To me, the dividing line is a significant amount of roast barley in a stout and a significant amount of chocolate malt in a porter.
I’ve wondered the same thing myself countless times. By and large, there truly is no difference anymore between porters and stouts. The only tentative differences these days might be color – your stout would be a blacker version of your porter. And, stouts might have more roasted barley – but porters can have it as well. So… to me it does seem silly to try to come up with arbitrary arguments that would differentiate two broad styles that have in reality evolved to become in essence nearly one and the same, with a few obvious exceptions (I’ve never heard of a sweet porter, never heard of a brown stout, etc.), but that’s just semantics as well. I feel it is high time to combine porters and stouts into one main category. I don’t think many people will agree with me, but I’m not interested in popular opinions, because what fun is there in just agreeing with what everyone else says.
Let me put it to you another way – if we were to do a blind side-by-side test of one brewer’s stout vs. a second brewer’s porter, what are the odds that you could correctly distinguish the one called “stout” from the one called “porter”? I think the odds are equally 50/50 of getting it right vs. wrong. So even a monkey could flip a coin and do just as well. My point exactly.
Yep. Personally I’d say black malt instead of chocolate malt (I know that I’m the last homebrewer alive that still uses black malt in my porter). I’d like to say less hoppy as well but historically that may not be correct.
Tragedy
It’s good to see that you don’t care for popular opinion. Unfortunately it’s popular consciousness that has led to the melding of these two styles. If you had one of my porters followed by one of my stouts you could tell the difference. Let’s not destroy the styles just because people aren’t educated enough to taste the differences and/or educated enough to brew the differences.
No, there are 2 of us! My porters just seemed kinda insipid, so I started experimenting with just a bit of black malt in them. Turned out to be just what they needed!
denny you just made my day!
My thought as well.
The best answer I’ve heard, It’s whatever the brewer decided to cal it.
Go historical and call it a Stout-Porter.
Yet even the roasted barley vs. chocolate malt argument is a BJCP fabrication. The 21st century style guideline is so far off of the old 19th century origins of the styles that it ain’t even funny. What about brown malt? What about a stout supposing to be stronger than porter? Ugh. On the inside, I shall not give in to the BJCP and popular beliefs to define whatever ya’ll want, it’s so arbitrary and historically inaccurate. Sure, I’ll judge to the BJCP 2008 guidelines and beyond, but meanwhile my soul is silently screaming at the silliness of it all.
Just curious but have the BJCP guidelines always had it like that? I first heard the RB = stout and BP (or chocolate, can’t remember) = Porter in the mid 90’s from Daniel’s DGB and I guess I just thought it spread like wildfire from there.
I did at least learn what ‘sucking the monkey’ meant. 
Dave, I’m drinking beer in the 21st century, not the 19th. I’m using a 21st century definition.
Same here, I was going to concur with jaybeerman about the black malt instead of chocolate malt thing, also. I like the bite of black malt in my porters, I think that’s what defines porters instead of chocolate malt, but that’s just me.
But as far as I’m concerned, the beer is whatever the brewer says it is. If they say it’s a porter, but to you it tastes like a stout, it’s still a porter; and vice versa.
I don’t think a monkey could flip a coin without yeasr of exhaustive training and a thumb. Now an ape maybe
+1 many folks under-rate the importance of thumbs. I know my dog is really pissed at me that I’ve got thumbs & she doesn’t. She’d really like to be able to open the food bin herself, or unlatch the door… but no luck, no thumb.
I mean no disrespect, when I say/ask this…
To me…This whole question is similar to the Cascadian Dark Ale issue.
Why make a new classification, for a slight twist?
But your 21st century definition fails to describe 21st century reality in the UK or the US. Did anyone read the blog post before responding to it? Has anyone called Sierra Nevada to tell them they do not understand what a modern porter and stout are? How did they take the news?
I read the blog.
Three of us!
dmtaylor, there isn’t a modern day equivalent to the original brown malt. Do you use the modern brown malt in your porter and/or stout?
I have made my own brown malt before – it is not difficult. Daniels and Mosher provide guidance in their books. Not sure how historically accurate it actually tastes, but it’s not for a lack of effort. To me it tastes sort of like burnt toast. Think somewhere between dark Munich and chocolate malt. Yummy and complex in reasonably small amounts.
I’m all for that era (the brown malt era) of porter too. I actually brew two porter recipes - a porter with black malt and then a brown malt porter. Last year my black malt porter took silver at the NHC in the robust category. This year I entered my brown malt porter and it was the lowest scoring beer I’ve ever entered into the competition. The judges noted the breadiness as a flaw ::) and one of them thought that the breadiness was due to yeast problems. IMO the brown malt porter is better than the medal winning porter from last year (and more historically accurate), but that’s not what people think a porter should be anymore.
I’m not sure that I really have a point, but I will admit that the porter definition is somewhat screwed up. I could see the american categories of stout and porter being combined, as pointed out the modern commercial offerings are completely overlapping. Denny, beersk and I can continue to make our porters with black malt, our stouts with roasted barley and I will continue to keep my hops for stout.
This is a discussion that we should all have over a few pints of Entire Butt Porter (made with black, brown, chocolate, pale chocolate and roasted barley).
about the brown malt, i;ve made the fullers london porter a few times and love it- it has 1 1/2 lbs brown malt. i see no yum icon ???
I pretty much agree with Dave.
It’s all pretty arbitrary, and really, it is totally open to individual interpretation. The line between Porter and Stout these days is quite blurry anyway, and historically the line probably almost non-existant. And anyway, there is no one alive who can comment on the historical difference between the two (if there even really was a difference). The blog page referenced at the start of this thread is brilliant and spot on; with the well researched writings of Martyn Cornell and Ron Pattinson, it’s becoming clear how much heresay we’ve all swallowed with our beer all these years. And it’s refreshing to finally see some genuine beer history scholarship.
There is no final authoritative word on what the makeup is for any style (although the beer police I occasionally run into at my local hang may disagree…the same guys that lectured me on how Fuller’s ESB was not really an ESB. Uh, yeah…right, guys).
And Guinness Stout is a good example of how things evolve and mutate…evidently roasted barley wasn’t even part of the grist until well into the 20th century.
Best thing is to just make good beer according to what your own interpretation of a ‘style’ is. That’s what brewers have always done; they certainly never let artificial guidelines get in their way.
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In the end (maybe within some very broad parameters), a beer is pretty much whatever the brewer says it is.
I’ve had plenty of Porters made with roasted barley, and plenty of Stouts made without it.