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Stout Day
“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep;
whoever sleeps long, does not sin;
whoever does not sin, enters Heaven!
Thus, let us drink beer!”
~Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Stout and Porter ... Porter and Stout! Fancy a pint? Stout is a dark, top-fermented beer with a number of variations, including dry stout, oatmeal stout, milk stout, and imperial stout. With an original meaning of a "strong" beer (rather than dark), Allegedly, Porter takes its name from the burly deliverymen who balanced wooden kegs on their shoulders and rapped on pub doors, announcing themselves with a shout of “Porter!” Because of the huge popularity of porters, brewers made them in a variety of strengths. The stronger beers, were called "stout porters," further intertwining the terms so that the term stout has become firmly associated with dark beer, rather than just strong beer. "Nourishing" and sweet "milk" stouts (containing lactose and also known as "sweet" or "cream") became popular in Great Britain in the years following the First World War, though their popularity declined towards the end of the 20th century, apart from pockets of local interest such as in Glasgow with Sweetheart Stout. Milk stout was claimed to be nutritious, and was given to nursing mothers! Today, modern artisan breweries compete by offering complex flavors such Maple Bacon Coffee, Rocky Mountain Oyster, and Choc Lobster, which gets its unique character from sea salt, chocolate, basil tea, and lobster! Cheers! 🍺
Stout Day is a day to celebrate this most hearty of brews. Stout is a dark beer made using roasted malt or roasted barley, hops, water and yeast. Stouts were traditionally the generic term for the strongest or stoutest porters, typically 7% or 8%, produced by a brewery.
Porter as a dark style of beer was developed in London in the early 1700s and favored amongst the working classes, particularly the street and river porters from which the common name is believed to have been derived. The word "stout", meaning "strong" was used to describe strong beers.
During the First World War in Britain, shortages of grain led to restrictions on the strength of beer. But less strict rules in Ireland allowed brewers such as Guinness to continue to brew beers closer to pre-war strengths.
Many breweries now brew Porters in a wide variety of flavors, including pumpkin, honey, vanilla, plum, chocolate, and even oyster (first noted in New Zealand in 1929).
The colours of the Porter Drinkers’ tartan are taken from the labels of the designer's favourite variety, a Swedish Porter with Scottish origins - David Carnegie, a grandson of a captain of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Life Guards (who took refuge in Gothenburg after the Battle of Culloden), became a wholesale merchant and in 1836, bought a sugar refinery and a porter brewery.
In this tartan, black is an allusion to the dark, full-bodied potion of the drink, while yellow is symbolic of a certain moderate sweetness. The thin red line is interpreted as the distinct “tang” that Porter drinkers instantly recognize as the hallmark of a fine porter.
If Porter or Stout is your drink and you would like to explore a complementary dessert, click the glass for a recipe for Triple Chocolate Stout Beer Brownies.