Thursday 19 October 2017

Deutscher Porter

I was most surprised when I discovered that Porter was brewed in the DDR. Excited, too, when I got to drink some.

While you couldn't find it in every corner shop, it was brewed in small quantities by a large number of breweries. Which is sort of what I'm trying to prove here.

These are just the labels I own. I've seen lots of others from different breweries. There must have been at least 25-30 producing it in the DDR. As far as I'm aware, it was usually top-fermented. I wonder why they all disappeared after reunification?












7 comments:

Benedikt Rausch said...

There are a lot of information about Deutscher Porter in the Groterjan Document ( https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/andreasdotorg-bucket/Groterjahn-Doerfel.pdf ).
It was made with a mixed culture of Sacc and Brettanomyces that was co pitched. Also around 17-18 °P with a lot of munich malt and some caramel malt and sirup and Roasted malt. Relatively cold fermented and ripened in 19 Liter kegs for 45 days (they would like to age it more but where constrained.)
For the next Carnival I will make one.

Cheers
Benedikt

Tilman Baumann said...

My local brewery in Karlsruhe the Höpfner Brewery produces a Porter.
Bottom fermented. And not worth the bother, if you ask me. But not everybody agrees with me. :)

Elektrolurch said...

Did they all dissappear? http://www.privatbrauerei-schwerter.de/dunkle-biere#porter https://www.bergquell-porter.de/porter-familie/strong-porter/

Anonymous said...

Based on what you have tried, how did German Porters compare to UK porters? Any close matches or are they pretty different?

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

they were really Stouts. Along the lines of Baltic Porter.

Ron Pattinson said...

Elektrolurch,

interesting. I'd love to try that.

Elektrolurch said...

Ron, I tried them, it has been a few years tough, the Meissner Porter was then called "German Porter",don't know if they changed the beer or only the label. I remember both being comparable to weaker baltic Porters youll find in Poland, like Okocim Porter, though not as good as something like Pradubice Porter.