St. Peter's Old-Style Porter

[old faithful]

Found this in an Ottawa LCBO but have not yet seen it in Toronto.

This is the real thing: the label announces it is blend of young and old ales, and as we know porter started by being a blend of beers.

There is a rich brown ale flavour, not sweet but what used to be called "luscious". Complex, not too hoppy but with a pleasant lupulin edge and a light acid note that adds balance. It is super fresh and very digestible. It is the perfect counterpart to O'Hara's Stout, its younger cousin, in that dry stout evolved from London porter. St. Peter's Old-Style Porter is really a strong mild ale, if that is not an oxymoron; it is in a word what the first porters were. Possibly those early beers were lightly smoky from wood-kilned malt. Later porters (1800's) often had a dash of licorice flavour. St. Peter's eschews such "refinements" but strikes me as a classic 19th century-type ale nonetheless.





<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: old faithful on 2004-02-12 08:08 ]</font>

[Wheatsheaf]

It's an interesting beer. I would agree that it's a bit hard to pin down stylistically--more Old Ale than Porter, maybe. It's almost like a younger, easier-drinking version of something like Gale's POA. The aroma is great, but I think the flavour is a bit thin in comparison.

It's obvious that unique packaging keeps bringing back St. Peter's beers to the LCBO. The beers are generally decent, give or take, but out of the dozen or so that I've tried there really isn't one that stands out as a great beer that I would want to try more than once or twice. Just my opinion...

[old faithful]

Fair comments. I agree this is somewhat like a weaker old ale, but that is what the first porters were. They were brewed "entire" to emulate the blends of strong and mild brown ales, sometimes with an amber or pale ale thrown in, that were drawn in the pub from different casks. They were dark brown in hue. Porter was relatively light-bodied. It was the extra strong (stout) version that evolved into the Guinness Extra Stout style. Porter strengths from my historical reading were around what St. Peter's is, 5% or a bit higher. There were extra, double, foreign and Russian stout variations, all progessively stronger, which we still have today. When dry stout became black-coloured (this is a separate story) I think the colour influenced people who still wanted to do a porter. E.g., Anchor Steam Beer's or Sierra Nevada's black porters are very good but always struck me as more of an English stout-type beer (richer, sweeter and darker in hue than than porter was originally). All this to say, the St. Peter's is a good session porter, and I think that is what porter was originally, a drink with good flavour but (to allow a certain consumption) not too rich, too bitter or too strong.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: old faithful on 2004-02-14 13:13 ]</font>

[esprit]

With all due respect Wheatsheaf, the packaging brought them back for the first couple of years but what brings them back now is consistently good sales and consumer acceptance that St. Peter's is actually a pretty good brewery considering the large variety of products they produce. I'll agree that many of their beers would not be near the top of the list of best of that style from the UK, however, as someone who represents a lot of UK breweries I can tell you that few breweries are as consistently good across numerous styles as is St. Peter's. The brewery receives dozens of e-mails from Ontarians singing the praises of their brews, many from ex-pats who have never heard of them before, so they're doing something right.

[borderline_alcoholic]

I am quite impressed with the St Peter's Old-Style Porter. Indeed, it is my favourite imported Porter within the Ontario market.

I also have a strong suspicion that the 18th Century bottle design replicated by St Peter's actually serves a more functional than ornamental purpose (although I am sure that it is being used in this instance primarily for marketing reasons). Try refridgerating a St Peter's beer and then pouring it by holding the bottle vertical into an upright pint-glass. It seems to fill the glass perfectly, with a very pleasing head, highly remiscent of a gravity-dispensed cask ale.

I strongly suspect that it is the more standard bottles of today that have come about for reasons of marketing and aesthetic shelf-display attention-grabbing purposes. Ironic therefore, that nowadays a much older (and IMHO more functionally sound) bottle design is the marketing ploy...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: borderline_alcoholic on 2004-02-14 19:47 ]</font>