. Thus the
Black Velvet was born. We could have done a whole
(27:23):
episode on Guinness. They oh, certainly that can still happen.
At some point, I was trying to remember what episode
we talked about where they they had they had somebody
invent refrigeration. They were like, we need this thing for
go invent it, and I too, ran out of time,
but maybe one day we'll return. When Edward Cecil took
(27:45):
over in eight he doubled the size of the bird
to the point it was nicknamed a city within a city,
complete with its own medical department, fire brigade, and railway.
And they established their first research lab in nineteen o one. Huh.
But meanwhile, we need to talk about an innovation that
(28:09):
Guinness made great use of black malt. I'm ready. So
there was this guy, Daniel Wheeler, British engineer, and in
the eighteen tens he was inspired by the way coffees
were roasted in revolving metal drums. This kept smoke out
of the product and let you dry it more evenly
into a more precise finish. He applied for a patent
(28:30):
for his improved method of drying and preparing malt in
eighteen seventeen. And um, this is what allowed the creation
of lots of different styles of beer, cleaner, pale ales,
roast your porters, all kinds of things in between. Um.
Because before this, um, if you cooked malt too hard,
it would go past brown to charcoal and just catch
on fire in your kiln. Bad. Yeah, But with this
(28:53):
new process, you could cook malt or straight barley or
whatever all the way to black without setting anything unintentional
me on fire. That's good. Yes, I like intentional fires
be there. Valentine's Day is coming up. I'm pretty sure
(29:14):
that the term patent malt arose for black malt because
there was a patent on the process. Yeah, um, but yeah.
This dropped the price of pale malts and allowed brewers
a lot of leeway and precision in creating darker beers.
Guinness was an early adopter um by they had entirely
replaced brown malt with black malt in their recipe smart,
(29:39):
which brings us to another innovation. In the seventeen nineties,
and English chemist by the name of William Nicholson developed
a practical and affordable hydrometer um, which is a device
that measures the density of a fluid, which is useful
in brewing because the density of beer is directly related
to its sugar and alcohol content um So, using hydrometers
(30:00):
in the early eighteen hundreds, brewers realized that paler malts
gave off more sugars than darker breasted maltsum, meaning that
the yeasts have more food, meaning that you can make
a stronger beer using less malt. Um So. Coupled with
Wheelers new killing method, this innovation meant that brewers were
coming up with all kinds of new recipes. Right, some
(30:21):
mid nineteenth century brewers in Ireland use up to nine
pale malt in their stouts and porters. Complicating all of this,
as with a lot of alcohols we've discussed in the past,
some less than reputable brewers added all kinds of additives,
especially for color, but also some pretty dangerous things. Yeah.
(30:41):
I mean some of these things were nicer than others,
like things involving like boiling down leftover wart which is
unfermented beer soup, or caramelizing sugar or roasting unused malt holes. Um,
but yeah, they were also brewers using less wholesome things,
and so there was this general public push against any
any traations period Right. During the later half of the
(31:03):
nineteenth century, records show that the recipes for stouts and
porters in London began to diverge, with doubts getting less
patent malt as compared to porters. There's a popular myth
that Ireland embraced the stout and unmalted barley to evade
a British tax on malted barley. However, unmalted barley was
illegal in both Ireland and Britain until eighteen eighty. Guinness
(31:27):
today does use unmalted barley in their recipe. During the
Great Famine from eight to eighteen forty nine, many Irish
immigrants arrived to the United States, and they brought their
beer preferences with them. Some historians believe that this is
how stouts got associated with the Irish in America and
in particular Guinness. Britain's freemash Ton Act of eighteen eighty
(31:48):
permitted the use of roasted barley, although folks weren't super
inti it at first. It also required brewers to purchase
a brewing license and shifted taxation from malt to original gravity,
which is a way of Yeah, this is another rabbit hole,
which is a way of predicting the alcohol content of
the final product based on the fermentable and unfermentable substances
(32:09):
in the word before fermentation. Yea great Also of note.
By this point, the oatmeal stout was common, but soon
milk stout passed it in popularity and almost led to
the oatmeal stouts extinction. Yeah. Um, milk stouts are sweeter
and at the time they contained milk added during fermentation,
(32:33):
and we're marketed as being like healthy or um or
restorative um. They are also considered easier on the palate
because they're less better than dryer stouts. Okay h. A
late nineteenth century high sugar, low alcohol sweet stout called
Invalid stout was marketed as essentially a health drink. Some
breweries marketed their porters even to nursing mothers and the ill. Yeah.
(32:58):
Breweries often permitted stouts like heavy and healthy and nutritious
through World War Two, famously the Guinness is Good for
You campaign in the uniteteen twenties. Yes. Yes, the midt
to late nineteenth and early twentieth century was around the
time the porter encountered some serious hardship. Once the most
popular beer in the UK. In the US, dark beers
(33:18):
took a huge hit when Pilsner came along in two,
and pale all a little bit before that to a
lesser extent um. Yeah, all that. All that work in
controlling the malting process allowed for pale beers with different
flavor profiles to develop, and simultaneously, more work was being
done to understand yeasts. Um. A lot of beers throughout
(33:40):
history wound up with a sour barney weird flavors from
wild yeasts and bacteria that got into them, but no
one knew that microbes are what causes those flavors into
like the middle of the eighteen hundreds, even though brewers
had like figured out ways to help control for them,
certainly by the seventeen hundreds. But uh yeah, Louis Pastor
figured out that it wasn't some weird chemical process but
(34:02):
rather a biological process. Around eighteen fifty six, um, he
discovered the yeast is a living organism and that different
yeasts produce different flavors. Um. He was commissioned by folks
in the wine industry to figure out why their booze
was going sour. We might not have pasteurization if not
for booze, what do you know? So yeah, so he
developed pasteurization, which is the process of heating stuff for
(34:24):
the right amount of time and at the right temperature
so that you kill off any of microbes without like
ruining the stuff, right. But it wasn't until the experiments
in Carlsberg's laboratories in the eighteen eighties that anyone isolated
and cultivated pure yeast strains that would produce alcohol with
like really reliable flavors. So between these two innovations, the
(34:46):
beer world exploded with all of these super light, super
clean tasting beers. Yes, not so great news or stouts
importers another thing, not so great news so ambitious. Yeah,
that thing ninety America and those taxes aforementioned taxes on
British taxes around original gravity didn't help either, although World
(35:10):
War One and malt restrictions lightened up the porter closer
to what we're more used to today. Um, yeah, that's
because the the UK government limited the alcohol content of
English beers during wartime because they were trying to conserve
grain stores so less grain, less alcohol content. However, they
(35:30):
were not so prohibitive in Ireland, perhaps to avoid angering
the Irish, meaning Ireland could keep churning out porters and
stouts while the British really couldn't. Post war, when the
restrictions were dropped, many British brewers decided to turn their
focus elsewhere, ditching porters and stouts except for the popular,
the still popular sweeter milk stout variety. But that meant
(35:51):
there was this beer vacuum and Ireland happily stepped in
to fill it. Meanwhile, that other famous thing, the Guinness
makes Guinness Book of Records, Um, got its start in nine.
The story goes that the then managing director of Guinness
Brewery UM one Sir Hugh Beaver which is another great name,
(36:13):
Hugh Beaver. Um. Yeah, he attended this hunting party at
in Wexford and UM. During that hunting party there was
this friendly argument about what the fastest game bird in
Europe is, um, and the party failed to find an
answer in any of the hosts reference books. So Sir
Hugh got the idea to promote Guinness with a book
meant to help settle pub arguments, and that book morphed
(36:35):
into the Guinness World Records that we know and we
frequently referenced today. Their website has the answer to that
original question. By the way, Um, the fastest game bird
in Europe is the golden clover. Ah, yes, the golden plover.
So there you go. Well, do you know that is
(37:00):
very enriching. My patronis is a swift and that is
the highest classisfying bird. But I guess it's not a
game birds not a game bird, so different things. Yeah, Okay.
In ninety nine, to celebrate two hundred years of brewing,
Guinness dropped one fifty thousand bottles in the Atlantic Ocean.
Inside the bottles are a variety of things like instructions
(37:22):
on how to make the bottle into a lamp, Guinness story,
a gold Guinness label and a certificate for the Office
of the King of Neptune. Yeah, all right, they've done
some really interesting marketing campaigns, that is for sure. Yes.
But also in yes, a scientists employed by Guinness named
(37:42):
Michael ash came up with the Guinness Surgeon Settle, the
world's first nitro beer. As America emerged from the dark
cocktail times of the eighties, new beers looking to revive
porters and stout's turned to the UK for inspiration, but
they were only able to find about three dozen stouts
(38:03):
three dozen steps being produced in all of England, and
most of those were the sweet Stop variety, which had
by then earned the death knale of a nickname Old
Fashioned Lady Drink. Oh No, No. One. Event did help
bring back porters and stoubts when English brewery Samuel Smith
(38:25):
combined forces with an importer for Washington States, merchant have
been named Charles Finkel to recreate the oatmeal stout, specifically
to sell to Americans. Finkel grew interested in them after
discovering vintage labels proclaiming their healthfulness. He went to then
beer authority Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter, UM, wondering if
(38:47):
he had tried one. Jackson hattn't, but he gave Finkle
his suggestions our ideas on what it might have tasted like,
and Finkel passed those notes on to Samuel Smith. The
resulting product laid the foundation for what we now call
traditional style oatmeal stouts. And Yeah, as we were going
through this craft to be a revival here in the
(39:09):
US and other parts, UM, porters and stuffs are very
much hard of that. And I know some breweries specifically
are trying to educate people and focus on them and
and bring them back, and there's festivals around them, and
I know some do like a whole stout lineup or
whole porter lineup. So that's exciting. I'm glad. I'm glad
that it's making a comeback. It is absolutely. Yeah. The
(39:32):
thing that the like, the like phrase that I ran
across a lot in doing this research was like people
just going like, if you like coffee, you're gonna like
porters and stouts. It's the same flavors. Yeah, they're they're
not necessarily heavy. They are quite delightful if you if
you haven't tried any trial one yes, or if you
had a bad experience, maybe give it another go if
(39:53):
you want, if you want, do what you want. Don't
take our advice unless you sure do what you want
exactly exactly. So I feel like you know, that was
a massive endeavor, but we there was something cobbled together. Yeah,
that's that's the rise and the fall and the rise
(40:14):
yet again of the Porter and Stout Porter and Stout Resurrection. Yeah,
and we do have a little bit more for you,
but first we've got one more quick break for a
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsored, Yes,
(40:36):
thank you, And we're back with mal la la. I
don't know any drinking songs. Huh, Well we can fix that. Well. No,
I know the one from Lord of the Rings. But
that says more about me than perhaps I wanted to say. Annie.
Everyone already knew that about you. It's true. Why am
(40:58):
I hiding from myself? Sam wrote, I listened to the
Black Eyed pe episode this morning while at the blood
Bank for two hours straight. I get a lot of
pod listening then, and I bet you mentioned the Carolina
Low Country dish Hop and John, but somehow you admitted
it's relative Limp and Katie, which switches out the rice
(41:18):
for haminy. Another dish akin to these is Limp and Susan,
which involves rice, okra and bacon. Eating black eyed peas
is my pleasure alone in our house. As my wife
doesn't like them. I'm still working to convince my son
they're worth eating. Hanging there. I I a lot of
things I didn't like when I was a kid. I
came around to Yeah, absolutely, yeah. My dad loved hominy.
(41:41):
I don't know how I I didn't come across this ever,
but oh yeah, yeah. My my grandmother loves it. Um.
She always a canned though, so I didn't like it
until like very recently. Cans am I right? I liked
canned food. I was an interesting In some cases it
(42:04):
can it can lend a texture quality that is pleasant,
and in other cases I find that is not accurate
to my experience. I feel that is a fair assessment.
Thank you, Steph wrote I was listening to your Pineapple
Redux episode and was reminded of a pineapple related experience
that I had in Thailand about a year ago. My
(42:24):
then fiance now husband congratulations and I were in Chiang
Mai in December. I'm a huge fan of tropical fruits,
pineapple in particular, and so was on the lookout for
any street vendors selling pineapples. I was delighted to find
pineapples of all sorts. They're ranging from tina tin of
pineapples that were no taller than the length of my hand,
crown included, and large pineapples with comically small crowns. I
(42:47):
can't remember which type of pineapple I bought from the vendor,
but I do remember that it was the sweetest pineapple
I had ever tasted. It was incredible. I was so
happy I found my new favorite fruit. After that, I
decided I would buy some cut pineapple. I'm a street
vendor at least once a day during the rest of
our time there. I think it was our third day there,
after eating my daily dose of cut pineapple, that I thought, Wow,
(43:08):
these pineapples are so sweet. They're almost too sweet, like
unnaturally sweet. I started getting a little suspicious and even
tried searching on Google and trip Advisor for any accounts
of street vendors sweetening cut fruit in Thailand. I wasn't
able to find anything, but that thought still nod at me.
That night, on our way to a night market, we
(43:28):
passed by a vendor selling fresh cut pineapple. We noticed
that as he was cutting them, he placed them in
a tub of water. I had assumed it was some
solution they used to keep the cut fruit fresh and
prevent them from browning, but now I thought maybe there
was something more to within that. The vendor didn't speak
much English, so I couldn't ask him what the liquid was,
but we found out that he could speak Mandarin due
(43:49):
to a recent influx of Chinese tourists after a popular
Chinese film was shot there. This is where my husband
came in, being a Mandarin speaker himself. He asked what
he was putting the cut pineapple in, and the vendor
told him it was sugar water. My husband then asked
why he did that, and he answered because otherwise they
wouldn't be sweet, as if it was the most obvious
thing in the world. Duh. Sadly, my tie pineapple bubble
(44:13):
was burst and I didn't buy any more pineapples from
street vendors the rest of our stay in Chiang Mai.
Though I'm glad we were able to solve that mystery.
Part of me wishes I had never asked the question
and just stayed in blissful ignorance, because it just meant
I ate less pineapple than I would have on that trip.
It reminds me of the scene in the Matrix when
(44:35):
Cipher is eating the steak and it looks so good. Yeah,
he knows it's not real, but he fits into it,
and he says, ignorance is bliss. Oh that's a bummer.
That is a bummer. Or I don't know if it
was delicious. It was delicious. It's true if you liked
it sweet and pineapple. But you got a way, you know,
(44:56):
you do? You do? Yeah, you have to. You have
to find your own pineapple truth. We all do words
of wisdom where just to live by and we owe
it to these listeners, to you and you're quick with
Lauren if you thanks to both of them for writing in.
If you would like to write to us, you can.
Our email is hello at savor pod dot com. We're
(45:17):
also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at savor pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of I Heart
Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts on my Heart Radio,
you can visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as
always to our superproducers Dylan Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks
(45:39):
to you for listening, and we have that lots more
good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.