Those who are familiar with the history of porter know that the brew started sometime in the early 1700s as a workman’s drink in London. It was first served in  the pubs of the public markets, where green grocers and fishmongers used to hawk their wares. As a beer style, porter conjures up images of jovial, brawny roughnecks, assembled in dark ale houses after a day of heavy toil, downing a few pints . . . and then some.

By some accounts, this brew was originally mixed on the premises from perhaps three casks, or “threads,” of ale. There is no agreement as to which ales made up this common pub blend, but pale ale, stock or old ale and stale or sour ale are usually listed among the likely contenders. It must have been a cumbersome process for the pub’s g’vernor to fill each pint from three separate taps, especially when droves of impatient patrons clamored for their drinks simultaneously.

The birth of porter a tall tale?

As the three-thread draft gained in popularity, the brewers themselves decided to do their own mixing in the mash tun rather than leaving the blending to the publican behind the bar. Legend has it that the first person to brew a “pre-fab” three-thread was Ralph Harwood, owner of the Bell Brewhouse in Shoreditch, East London, in 1722. Allegedly, Mr. Harwood’s brew was first served in the Blue Last, an ale house on Shoreditch’s Great Eastern Street. There, it was referred to as an “entire” or “entire butt,” because it bundled the flavors of several threads into a single “entire” ale, which also made for a quicker pour. Because hard-working porters were among the Blue Last’s best customers, so the tale goes, the new beer was named after them. The name “porter” for the “entire” apparently came into general use only a few decades after Mr. Harwood’s alleged invention, in the mid-1700s. Re-gardless of how the three threads in one cask really started or how it got its name, the new brew was made mostly from dark brown to amber malts and fermented in a single gyle. This made for an opaque, flavorful and hefty ale— a beer style we now refer to as the brown or standard porter. In Ireland this beer became known as a plain porter, a brew that continued to be made there by Guinness until 1974.

The brew of the industrial age

The emergence of porter coincided with the spread of industrialization on the British Isles, and, as brewing raw materials and brewing techniques evolved especially during the 19th Century, so did the porter. Great advances in brewing and malting technology gave brewers many more malt choices than were available when the London porter got its start, and many of the original brown malts were being replaced by mash mixes of pale malt and heavier-colored malts, including the new black patent malts. In general, such mashes gave brewers better control over beer colors and flavors. Because of the higher enzymatic strength of pale compared to brown base malts, these mixed-grist mashes also improved extract efficiency in the brew house (and thus the profits per capital invested). The use of darker or even black malts in the mashes of some porters gave these beers a slightly more roasted, acrid flavor than was common in the standard brown porters of earlier days. Some porters became chocolate-like, some toffee-sweet, some dry, some lighter, some heavier . . . and some porters became downright “stout.” It is thought that the most full-bodied of porters were the genesis of stout as a separate beer style.

One characteristic of all newer porters made with slightly to heavily roasted malts was their need for more hops, both for bittering and for flavor and aroma, so that they would taste balanced. While the old entire butt porters and their variations may have been hopped to an IBU-range in the mid-20s (nobody knows for sure), the later derivations of porter tended to be bittered at least in the 30s. Also, late aroma hopping or even dry hopping became more customary for the darker, heavier porters than might have been the practice for the lighter-colored brown-malt versions of yore.

Porter brewing reached its peak production volume in London in the 1820s, by which time it had become arguably the first mass-produced commercial beer. There was no brewery of note that didn’t depend on porter sales for its prosperity. Ironically, brown or standard porter reached its zenith at just about the same time when a newly-patented indirect-heat kilning technology made the reliable production of very pale, as well as very dark, malts possible, thus hastening the phase-out of the traditional, floor-malted brown malts. As brown-malt mashes fell out of favor in the brew houses of London, so did brown-malt based porters in the city’s pubs. Eventually, near the end of Queen Victoria’s long reign, the once-dominant standard porter “represented only one quarter of London’s beer consumption,” according to porter expert Terry Foster (see his book Porter, Brewers Publication 1992). It was during this technology-induced beer transformation of the standard porter that the robust porter — not unlike the stout in earlier times — split off from the fading original porter.

Diversification of the porter style into various sub-styles in the 19th century, however, could not save the brew. In the early 20th century, as beer drinkers switched more and more to pale ales, porters — robust or not — disappeared almost entirely from the beer menu. Only near the end of the 20th century did the erstwhile gruff porter make a comeback, especially in North America, where it is now a respectable, almost gentrified, craft brew style. On its home turf in England, too, porter has experienced a small renaissance. Today, perhaps the best-known and most easily available imported porters are Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter from Tadcaster in Yorkshire and Fuller’s London Porter from London. Though not labeled a robust, the Taddy is fairly dark and comes with pronounced roasted notes, like a robust. Only the dry finish is a reminder of this brew’s “standard” lineage. The Fuller’s, too, is fairly robust. It is rich and coffee-accented with less of a dry finish than the designation “London” would suggest. But, of course, we cannot really know for sure what a robust porter from the Victorian days tasted like. Among the imports, perhaps the 5.1% abv St. Peter’s Old-Style Porter from the St. Peter’s Brewery in Bungay, Suffolk, comes closest to the original robust porter. The St. Peter’s is very black and complex, and explodes with strong, long-lingering notes of chocolate. Unfortunately, this brand is only sparsely distributed in the New World, and when you do find a bottle amidst an “art gallery” of pretty labels on a warm shelf, there is a chance that it is past its prime.

From standard to robust — brew-technically speaking

To learn more about the differences between a robust porter and its allegedly tamer antecedents, I interviewed Tod Mott from the Portsmouth Brewery, a brewpub in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Tod knows a thing or two about robust porter, because he has been perfecting a recipe for this style for well over a decade. In 1997, his interpretation of robust porter even won him a silver medal at the Real Ale Festival in Chicago. Our recipe on pages 19 and 20 is a scaled-down adaptation of Tod’s commercial brew.

“All sub-styles of porter, such as robust, Baltic or imperial,” explains Tod, “are later evolutions of the brown or standard porter of the 18th century. These sub-styles differ dramatically in color, texture and flavor from the original porter, however, they do not differ all that much from each other. To me, a robust porter, a Baltic porter, an imperial porter and even some of the stouts are so similar that, in a blind taste test, I am sure, even an expert might have difficulty keeping them apart. While the original porter of two centuries ago was obviously a workers’ session beer, to me, a robust porter has become primarily a sipping beer. As a full-bodied brew, it is intended for the connoisseur among beer drinkers, not for guzzlers. Compared to many modern easy-drinking porters and to most commercial stouts, a robust porter is much richer. Though it resembles most modern stouts and porters in color, the robust porter is definitely higher in alcohol.”

Mott derives his brewing rules for the robust porter principally from the historical evolution that this brew experienced when it departed from the brown-malt based standard porter in the Victorian era.

“Perhaps the most important brewing consideration for a robust porter,” he explains, “is the avoidance of excessive dryness. In spite of the dark malts in the mash, this beer should never finish like an Irish stout. A single infusion is sufficient, but the saccharification rest temperature should be closer to 155 °F (68 °C) than, say, to the 148–152 °F (64–67 °C) range, at which most British ales are mashed. For additional smoothness, maltiness and depth, as well as for the proper mouthfeel and body, you can add measured portions of caramel, chocolate and crystal malts to the mash. The relative proportions of these specialty grains, however, are essentially left up to the individual brewer — and it is in the selection and quantity of specialty malts that you will find the greatest variation in today’s craft-brewed and imported porters.”

There also seems to be no definite rule about the upper color limit of a robust porter, except that it is darker than the original brown-malt based porter from London. Anything above 30 SRM appears to be acceptable. Because of the generous portions of darkish specialty malts in Tod’s grain bill, the Portsmouth Brewery interpretation of the robust porter ends up on the darker side of the porter spectrum, with an SRM-value of about 51.

In a brew system with a nominal extract efficiency of about 65%, a robust porter with an OG of 1.058 (14.26 °P) requires about 12 lbs. (5.4 kg) of grain. The brew should finish at a FG of roughly 1.014 (3.6 °P). The finished beer should have an alcohol level of about 5.8% by volume, which is in line with the drinking habits of 19th Century Londoners. For extract-plus-grain brewers, the equivalent amount of liquid malt extract (LME) is about 8 lbs. (3.62 kg), based on an 80% sugar content in the extract, and assuming no contribution to gravity from the steeped specialty grains.

Tod recommends a boil length of 75 minutes. For bittering, he uses a high-alpha Magnum (~13% AA) instead of traditional, lower-alpha English hop varieties. For flavor, he uses U.S.-grown Santiam, which he adds about 20 minutes before shut-down. Because Santiam is a Tettnanger-like hop that adds a slight note of citrus to the brew, it can be replaced with Tettnanger or Fuggles. For aroma, he uses U.S.-grown Glacier in the whirlpool. If this hop is difficult to find, you can replace it with Fuggles, Styrian Goldings or Willamette.

As far as yeast, Tod uses his White Labs WLP051 California Ale V house yeast, but you can also use the more traditional Wyeast 1098 Whitbread British or the White Labs WLP002 English Ale yeasts.

Horst Dornbusch writes “Style Profile” in each issue of BYO.

Tod’s Boisterous Porter
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.058  FG = 1.014
IBU = 32  SRM = 51  ABV = 5.8%  
   

Ingredients

9.5 lbs. (4.3 kg) Muntons pale ale
    malt (5.5 °L)
0.2 lb. (0.9 kg) Muntons chocolate
    malt (380 °L)
0.8 lb. (0.36 kg) Dingemans
    Special B malt (100 °L)
0.9 lb. (0.4 kg) Muntons light
    crystal malt (56 °L)
0.8 lb. (0.36 kg) Hugh Baird
    Carastan malt (15 °L)
7.11 AAU Magnum hops (bittering)
    (0.55 oz./16 g of
    13% alpha acid)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Santiam hops (flavor)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Glacier hops (flavor)
White Labs WLP051 (California
    Ale V), Wyeast 1098 (Whitbread
    British) or White Labs WLP002
    (English Ale) yeast
1 cup light dried malt extract
    (for priming)

Step by Step

Assuming a milled dry grain temperature of 68 °F (20 °C) and a desired liquor-to-grist ratio of 3:1 by weight, heat about 4.25 gallons (16 L) of water to a temperature of roughly 166 °F (74 °C). Infuse the mash with this liquor until you reach the mash target temperature of 155 °F (68 °C). Hold that temperature for about 45 minutes for proper grain hydration and enzymatic conversion. Meanwhile, heat plenty of sparge water to a temperature of 175 °F (79 °C), which should be sufficient to raise the grain bed temperature during the sparge to the mash-out temperature of 167 °F (75 °C). Recirculate the initial runnings until the wort runs clear. Sparge very slowly for about 45 minutes until the kettle gravity is about 1.050 (12.4 °P).

Boil the wort for 75 minutes. Add the bittering hops 15 minutes into the boil and the flavor hops 55 minutes into the boil. After shut-down, take a gravity reading. If necessary, liquor the wort down to the target OG of 1.058
(14.26 °P). Then add the aroma hops and whirlpool for about half an hour. Heat-exchange the wort to about 70 ºF (21 °C), pitch the yeast, and aerate thoroughly. Primary fermentation should last about a week. Allow the lees to settle for two days after primary fermentation and rack the brew into a clean container. Let the brew mature without pressure for another two or three weeks. Rack again and add the priming agent. Now bottle or keep in a closed Cornelius keg for conditioning. Omit the priming agent, if you use bottled CO2 and a keg. After a week, the porter should be ready for serving.

Tod’s Boisterous Porter
(5 gallons/19 L, extract plus grains)
OG = 1.058   FG = 1.014  
IBU = 32  SRM = 51  ABV = 5.8%

Ingredients

7.0 lbs. (3.2 kg) pale ale liquid
    malt extract (such as Coopers,
    John Bull, or Muntons)
0.2 lb. (0.9 kg) Muntons chocolate
    malt (380 °L)
0.8 lb. (0.36 kg) Dingemans
    Special B malt (100 °L)
0.9 lb. (0.4 kg) Muntons light
    crystal malt (56 °L)
0.8 lb. (0.36 kg) Hugh Baird
    Carastan malt (15 °L)
7.11 AAU Magnum hops (bittering)
    (0.55 oz./16 g of 13% alpha acid)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Santiam hops (flavor)
0.5 oz. (14 g) Glacier hops (flavor)
White Labs WLP051 (California
    Ale V), Wyeast 1098 (Whitbread
    British) or White Labs WLP002
    (English Ale) yeast
1 cup light dried malt extract
    (for priming)

Step by Step

Mill or coarsely crack the specialty malts. Mix them well and apportion them into two muslin bags. Steep the bags in about 1 gallon (~4 liters) of water at roughly 170 ºF (77 °C). Hydrate the grain for about an hour, while periodically giving the steeping pot a boost of heat to maintain the proper temperature. Lift each bag separately out of the steeping liquid and rinse it with 2 cups of cold water. Allow the bags to drip dry. Do not squeeze them. Add about 3 gallons (11.4 L) of brewing liquor to the steeping liquor and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and stir in the malt extract. Bring the wort to a boil and add the bittering hops. Boil for 1 hour. Add the flavor hops 20 minutes before shut down. At shut-down, take a gravity measurement and liquor the wort down to the required original gravity of 1.058 (12.37 °P). Add the aroma hops and whirlpool for 30 minutes. Then follow the equivalent instructions for the all-grain recipe.