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Sometimes, a pint in a pub is enjoyable and memorable in ways that are hard to explain. I remember a glass of cask-conditioned porter, served in perfect condition and bursting with flavor, that I drank in a London pub some years ago. Perhaps it was the time of year – autumn, the best pub season – or maybe it was the gentle hum of human contentment, but I’ve rarely enjoyed a beer more.
I love dark ales. From the subtle, creamy roastiness of nitro stouts to the dried fruit and chocolate offered by the best London Porters, they provide perhaps the most satisfying experience beer can offer. It was no surprise to me that Guinness sales boomed post-COVID-19; it may not be the world’s most thrilling beer, but it offers everyday indulgence, an escape from the daily grind for the price of a pint.
With International Stout Day last week (Thursday, 7th November), I thought it was the perfect time to explore why I enjoy stouts and porters so much – and I’ve enlisted a few people who know a lot more about the technical side to help, too. Crisp Malt’s Sarah Marshall and Andy Parker, owner of Elusive Brew an English craft brewery in the county of Berkshire, who have years of stout-brewing experience. Here, then, is how you can produce a few perfect pub moments of your own.
When it comes to dark stout beers, complexity, which is achieved by layering malts, is crucial. For Sarah, this involves crystal malts, which offer a selection of complementary flavors. “By using crystal malts, you’re bringing in burnt sugar, caramel, molasses, and toffee,” she says. “If you layer the flavors, you get something different in every sip.”
Andy is in full agreement. He says one of the best brewing tips he ever got came from Colin Strong, once of Marble, Buxton, and Salt Beer, now running Lost Cause Brewing in Castleford alongside his wife Vik. “He told me that his best stouts were all about layering,” Andy says. “He made these fantastic big imperial stouts, and there were seven or eight malts in each of them – caramel, crystal, Munich malts. We always try to mimic that [when we make stouts].”
Layering malts is about creating complexity and refinement and ensuring a real depth to the beer. One way to destroy that, though, is by going too hard on the dark malts. “You’ve got to be careful,” says Sarah. “Dark malts can get astringent, or mouth puckering, very quickly if you overdo them. With crystal and dark crystal malts, you can get most of the way there, colour-wise – and then you just use a touch of black malt or roast barley.”
She recommends perhaps two percent of the malt bill could be roast barley, with a little more for black malt, which is less astringent: “That’ll give the burnt flavours, the coffee, dark chocolate and cocoa that you look for in a stout.”
Oats, which offer a fuller, creamier mouthfeel, can be crucial in a stout, too. “They plump it up,” Sarah adds. “They create that thickness, that indulgence you need.”
Few things are more controversial in the world of modern beer than the rise of beers sweetened with lactose and a variety of sickly adjuncts. Traditionalists hate them; lots of drinkers love them. What everyone can agree on, though, is that stout provides a perfect canvas for adding complementary flavors like these and others too.
Andy has plenty of experience in this regard, having produced dark beers with coffee, pastries and more. “You can take stout in different directions,” he says. “With a stout, you’ve got something that is lightly roasted and sweet, and you can chuck quite a lot of things at it to layer flavor.”
Elusive’s core stout, Morrisman, uses three different types of chocolate in order to produce what Andy describes as “the most chocolatey beer ever.” “I was drinking a chocolate stout in a pub in Reading with a friend once, and we thought it wasn’t actually very chocolatey,” he adds. “So for Morrisman, we make it quite light on roast – we use just enough dark malts to make it black in the glass, without being particularly roasty.”
A great stout needs both layered malt flavor and a complex fermentation profile (hops, unusually in this day and age, generally take a back seat). Fermentation can add some really delicious and complementary flavors, according to Sarah. “You could go for a slightly higher than normal fermentation temperature, so 20 to 22 degrees, and then you get some lovely esters in there. There’s plums, raisins, stone fruit – all the flavors that make the beer more refined.”
Andy uses English yeast varieties such as Windsor when making stout, he says. “That’s to ensure we don’t dry the beer out too much,” he says. “And they ferment nice and quickly as well.”
For many drinkers, stout IS Guinness – but increasingly, smaller breweries are able to carve out a chunk of the nitro stout market too. London’s Anspach and Hobday have had huge success with their London Black, while the recent release of Northern Monk’s collaboration with Timothy Taylor, a nitro stout called Northern Rising, suggests there’s plenty of life in the nitro dog yet.
The main difference between nitro and non-nitro is in packaging rather than the brewing process, according to Sarah. Anspach and Hobday’s Porter is often served with an 80/20 nitrogen/CO2 mix, which offers a creamer mouthfeel – and reflects how Guinness is often served in its home country.
Andy, meanwhile, is happy to see the rise of rivals to the great Irish dry stout. “I hope it continues,” he says. “I think there are plenty of customers who will try something else if they see it on the bar.”
Andy is co-author of The Modern Homebrewer book.
Article written by Will Hawkes
Fortnum and Mason Awards Drink Writer of the Year 2021 & 2023
Find out more about Will Hawkes here
