Posted by Greg Clow in beer, beverages on September 18, 2007 at 6:41 pm

Of all the classic beer styles to be revived by craft brewers in the recent times, porter is one of the most interesting, at least from an historical standpoint. First brewed in the early 1700s, there are conflicting stories about how the style came to exist.

One version came about in 1802, when a guy named John Feltham wrote a history of porter stating that it was created around 1730 by a brewer called Harwood. His beer was called Entire and was based on "three threads", a drink made by mixing three different beers that was popular with the railway and river porters of London, leading to Entire being nicknamed "porter" when ordered in bars and pubs.

It was later established, however, that Feltham's history was based on his misinterpretation of earlier writings on the subject, and that it was unlikely that a direct connection existed between "three threads" and porter. It's now believed that porter was created when brewers decided to age their brown ales on site rather than sending out young beers to publicans to age on their own, which in turn allowed the brewers to make larger batches and ship the casks farther, increasing their sales considerably.

In the late 1700s, the increasing imports of porter from London to Ireland inspired a number of Irish brewers - including a certain Mr. Arthur Guinness - to start brewing the style. As with many beers brewed at the time, different strengths were offered, including the lower strength "plain porter" and the stronger "stout porter". Eventually, porter was dropped from the names, and over the years, most porter variations besides stout fell out of favour and were all but extinct. Guinness was one of the last Irish brewers to continue brewing a plain porter into modern times, but they finally discontinued their version in the mid-1970s.

That could've marked the death of porter, but thanks to the efforts of CAMRA and craft brewers, the style was rescued from near death, and is now a popular offering from many microbreweries and brewpubs. Many of today's more adventurous brewers put an experimental spin on their versions, whether it be through the addition of flavours like coffee or chocolate, or bumping up the alcohol level and body to a point that they might as well be called stouts.

Anyone who has followed the work of Perry Mason from Ottawa's Scotch-Irish Brewing knows that he's been known to crank out some pretty experimental brews himself, but for his Black Irish Plain Porter, he sticks with a traditional interpretation of the style. It has a deep black colour with a dark tan head, and a rich, complex aroma that begins with roasted malt, and builds to include notes of chocolate, vanilla, raisins and coffee. The body is thinner than one might expect from a beer so dark, but remember: it's a porter, not a stout. The flavour has roasty and slightly sweet malt notes off the top, followed by bitter cocoa, coffee and licorice, and finishing with a slightly lactic sourness. This latter element seems like a tip of the hat to the fact that the aging process of the original porters and stouts was often sped up via the addition of old, soured beer to new batches, which presumably gave the finished product a sour edge.

Until recently, Black Irish Plain Porter was a keg- and cask-only beer, sometimes available in flavoured variations such as Vanilla Bean Porter and Fire in the Hole Smoked Porter. But the original version is now available at selected LCBO locations in stubby bottles (LCBO 32540 - $2.00/341 mL) as part of the Autumn Ales promotion. Look for the black Irish Wolfhound on the label, and taste a bit of history.