Porter is a beer style which dominated British brewing for 200 years but is little known today. London brewer Ralph Harwood is reputed to have invented porter in 1722 in the Bell brewhouse in Shoreditch when he brewed a beer called Entire Butt. At the time the favoured beer in the capital was called 'three threads' a blend of pale, brown and 'stale' a very mature beer which had to brought in from country brewers. Entire Butt on the other hand was brewed using a new brown malt and served from a single cask. Other brewers such as Samuel Whitbread quickly copied this new successful beer. The name porter as is well known came from the beerıs popularity with London's street market porters. Whitbread built a brewery at the Barbican dedicated to brewing porter. In 1788 porter started to be brewed in Bristol and by 1786 was being exported to Russia. In 1814, when a porter maturing vat at Meux's Tottenham Court Road brewery burst, the flood of 130,000 gallons of ale drowned eight people. The beer would have been dark brown in colour and heavily hopped, with a sour and bitter flavour. When roasting machines were invented a century or so later the addition of black or chocolate malts resulted in the black colour we expect today. The strongest of the porters were called 'stout porter'. Large quantities were exported to Ireland, and soon Irish brewers Arthur Guinness in Dublin and Beamish and Crawford in Cork switched from ale to porter. Guinness started using a proportion of unmalted roasted barley to avoid tax, which produced the style called 'dry Irish stout'. (Present day Guinness is filtered and pasteurised). Stouts and porters took months to condition and were eventually replaced in many breweries by 'running beers' which as the name implies have a faster turnaround.

Like other beers the strength of stout was reduced during World War One, and they had already been overtaken in popularity by mild and pale ale. A number of brewers are now reviving English versions of porter: Nethergate Old Growler (5%) is a complex porter, where sweetness roast malt and fruit feature in the palate with lingering bitter chocolate flavour. Hop Back produce an entire stout (4.5%) a delicious rich dark stout, made with ginger, with a strong roasted malt flavour. Locally Foxfield produce Black Combe (5%) a bitter stout; Hesket Newmarket's Great Cockup Porter at 3% is too low in gravity for the true porter style but has a good bitter and chocolatey taste none the less.

The Prince of Wales in Foxfield showcases a wide range of stouts, porters and strong ales from 21st to 23rd November ­ a good opportunity to try some lesser known beers. Well known beer writer Roger Protz has co-written a new book with Clive La Pensee entitled 'Stout and Porter ­ Homebrew Classics' which contains fascinating stories from the early days of brewing Stout and Porter, authentic recipes from contemporary brewers, brewing instructions and detailed analysis of what constitutes Stout and Porter beer styles - price £8.99 from CAMRA.

Acknowledgments: CAMRA Good Beer Guide 2003

Hugh Price, MBII