The weather outside is getting colder, which means it’s time to break out some darker beers. While you can certainly enjoy a nice porter anytime of year, the brew is particularly well-suited to cool autumn months, and it has a pretty interesting history to boot. By the way, you can also check out our tasting/ranking of 35 American porters here.
The first thing you need to know about porters is that the beer style started out as more of a beer cocktail than a brew all of its own. It reportedly got its start in the early 1700s when a brewer in London combined an older and newer beer together in a barrel and started serving it. Turns out, it wasn’t bad. The mixture allowed them to make a drinkable beer that wouldn’t break the bank. There’s a bit of debate on whether the original blend was made up of just two beers, or three. The triple blend story involves a London brewer named Ralph Harwood, and a drink known as “Three Threads,” with the three threads being three different parts of the mix.
Regardless of how many parts there were, the brew caught on with the working class, especially those in London who were employed as porters (go figure), ultimately leading to the beer style being known as “porter.” It was originally made using brown malt that was dried over a wood fire. The char on that malt gave the brew its distinctive smoky flavor.
As the beer started to gain popularity in the late 1700s, it was more economical for brewers to use pale malt instead. That made the beer cheaper to make, but also lighter in color, which made some customers think they were getting a watered down beer. To compensate, brewers started adding things like opium and hemp to the beer. As you may have already guessed, that practice isn’t exactly going down in today’s beers.
