Titanic Plum Porter 4.9% abv

Anyone fancy a pint? A series of occasional beer reviews

It’s been a bloody tough week at work and finally Friday has come around. A whole weekend to read, write, think, kick back, and sample a legendary ale which I’ve not sampled before. Last weeks beer review compared the difference between Guinness Nigerian stout with the Irish original. Today I’m having a taste of Titanic Brewery’s porter.

What’s the difference between a stout and a porter? According to Des de Moor’s encyclopedic book Cask “the short answer is that there isn't one, as no distinction is consistently applied. […] Porter is the earlier and more inclusive term, with stout porter used for the stonger varients, eventually shortened to simply stout. […] What all these beer have in common is the use of darker,  roasted malts like brown, chocolate, and black malts, and sometimes roasted unmalted barley, alongside pale malts.  They give a very dark brown or near-black colour, often with ruby highlights, and a distinct roasted flavour, often with suggestions of chocolate and coffee.” This makes sense as coffee beans are also roasted. I have to say that some brewers offer a white stout; perhaps a novelty and despite sampling a few I can’t report favourably despite good intentions. Maybe it’s a visual thing with the expectation that porters and stouts are black beers. I even tried closing my eyes when tasting. Oh well.

Keeping with Des de Moor, Titanic’s brew “adds natural plum flavouring to a beer darkened with dark crystal malt and hopped with English Pilgrim and Goilding, German Herkules and Slovenian Celeia.” Titanic Brewery was founded in that great centre of English brewing expertise, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1985, and Plum Porter is their best-seller. From small beginnings the brewery is now producing up to 4 million pints per year. This is the power of real ale in bottle and cask.

Let’s give it a go as a Suffolk sunset darkens the county and my door remains open to welcome the chattering of pyes and shrieks of gulls with the scents of an English summer evening drifting in mid-July. This review is of the 500 ml bottle variety; rest assured that it is also available in cask. Order a pint if it’s on offer in your local as it’s well worth a try. Please note that this is a beer which divides opinion, some calling it the dog’s bollocks and others more circumspect. Apparently it’s big in the homeland of the Midlands.

The porter pours a deep-red into the glass with a nose of plummy fruit as advertised, floral, high-cocao chocolate, a touch of wood smoke. The head is large and foamy but doesn’t prevail. Low carbonation but aslo spritzy and with minimal lacing.

On the palate it’s well-rounded, fruity, the plum is present and correct, a hit of spicy bitterness and the hops really come through. The fruity sweetness doesn’t predominate and is well-balanced with the hoppy bitterness; I’m not getting as much initial bitter bitterness as from a pint of Adnams Southwold or Mauldons Mole Trap but it comes on later. Light yeast and a touch of caramel. The overall body is not that solid compared with some other dark porters/stout; it’s fairly light for a dark beer which might account for its popularity. The aftertaste is a fruity vapour-trail ending in an astringent and lasting bitterness in the mouth and fruit remnant. Perhaps too astringent but it puckers the mouth in anticipation of another pint. 

I really like this; it’s so well balanced and the fruit notes taste natural.

I want to try this ale in cask as there is usually a noticable difference between fresh and bottled.

Cheers!