What is your Favorite American Beer Now and what did you like many years ago?

[Gillman]

Yes Dave I have, we get the same canned version here you mentioned. It is excellent, I agree.

Porter was invented in England - in fact in London - in the early 1700's. One would expect (or hope) that a version still made in that city would be authentic, and it is.

For a while, porter died out in its native land but in recent decades it came back - it was Americans who kept it going in the interim (also Eastern Europe and other odd places).

There are many excellent U.S. porters, not all costly (easy to find the high end ones and most are very good, e.g., Anchor Porter, Black Butte, etc.). For more reasonably priced ones, I like Yeungling's Porter and always have, same for Stegmaier Porter if it is still made.

Ballantine made a Porter, sold in the little stubby bottle, about 30 years ago, but no more.

But Yeungling's recipe is very good and authentic too, that place has been going since the 1800's and its porter has been made probably since then.

Gary

[dave ziegler]

Yes Gary they still make Stegmaier Porter and it is very good it is really dark in color and thick. Stegmaier is made by the Loin from the original recipe. And I always have some Yeungling Porter around. That is right on about the Porter being invented in England, and I love the Fullers never had it in a can bottles here. Back in April I took a tour of the original Yeungling Brewery and it is such a neat place they even have the old caves they used to age the beer in down below! And the wall is still there where the Feds walled it shut during Proibition!

BE WELL GARY

Dave Z

Old Hickory

America's Most Magnificent Bourbon

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[Gillman]

Thanks, and a note about porter and stout might not be out of place.

What is stout? What is porter?

Well, they are related. The term stout derives from "stout porter" (strong porter), and then it got shortened to stout. The term stout as used in beer pre-dates porter, it was used to mean strong beer (any beer), and that is how it came to be applied to the porter style.

However, Guinness innovated by adding unmalted (raw) barley to the mash to make its famous stout porter. So, stout evolved as a different style. (Note how unmalted barley is also added to Irish mashing bills for whiskey). Porter has stuck with an all-malt mashbill or at least that is a hallmark of the style.

Originally, as noted, porter was weaker than stout. That seems less so today in general terms, and each style in fact has different levels of strength.

However, in the family of black beers - black ales, not lagers - black lagers are a different story - porter came first and came to America with early Britsih settlers. Its survival in America via Yeungling and Stegmaier is quite remarkable. We had porters (pre-micro) in Canada too, Molson's was the best.

I have had the Fullers Porter in the bottle too. I prefer it (as most beers) in the can because the light can't get in. Cans are fine as long as it is a fresh can. The English make excellent beers in this style. I like a lot Samual Smith Imperial Stout, which isn't as brutishly strong as some Imperials, it is about 7% ABV - strong enough, and it has the trademark Imperial Stout taste. Sam Smith make a porter too, Taddy Porter, but I think Fuller's porter is better.

There are porter imports that are actually an excellent value. There is one from Russia (from a well known lager brewer) that is excellent, and I've bought it in New York, a large bottle, for $1.99 or so. The Baltic and East European areas have specialised in a small way in porters since the 1800's, and their beers often sell here for much less than imports from Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe and often are better beers.

Stout and porter generally last a long time, in the bottle anyway - an exception to the rule that super-freshness is a desideratum with most beer.

Gary

[dave ziegler]

Thanks Gary That is very Interesting Information and I will look around to see if anyone has the Fullers in Cans. I sort of like Beer in Cans myself and they take up alot less room too! The Yeungling is a wonderful Porter. When I was young we used to get a Really great Porter Made by a Brewer called Kaiers in Mohanoy CFity Pa about 15 miles from Pottsville it very Dark and thick and just Delious. I never forgot and have loved porter ever since. Did you ever hear of Kaiers Special Beer They actually won a Medal in Begium back in the late 1960's for their Beers first place. Thanks again for the Information and BE WELL

Dave Z

Old Hickory America's Most Magnificent Bourbon

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[Gillman]

Dave: in the books on the history of beer they often quote a poem from the 1600's in which a poet dreams of "a pint of stout and a mutton chop" to "surprise his muse" (get inspiration) (poets rarely have much cash). This was before the Guinness type of stout was invented, and before porter, too. It meant any strong beer. Lots of strong beers are still made of course, everything from malt liquor to the strong ales from the micros.

As for the mutton well, the British brought that to America too - you can still get it in Kentucky, barbequed, not in chops (that I have seen).

Kaier's Special gets a good rating in Jim Robertson's book, he doesn't mention the porter though. Maybe by the early 80's the porter wasn't available, or Robertson didn't find it. I myself do not recall it but I was buying U.S. beers in Plattsburgh, NY and other areas in the North East (mostly New York State though), so I mightn't have seen it necessarily. E.g., I first found Ballantine IPA and Porter on Cape Cod but they weren't available in Plattsburgh as far as I can recall.

In pint bottles at many of the larger beverage stores and large food markets you can get 20 ounce pints of Guinness Stout that is actually made in Canada (in New Brunswick) by a Guinness subsidiary or licensee there. This is an excellent drink, and offered at a good price. It is drier than Fuller's Porter and has the flavor of roasted barley that I mentioned. This stout is sold in regular glass bottles, not cans or the shaped 12 ounce black bottle, that's how you know it is the "Canadian" one (plus on the side it states it is from Canada).

But anyway stouts and porters are closely related beers: both use dark-roasted malts and both are ales (top-fermented). But as I said porter normally doesn't also use flaked or other unmalted barley, at least as far as I know.

Gary

[Gillman]

Here's another beer story. When I first moved to Toronto in the early 80's, I took a drive to the Buffalo area and drove west along Lake Erie. I came to Dunkirk, a fishing town - or it was - fishing in Erie today is much reduced. I went to find Fred Koch's (pronounced Cook's), a local brewery. I may have mentioned this visit some time ago on SB, but I'll do it again since you can always add a different twist.

By the time I got there, it had closed, and the Koch brands were being made by Genessee Brewery in Rochester, NY (now called High Falls Brewery).

However, the local taverns still carried the beers and also, there was still in the stores a beer the closed brewery had made, a Porter whose recipe came from a company called Vaux in England - Vaux had bought Koch's as a way to expand but it didn't work out in the end. That Porter was excellent, it was dark ruby brown, as the original porters were, with a typical English fruity top-ferment taste.

The Koch's beers, even by pre-micro standards, were okay (IMO), not great. I liked their Deer Run Ale, and especially Black Horse Ale, a brand that used to get around you might say. It was originally Canadian, then produced in at least two different markets in the U.S., probably it was licensed by the Canadian owner to different makers. The ones I know were Koch's and Champale, and this information is from Robertson's book I've mentioned before.

Koch's Black Horse was excellent beer which Robertson praised quite rightfully.

Anyway I'm in Dunkirk asking about the beers and the guys in the taverns added extra information. One told me a favored drink in town was to blend 2 parts Koch's lager to 1 part the porter I mentioned. And a good blend it was (and is, since you can use any lager and porter or stout to do this).

Some of the brand names from Koch's were Iroquois, Phoenix and Simon Pure (the latter acquired from the famous Buffalo, NY brewery that expired in the 60's or around then).

So I had a couple of rounds in a bar in town, and the beer was good (especially the draft). And a fried fish sandwich, and I came home to Canada saddened that another piece of local brewing heritage was lost.

Gary

[dave ziegler]

Gary Have you ever had Yuengling Bllack & Tan? It is half Yuengling Premium Beer and half Yuengling Porter it is a very nice drink! Funny you brought up the Black Horse Ale as I have an old empty can of it on my Office desk never had it but was told many times it was real nice Ale.

Dave Z

Old Hickory America's Most Magnificent Bourbon

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[Gillman]

Never had the black and tan, but I've had their Premium and the porter numerous times, so I can envision the combination.

The idea of the half and half is very old. In fact, porter itself derives from a blending of beers. Generally, an aged and young brown beer were blended, sometimes with a pale ale.

The aged beer had a tart, citric taste (in those pre-pasteurisation days). The brown ale was sweet and fresh, not too hopped. The pale ale probably was similar to beers of that description today.

Gary

[dave ziegler]

Gary that is interesting as the Bar where I first tasted Fullers London Porter on draft told me that hundreds of years ago the way Fullers came to making porter was that when they had old beer they would blend others with it to make a beer up for the Poorer People in town. Well it was a Pain so they thought about premaking it and tasted some of the mixtures they were selling and found them to be real nice and that is how porter was born so he said have you read anything on that story about Fullers as he said they invented Porter!

Dave Z

Old Hickory America's Most Magnificent Bourbon

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[Gillman]

Fuller's did not invent Porter but as an old London brewery, it would have been selling it for a long time (since the 1800's at least, and probably into the 1950's or so - for some decades porter then disappeared from the U.K. - but then some brewers brought it back, including Fuller.).

It is true that porter originally was a blend of beers (I mentioned this in an earlier note).

It is also true that one of the beers used in the blend was an aged brown beer that would have been winy or acidic in taste. In those years, without pasteurisation, the beers just went off after a while.

It was a habit in the pubs to mix the old acidic beer with new, fresh sweet beer. So some people drank a half and half of old and new brown ale. Some people added pale ale to it, to give an additional flavor.

These blends were called, when made with 3 beers, three threads (thread being a corruption of the term "third") - three thirds, one third each beer.

The publican drew from the different taps to make this up.

A brewer then had the idea to make a beer that had the attributes of the blend, first it was called "entire", and then porter because London porters (who pushed and pulled carts loaded with goods in pre-motoring days) seemed to favor it as a drink.

There is however a fair amount of uncertainty about aspects of this story. At another time I'll explain more about it. For now, it can be said safely that no one is sure exactly what the first porter brewer made. He might have blended beers in his own brewery to equal what the publicals were drawing from their casks. He might have made a beer from one mash as opposed to the earlier practice of making progressively weaker beers from worts drawn from separate soakings of the same batch of malt (parti-gyle brewing). So there is lack of clarity, but porter as a strongish, somewhat tart, somewhat sweet dark brown beer emerged as a style in London (specifically) in the early 1700's, that much is clear.

I have had Fuller Porter on draft too, in Ontario, and it is excellent. It has (to my taste) a slight hint of licorice. Licorice was a favored additive for porter in the 1800's.

Gary

[Gillman]

By the way for the beer fans, it may be noted that aged brown beer of the type mentioned is still available, in Belgium, and often exported to the U.S.

Petrus Brown is one such. Liefman's Brown Ale is another, and there are others.

Russian River in Jim's neighborhood is also aging beers now in wooden barrels to get this kind of vinous character (it should be tart/sourish but not sour as vinegar, at least IMO).

Those breweries in Belgium sometimes blend a beer like I explained earlier. But also they will sell the aged one on its own, because some people acquired the taste for it (then and now).

You can blend a porter yourself. Take e.g., a Petrus Brown Ale, aged some 17 months in wood, and blend it to your liking with any new, sweetish brown ale. When I do it, I add just a little of the old beer (say 10% or so). Guinness stout used to be made, and maybe still is, with a very small amount of a "soured" beer in it. The sourish edge of a well-blended porter is refreshing and may satisfy those who found a fresh malty beer too sweet.

The Belgians just carried on with these old practices from hundreds of years ago.

Jeff or Ed, if you have made a brown ale and have an old one which may have gone south just a bit, add it to some fresh new dark beer (yours or a bought one): the results often are very good.

You can try adding a pale ale, too, to get an original three threads.

This thing about blending, vatting: I wish I could say I invented it but I didn't. It's knowledge that is as old as the hills.

By the way, the addition of sourish beer to a fresh new one can be explained possibly by a brewer's habit not to throw away old beer - and in the end consumers got the taste for the blends. Another explanation I've read is that if you add a tart beer to a fresh one, you can get the pH to a point where the beer stabilises - an important consideration in the era of pre-pasteurisation, pre-refrigeration. Apparently the pH stabilization was used in areas which did not have a large supply of hops available, since hops originally were the first preservative.

Gary

[dave ziegler]

Thank you Gary I can always count on you to get me right on these things, and as you said Fullers London Porter is wonderful on draft!

Thanks Gary and Be Well-!

Dave Z

Old Hickory America's Most Magnificent Bourbon

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[snakster]

Yes Gary they still make Stegmaier Porter and it is very good it is really dark in color and thick. Stegmaier is made by the Lion from the original recipe.

I, too, dig on the Stegmaier Porter. To be honest, there isn't much that comes out of the Lion that I don't like.

[dave ziegler]

Ron right you are Stegmaier Porter is one nice Porter and as you said the Lion Does things Right! Have you had Reading Premuim Yet? The Lion does that for them also!

Dave Z

Beer Its Not Just A Beverage Its Food

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[New2Whiskey]

FULLERS LONDON PORTER

After reading these posts, I went ahead and purchased this beer. Excellent I must say.

I had 4 already. I like it better at room temperature than chilled in the fridge. Actually, it is stored in the basement. Which is slighter cooler.

[Gillman]

That sounds an ideal temperature. However, if a beer is very good, I can drink it at room temperature and have done so for many years. Once you get the taste for it, you can do that. I once read when much younger that it was a brewer's habit to do so. I found it hard to believe, but in time did the same thing. When first travelling in England in the early 1980's, I noticed people doing this with any kind of beer (not just draught bitter which is typically served - or should be - at a coolish temperature). Again, it took a while, but once the taste is acquired, it is easy. Still, I know very few people who actually do this.

Gary

[dave ziegler]

Hey Gary Drank some Yuengling Lager warmer then I do and I still like my beer and Porter and Ale Cold But in a pinch it is ok and seems to have a special mouthfeel you do not get cold. Just wanted to give it a try. Another beer I always wish I could have tired was Bavarian Beer "Mount Carbon Brewing" which used to sit right down the street from Yuengling and I have been told those days used to outsell Yuengling. I was told they hit hard times and Yuengling bought them out and never made the Brand again. To Many Beers to little time!

Dave Z

Old Hickory America's Most Magnificent Bourbon

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[Gillman]

Well, e.g., the porter at just a cool temperature (say around 60 F.) might be interesting I think but not when it is too hot, say late at night on the porch. I find these dark ales and porters, or any dark rich beer, tend to drink well at just a cellar coolness, and it is similar in that regard to red wine. However the colder it is in the surrounding temperature, the more enjoyable it is to sample the beers this way.

I'll never forget seeing people on English trains drinking even cans of lager at strict room temperature (this in the early 80's). It amazed me to see that! Today, beer almost always is served cold in England, except for real ale drawn on pumps generally pulled by hand, a l'Americaine.

Gary

[CorvallisCracker]

I'll never forget seeing people on English trains drinking even cans of lager at strict room temperature (this in the early 80's). It amazed me to see that! Today, beer almost always is served cold in England, except for real ale drawn on pumps generally pulled by hand, a l'Americaine.

Gary

Back in the late '60s and early '70s, I and my other motorcycle riding friends all rode either Japanese or German bikes, and were amused by the problems which bedeviled owners of British bikes, chiefly oil leaks and failures of the various electrical components (these made by the firm of Lucas).

One of our favorite jokes was:

Q. Why do the British drink warm beer?

A. Because they have Lucas refrigerators.

[jesskidden]

Another beer I always wish I could have tired was Bavarian Beer "Mount Carbon Brewing" which used to sit right down the street from Yuengling and I have been told those days used to outsell Yuengling. I was told they hit hard times and Yuengling bought them out and never made the Brand again.

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"Bavarian Beer" was still being brewed by Yuengling into the late 1970's (it's pictured in Yuengling's pamphlet from the era- in deposit pint and 12 ounce steinie returnable bottles), as was "Old German", another economy brand from YBC (not to be confused with a number of other "Old German" brands that were brewed by a several breweries).

Bavarian was probably strictly local - tho', the Yuengling beers themselves were still pretty much Eastern PA only at that time. I bought a case or two over the years (I was a sucker for the steinie bottle), along with other deleted Y. beers like their Bock and Chesterfield in brown deposit quarts and long necks (better than the green bottles).

Never really thought about where the Mt. Carbon brewery was located now that you mention it (Mt. Carbon is a "section" of Pottsville, south of town, isn't it?), even tho' they'd only been closed for a few years when I first went to Pottsville on a beer/brewery run (1976 was their final year). IIRC the era when they were outselling Yuengling was the 1960's.

[jesskidden]

I went to find Fred Koch's (pronounced Cook's), a local brewery.

By the time I got there, it had closed, and the Koch brands were being made by Genessee Brewery in Rochester, NY the stores a beer the closed brewery had made, a Porter whose recipe came from a company called Vaux in England - Vaux had bought Koch's as a way to expand but it didn't work out in the end. That Porter was excellent, it was dark ruby brown, as the original porters were, with a typical English fruity top-ferment taste.

Gary

I was living in the Finger Lakes area when Vaux bought Koch's, and expanded their distribution to reach us there in central NYS. Besides the great Porter, they also "revived" an old Koch label, Holiday Beer, and it, too, was a very nice beer for the era. Pretty sure that same Christmas (1983 or 1984) was one of the first appearances of Matt's Christmas brew, too- seasonals (save for the few remaining "bocks") were pretty rare back then. I was sad to hear they closed and sold out to Genesee- never made the drive to Dunkirk.

The Koch's beers, even by pre-micro standards, were okay (IMO), not great. I liked their Deer Run Ale, and especially Black Horse Ale, a brand that used to get around you might say. It was originally Canadian, then produced in at least two different markets in the U.S., probably it was licensed by the Canadian owner to different makers. The ones I know were Koch's and Champale, and this information is from Robertson's book I've mentioned before.

Koch's Black Horse was excellent beer which Robertson praised quite rightfully.

The story of "Black Horse Ale" in the US is pretty interesting, more so than the typical "contract brew". "Black Horse Ale" was a pretty popular export to the US, apparently, from Dow in Montreal. Dow collapsed after some beer killed a few folks (due to a "foam enhancer" containing cobalt) and Carling bought the brands but somehow neglected to protect the name of "Black Horse Ale" in the US and the Diamond Spring Brewing Company of Lawrence, MA simply registered the name. They brewed the ale (at a rather high 7.5%) for the US (south to Florida, west to Colorado), and later reduced the alcohol to a bit over 6%. (info from BEER NEW ENGLAND by Will Anderson).

As you note, the beer continued on as a Koch brand (Diamond Spring closed in 1972) and the way I remember it, *they* licensed it to Champale. Living in NJ, I was more familiar with that version, which, when fresh, was very nice but often just sat around and got skunky (green bottle). The Koch version, after an updating of the label design by Vaux, was better but, again, maybe because it was moving off the shelves better at the time.

Genny, after they bought the Koch brand, also brewed the Black Horse for a time- so they had both "12 Horse Ale" and "Black Horse Ale" on the market at the same time. Sadly, by then, the 12 Horse was a mere shadow of it's former self- having been reformulated to be a "Canadian" style ale rather than the UK style it had once been. (Genesee was the only US brewery using Burton Unions for its ale, post-Repeal, according to their advertising at the time).

[jesskidden]

Yes Gary they still make Stegmaier Porter and it is very good it is really dark in color and thick. Stegmaier is made by the Loin from the original recipe.

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I don't know which is the "original" recipe, but the final versions of Stegmaier Porter (and, as I recall, the early version from the Lion) in the 1970's had a distinct licorice flavor due to the addition of (duh) unsweetened licorice (as the brewmaster was quoted, in a 1970's era publication from The Lion). At the time, the early "proto-beer geeks" felt such an addition was inauthentic and often knocked the beer- just as they knocked most of the US surviving porters for being brewed with lager yeast (this, of course, before the sub-style of "Pennsylvania Porter" was recognized). I once had a friendly argument going in print with a well-known beer writer, who felt that way about Yuengling Porter ("If they called it a "dark lager", I'd say I liked it.")

The licorice-flavored Steg. Porter (with a strange label featuring the side view of horse's head, in deposit long necks, cases only, tho' many retailers sold it as singles back then) was distributed at least as far east as central NJ- I used to buy cases of it for a friend's father who worked at Pabst in Newark- maybe one of the first "beer incidences" that made me realize that not "all beer is the same". Don't remember when it disappeared, but when The Lion re-introduced it, with new graphics and in six-packs, I was looking forward to that licorice taste again, only to be disappointed with a typical "OK" porter. Perhaps it was more authentic, perhaps it's the true "original" Stegmaier Porter recipe, but I miss the old stuff.

[jesskidden]

Kaier's Special gets a good rating in Jim Robertson's book, he doesn't mention the porter though. Maybe by the early 80's the porter wasn't available, or Robertson didn't find it.

Kaier's was bought by Ortlieb in the mid-1960's- think they even ran the brewery for a couple of years more in Mahoney City, and then the brand became just amother "economy" beers from Ortlieb. The strange thing was, while Ortlieb's distribution shrank at the time to South Jersey and Phila.-area PA, I could find the Kaiers in a few large liquor stores in NJ, where it was often the cheapest beer around- sold only by the case, in returnable steinie bottles. I remember once going to the local "drive-thru" beer store (a rarity in itself in the state) and asking for a case of Ortlieb by mistake. The guy didn't know what I was talking about- THEN I remembered it was *Kaier's* they sold.

I sort of doubt Ortlieb continued the porter in bottle- a few years later, they expanded their line with the addition of a stout (Boarhead), malt liquor (Coqui) and McSorley's Ale (purchased when Rheingold folded), but at the time they were pretty much strictly a "light lager" brewery, with the exception of their version of Neuweiler Ale.

[Gillman]

Thanks Jess. Robertson did mention that Kaier's by then was a brand of Ortlieb's.

I do feel that bottom fermentation does not deliver the true aleish (estery) taste that top-ferments generally do. However licorice was added to many porters in the 1800's, so I feel that is an authentic taste. The old Champlain Porter in Quebec had a similar licorice hint.

True, originally (1700's) possibly licorice was not used, i.e. it might have been one of the 1800's additions used to enhance color once they started using a lot of pale malt in the mash, but it became an accepted part of the palate IMO.

Gary

[dave ziegler]

The Kaiers Porter was the very first porter I ever drank and I drank it till it was gone when Ortliebs bought the Name and the brewery as you said. They did run it for a year or so then closed it and when they ran it they also ended up buying F&S and making the Beers there for abit. By any chance did you ever drink Krueger? I have wanted to find someone who had drank Krueger just for their opinion of it!

Dave Z

Old Hickory America's Most Magnificent Bourbon

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