Amongst the pantheon of classic beer styles, porter tends to be one of the most under-appreciated and misunderstood. Considered by many modern beer drinkers to be the little brother of the more popular stout, porter is actually the older of the two styles, and was one of the most widely consumed beers in the 1700s and 1800s, especially amongst the street and river porters of London from which it received its name.
While stout, originally known as "stout porter", has remained popular throughout the couple of centuries since it was first brewed - thanks mainly to the product a certain Irish brewery that needs no introduction - the original porter style came very close to extinction. But like several British beer styles, it was revived in the 1970s and 1980s via the combined efforts of the UK beer advocacy group CAMRA, and the first modern wave of North American craft brewers.
(A more detailed history of porter can be found in this post on my blog, originally written for my "Beer Styles 101" column in TAPS Magazine.)
Nowadays, it's hard to find a microbrewery or brewpub that doesn't make a porter. Although just because it says "porter" on the bottle or tap handle, one can't always be sure exactly what the beer itself will be like - some could be mistaken for mild brown ales, others for full-on stouts. And then there are coffee porters, Baltic porters, smoked porters, and a multitude of other variations and mutations. Frankly, it can all get a little confusing.
When it comes to just a straight up porter, though, the criteria for a good one (for me, at least) is pretty simple: I want an ale that's dark but not black, full bodied but not sticky, malty but not too sweet, and with hops providing balance but not a lot of obvious bitterness. The benchmark example of this combination of elements is Fuller's London Porter, brewed in the namesake city where the style was born, and given that Amsterdam's newest seasonal beer Dry Dock Porter has been described as a London-style porter, it's presumably intended to be similar.
They've got the appearance down pat, as it has a dark ruby-brown hue with a generous tan head. The aroma is also pretty solid, with lots of roasted malt, hints of cocoa and coffee, and even a mild smokiness. The body is on the lighter side for the style, but still in the ballpark, and while the flavour doesn't have quite the same finesse as the Fuller's, it's still enjoyable, with a fair bit of coffee and chicory sitting alongside the roasted malt, backed up by a moderately dry finish.
As I've noted before, Amsterdam brewmaster Jamie Mistry has been doing some great things since he joined the brewery in 2008, especially in the area of seasonal and one-off beers. His Dry Dock Porter, while not a world-beater, is still a very decent effort, and hopefully it'll turn out to be more than a single-batch brew. For now, it's available only in the Amsterdam retail outlet at 21 Bathurst Street where it's selling for $11.95 a sixer, alongside another winter seasonal - Twisted Kilt Scotch Ale - and the rest of the Amsterdam line-up.
