It’s the time of year for holiday beers, and the mad rush associated with getting them can turn any merry soul into a veritable Scrooge. If you didn’t get your holiday beer by mid-November, you may as well just forget it unless you know a distributor who will charge you twice as much for the good stuff. Bah, humbug!
Rather then let yourself become like the embittered businessman, settle in with the dark and roasty flavors of one of the first beers of the Industrial Revolution: the porter. With its history in technological expansion and beverage recombination, the porter paved the way for modern beer production and availability. An alcoholic miracle.
To understand the porter’s importance we’ll first step back in time with the Ghost of Beer’s Past, all the way back to 18th-century London. Business-savvy publicans wanted a way to drive up the costs of their wares while conserving their more expensive beers. The answer came in the form of a beverage called “The Entire,” which combined relatively cheap unhopped ale and hopped beer with more expensive “twopenny” beer. This early beverage allowed these enterpris-ing men to sell off their cheaper beer at an inflated rate while conserving the expensive stuff for more discerning clientele.
The Entire came into being during the formation of London’s shipping industry and in turn be-came popular cargo to send to the colonies, well before the arrival of the pale ale. Some believe this is where The Entire finally became the porter, named for the dockworkers who handled the brew most often.
As the porter grew in status, it became necessary to brew the beer using its own ingredients as opposed to using the traditional means of mixture. To retain its aged flavor, brewers would set aside large tankers of the beer for a year and a half at a time to be mixed with more freshly fermented drink. Despite being individually brewed, the porter couldn’t escape its mixed roots.
The process became even more involved at the dawn of the Napoleonic Wars. Malt tax was increased during this time and our business-minded brewers wanted to cut back on its expense. Thanks to the introduction of the thermometer and hydrometer to the brewing process, they could now accurately judge the yield of fermentable material from the malts they used. This led to another problem, however: If they used more efficient malts, the coloration of the beer would become very pale, as opposed to a lovely, opaque darkness.
Luckily, another technological breakthrough saved the day: the patent malt. The patent malt was used for the patented process invented by Daniel Wheeler in which he utilized a coffee roaster to toast the malt to near blackness. This would darken a beer’s complexion without imparting an ashy taste. The patent malt is so efficient at darkening brew it merely needs to be in a ratio of 1:20 of the other malts to achieve an opaque drink.
Now, with the aid of these modern brewing tools and the Ghost of Beer’s Present, we’ve made a successful jump back to today, where the porter is alive and well due to the contemporary brew-ing renaissance. The porter still exists in many forms but none nearly so notable as Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter, hailed by many to be the jewel of the porter crown.
The beer pours as dark as a cold winter’s night with a warm tan head. The drink has the odor of bitter coffee and burnt sugars, strongly resembling caramel. Best drunk warm, the beer has notes of bitter chocolate and a nearly astringent anise flavor. The feel of the beer is thick and sticky with a prickly carbonation that enlivens the mouth. Much like a warm holiday soiree, this porter will keep you toasty and smiling.
As Scrooge had to learn the true meaning of the Christmas, I hope the porter has taught us the pluck and know-how of dealing with seasonal-beer snobbery. Much like those historic brewers of yore, let us remember that the true meaning of beer is not how much nutmeg we can mix in before it makes you sick. As the Ghost of Beer’s Future will tell you, it is making sure enough beer is about to be had by all.
