Stout

The colour of beer comes mainly from the grain. The more caramelised, roasted or darkly kilned malt the brewer uses, the darker the beer. CraftBeer.com of the Brewers Association expressly adds that colour does not equal alcohol content or mouthfeel. A quality guide of the Brewers Association for the trade also writes that colour sometimes suggests strength, but often wrongly.

The style guidelines show it in black and white. An Irish stout is black from dark roasted malt or barley, but according to the BJCP has 3.8–5.0% alcohol. A Belgian tripel is deep yellow to light amber and has 7.5–9.5%. The Brewers Association gives the same picture: a dry Irish stout has 4.1–5.3% at a colour of 80+ EBC (black), a tripel 7.1–10.1% at 8–18 EBC (pale). Such a stout does not have to be heavy either: the BJCP calls it remarkably smooth, with a medium-light to medium-full body.

Of course there are also dark beers that are strong, such as imperial stout (8–12% according to the BJCP). That is due to the amount of sugar that was fermented, not to the colour.

The name milk stout refers to lactose, that is, milk sugar. Brewers add it as a sweetener. Brewer's yeast does not ferment lactose, so the beer stays sweet and becomes fuller. The idea of adding lactose to stout was patented in 1908 by the English food chemist William Melhuish. In 1909 Mackeson's in Hythe brewed the first milk stout.

The name does not mean that milk goes in. A British newspaper wrote as early as 1949 that no milk was used in the making, but lactose: a sugar from whey. In the EU allergen list, lactose does fall under 'milk'.

Not every sweet stout contains lactose. The BJCP writes that it is often added, not that it always is. If you are lactose intolerant or drink vegan, take a look at the label.

The slogan 'Guinness is Good for You' belonged to the first official advertising campaign of Guinness, in 1929, made by the London advertising agency S.H. Benson. Employees asked in pubs why people drank Guinness. The answer was almost always: because it is good for you.

Guinness also wrote to doctors and got positive, but anecdotal, responses. People then thought it was rich in iron, and doctors prescribed it at the time, for example after an operation. The Royal College of Physicians, however, states that there is no solid evidence that drinking it improves your health. Guinness itself says it makes no medical claims. We did not find a reliable laboratory figure for the iron content of Guinness.

Milk stout, too, used to be advertised this way: as a tonic for the sick and for nursing mothers. Nowadays, in the EU, drinks with more than 1.2% alcohol may carry no health claims at all (Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006).

In the 18th and 19th centuries 'stout' was the name for a stronger porter; the word meant 'strong'. At Whitbread in London, porter and stouts were brewed from exactly the same raw materials in 1844; in 1805 only the double stout differed slightly in the types of malt. The difference lay in the amount of water, and so in the strength.

In the 20th century the roles reversed: around 1934 porter was called 'a variety of stout', a kind of stout, that is. By now the difference in strength has disappeared too. Some brewers make stouts that are lighter than their porters.

The BJCP style guide describes English porter as brown and Irish stout as black, and that helps with tasting. But beer historian Martyn Cornell found no sharp boundary in strength or flavour in a sample of 30 British porters and stouts.