Jason McGlone

I can’t remember what list I was looking at when I added Fuller’s London Porter to my brew wish list.  Not that that’s alarming or anything, but it came highly rated from somewhere.  So I bought a bottle from my typical beer haunt close to the home in Northern Kentucky.  The bottle’s somewhat impressive looking–it’s dignified, like so many motionless guards outside that castle thingy.

Since I’ve started this “trying new beers” thing, I’ve been looking at porters and stouts pretty closely.  They’re interesting beers.  I feel like I’ve figured out what it means for a stout to be a “good” stout, but porters are a completely different animal.  They’ve got a hue similar to stouts, and there’s that familiar bitterness between porters and stouts, but there’s a distinct difference between the two; porters tend to have a thinner consistency, as far as I can tell, and the “coffee bean” flavor isn’t as pronounced. 

London Porter, though, is as good an example of a porter as I’ve yet tried.  Which is to say, of the three or four I’ve had, Fuller’s London Porter seems to embody the characteristics of what a porter “should” be.  It’s the archetype, as I imagine it, the hub of the porter bicycle wheel, so to speak.  It’s creamy and simultaneously bitter and smooth.  Almost decadent.  Very good, as porters go.  Here’s the thing with these dark beers, though: it’s difficult for me to drink more than a couple–there’s just too much flavor going on with them all to make a whole night of them. 

 On the proprietary jasonmcglone.com “Crap to Superb Scale,” Fuller’s London Porter scores a Very Excellent.  I recommend it if you’re learning about beers and want to know what a porter should taste like.  It’s complex, but not so complex that you have to redefine what you know about beer (be it a little or, like me, almost nothing) in order to make yourself enjoy it.  You do, however, have to enjoy a little bitterness with all that dark beeritude you’re about to imbibe.  Hope you enjoy drinking a glass as much as I did.  Well done, Fuller’s.  But you probably knew that already, yeh bastards.