While visiting the newish Hammer & Stitch brewery in Portland, Oregon, earlier this year, I stumbled across a rare specimen in today’s taproom ecosystem: a porter.
I don’t mean a Baltic porter or a cold-pressed triple-chocolate tiramisu porter, but rather a no-frills, 5.7 percent ABV pub porter.
When the brewery revival came to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, many of the first breweries—Anchor, New Albion, DeBakker—made a porter. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a porter or its cousin—the slightly stronger American stout—was an almost-mandatory brewpub offering. That has changed, to the delight or consternation of different kinds of dark-ale fans. For those who love their stouts bourbon barrel–aged and/or brewed to taste like liquid confectionary, these are the salad days. Traditionalists may grouse that these indulgent newcomers are further evidence of craft beer’s excesses. In this case, however, they’d be wrong. Dark ales have been in constant change since the Lincoln administration.