Several Jars of Porter

A couple of months back a friend, and colleague at the company that is my day job, of mine was in Oxford for work. Naturally I asked him if it would be possible for him to bring me back a bottle or two on Oxford beer. After a week of seething jealousy as him sent me messages from places like the King's Arms, he came back to Central Virginia with a bottle of Shotover Brewing's Oxford Black Porter, which spawned a plan to do a tasting of as many porters as I could lay my hands on.

Originally the plan had been to find as many British porters as possible, but then I decided to broaden that out to include US made porters as long as they didn't have weird shit ingredients - I really fail to understand why craft brewers insist on putting extraneous shit in their dark beers (or in their beer at all to be honest).

Thus after Thanksgiving I had collected the following porters for my tasting:

• Fuller's London Porter
• Shotover Brewing Oxford Black
• Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter
• Deschutes Black Butte Porter
• Great Lakes Brewing Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
• Port City Brewing Porter

This weekend just gone, and last night, I got round to drinking this little bevy of dark bevvy and here are my thoughts, a la Cyclops...

Fuller's London Porter

• Sight - dark chestnut brown, light tan head
• Smell - chocolate, caramelised sugar, roasty
• Taste - toast, cocoa, molasses
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 2/5
• Notes - very smooth, complex, moreish

Shotover Brewing Oxford Black

• Sight - dark brown, red edges, off white head
• Smell - spicy, slightly phenolic, touch of band-aid
• Taste - lightly roasty, bready, trace of rubberiness
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 1/5
• Notes - bit thin, muddle of flavours

Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter

• Sight - rich dark brown, red edges, loose tan head
• Smell - light coffee, cinnamon, molasses, slight tobacco
• Taste - dark brown sugar, some coffee, roasty notes
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 2/5
• Notes - dry, slightly lactic finish, great balance

Deschute's Black Butte Porter

• Sight - rich dark chestnut, crimson edges, tan head
• Smell - molasses, bittersweet chocolate, burnt sugar
• Taste - bittersweet chocolate, slight roast
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5
• Notes - medium bodied, great balance, moreishly drinkable

Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter

• Sight - deep brown, light tan head, dissipates quickly
• Smell - bitter chocolate, molasses, light roast coffee
• Taste - bready, nutty, cafe creme
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5
• Notes - beautifully balanced, medium-full body, ideal for fireside in winter

Port City Porter

• Sight - very dark, almost black, ruby edges, tan head that ligners
• Smell - burnt sugar, light treacle, coffee, chocolate
• Taste - sweet molasses, chocolate spread on toast, spicy
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5
• Notes - rich, unctuous brew, really well integrated

Other than the Shotover, each of these porters was a beer than I would be happy to drink whenever the porter mood strikes. If there was one take away from this mini session it was the American made beers tending to be sweeter, fuller bodied, and maybe a bit more complex, without having that much higher an alcohol content - only the Great Lakes and Port City brews were over 6%. It seems sometimes as though porter kind of gets lost in the IPAness of the modern craft brewing world, but for those of us who like dark beers, there are some decent ones out there.