patto1ro

Recipes 

Roast barley wasn't allowed in beer in Britain before 1880. A brewer caught using would have been fined and could have had his equipment confiscated. Guinness didn't start using roast barley until the 1930's.

The only difference historically between Porter and Stout was the amount of water used. Otherwise the recipes were identical.

Stout is just the name for strong Porter. All Stouts are Porters, but not all Porters are Stouts.

aaronbeach

Recipes 

I think most (modern/american/craft) beer drinkers tend to share an intuitive sense of where porter leaves off and stout picks up (however I may be wrong here).

I'd say the dividing line between porter and stout tends to be agreed upon nowadays in terms of how roasted the beer is and not so much in terms of gravity. Hence an Imperial Porter still makes sense as long as its not overly roasted in taste. The use of roasted barley is a dead give-away for a stout, but even heavy-ish usage of black patent at a certain point just needs to be called a stout.

So I'd say the dividing line between porter and stout is in the human perceived "roasty-ness" of the beer - with Stout being more roasted and porters less.

gointomexico

Recipes 

The difference to me is that one starts with an s, the other one with a p.

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"Once Pastor pulled out of his brief-case a 9 MM pistol to evict an unwanted heckler. Does this mean if you do not respect and obey Pastor Arnold Murray, he will kill you?" http://www.thegodmurders.com/id81.htmlMay 29, 2009

djfriesen

Recipes 

As soon as I saw it was a thread started by BP, I knew it was gonna be a zombie.

gointomexico

Recipes 

Its cus of that damn internets and the Google search, heh.

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"Once Pastor pulled out of his brief-case a 9 MM pistol to evict an unwanted heckler. Does this mean if you do not respect and obey Pastor Arnold Murray, he will kill you?" http://www.thegodmurders.com/id81.htmlMay 29, 2009