Hey Porter, Hey Porter

I grew up in the wrong era.  Fedoras, Big Band music, and travel by train would have been more my style.  I traveled by train twice when I was a child.  Once to New Orleans and once to Minnesota.  I traveled again in Europe when in college.  It was an enjoyable experience that took you through some of the more scenic routes of both our country and in Europe.  While on the train to Minnesota, I vividly remember the porter.  The porter was an employee of the railroad on the train who was there to serve the people in whatever fashion and was there to move things, hoist things, and to help.

Johnny Cash sang the song, "Hey, Porter," in which he asks the porter how much longer before "we cross the Mason Dixon line," and to tell the engineer to slow it down,  because he wants to "take a stop and look around."

So, we come to the porter beer, so named for both its strength and, as lore has it, usually enjoyed by the porters.  Porters who worked the docks loading and unloading.  I can't do anything about the era I was born in (well, I do have a fedora), but I can do one thing:  enjoy a porter beer.

London, it appears, is the home of porters.  I must confess, I have really enjoyed porters since last May because it was the first beer I brewed at the house. I brewed it for two reasons:  the taste of the sample at the brew house, and the experts said start with a dark beer when you begin brewing.  In order to see if I had developed a porter of quality,  I went to Spec's to find porters that would give me a sample when mine was ready.  I chose Samuel Smith Taddy Porter.

We've sampled the Samuel Smith Brewery before in previous reviews, but the porter was my first from this brewery from England.   The porter is, including the one I brewed, very dark, almost impenetrable by light, giving it almost a stout-like appearance.  The taste is different from the stout, however, in that it has little "hoppy" flavor to it.  According to Smith, the porter was first brewed in the 18th century (1700s), and given the audience it was named for, may have been a working man's ale. 

Because I grew up near the port of Houston, worked on it periodically, and lived in a working man's neighborhood, I think I developed a fondness for it when I learned its history. If the review is based on its taste, then I have to confess it has quickly become one of my favorites.  I can certainly say the Samuel Smith Taddy Porter is one worth trying.  Mine was too, of course.

If you hear of a way to travel back in time, let me know.  My decades are calling me.

Ordinary Average Guy

So sang Joe Walsh once in a song .  So, in this new year, I've taken up what appears to be an activity that you look at and say, "Brew review?  Doesn't that come to you like breathing?  What's to review?"

The truth is that conducting a search in Google to find an estimate or exact number of beers available to the average guy is not easy.  Sure, you can find top rated beers or bottom dwellers, but not an exact number of beers out there.

So, if you couple that fact that the amount of beer available is limitless and divide that times a limited amount of time on earth, you begin to see that the average guy, limited by time on earth and a large number, needs to have some kind of funnel to narrow the search.  To exacerbate the problem (make matters worse if you live in East Texas), you are probably like me in that you have an average salary in your average life that can only be spent on so much.  That means, perish the thought, a limited amount to spend on what appears to be a limitless supply.

To the point, Average Guy Beer Review is committed to steering you in the right direction when it comes to beer.  That means highlighting beers you may not know about and informing you on some you may have heard of.  Now, since all tastes are not the same, my taste may not equal your taste, which means my analysis may not be yours, but that is what is cool about the world of beers and brewing.  We learn to exist on the same planet with different tastes.

So, Average Beer Guy and the average guy who writes it is committed to you the loyal reader and to those who may be new to the site:  analysis that is friendly to the reader, not complicated; helping you in your selection of beers from across the country and globe; providing some good reads for just before bedtime to help you doze off; and, hopefully to bring us together in the world of brews.

Hope you had a Hoppy New Year with some of your favorites.  We did here.

Average Beer Guy