Stout Colour

[Sandimas]

I've always thought of Stouts as black beers but notice that some recipes have a range of colours.

Juts bottled the GH Oatmeal Stout this morning and it's decidedly dark brown, I upped the original recipe colour a tad to 47 EBC and thought it looked a bit light, should've used some black malt I suppose.

Sample tastes great but I'm drinking it with my eyes and well as my mouth and the colour is a but off-putting. What do others think?

 

[Clint]

Stout originally meant strong but I get what you mean. It's like a BIPA ..or a dark lager....totally unexpected if you haven't been forewarned.

 

[MmmBeer]

On a recent visit to a local brewery I noticed that they produce a White Stout. The power of Google shows it's quite a common idea.


Don't expect this though.

 

[Sadfield]

Either, or. Presumably, stouts and porters were originally brown from being brewed with old style (diastatic) Brown Malt.

 

[Madhouse]

Stumbled across this while trying to work out if there was a difference between a stout and a porter. As Clint says, stout originally just meant strong, so in theory you would have had a stout porter as well as a stout pale. Skip forward a century or two and we associate stout with colour rather than strength and have to google if there's a difference between a stout and porter.

 

[Covrich]

If you cold steep the malts you get less colour, they can be like coca cola rather than jetblack

 

[phildo79]

I think the popularity and abundance of Guinness has helped the notion that stout should be black (even though Guinness is ruby red, apparently). Either way, it's what we expect nowadays. So when we get a white stout (which is usually a pale, **** brown colour), we do what everyone does and take our first bite with our eyes. And this can have a negative impact on our perception of the beer.

Someone recommended ABC Flat White stout to me and I wish I had ignored him. Not only did it look unappealing, it tasted pretty crap as well. But he liked it...

 

[An Ankoù]

On a recent visit to a local brewery I noticed that they produce a White Stout. The power of Google shows it's quite a common idea.


Don't expect this though.

I've heard of this one. Milk stout, isn't it?

 

[Cwrw666]

In the 1800s there was no difference between porter and stout (stout porter actually) other than it's strength. Then the government changed the tax system - it used to be on the ingredients and so it was illegal to use anything but malt and hops in beer. Then they changed it so that a brewer could use anything in beer and the tax was on the beer, not the ingredients. So breweries shovelled roast barley in instead of roast malts as it was cheaper. And that's why we think stout should be black.

 

[HoppyTommy]

I think the popularity and abundance of Guinness has helped the notion that stout should be black (even though Guinness is ruby red, apparently). Either way, it's what we expect nowadays. So when we get a white stout (which is usually a pale, **** brown colour), we do what everyone does and take our first bite with our eyes. And this can have a negative impact on our perception of the beer.

Someone recommended ABC Flat White stout to me and I wish I had ignored him. Not only did it look unappealing, it tasted pretty crap as well. But he liked it...

I can confirm it is ruby red. My mate at Uni drank about 10 pints of Guinness one St Patrick's day and vomited in spectacular style. We all thought it was blood initially but one slightly more seasoned drinker pointed out the ruby red nature of Guinness!!!

 

[simon12]

In the 1800s there was no difference between porter and stout (stout porter actually) other than it's strength. Then the government changed the tax system - it used to be on the ingredients and so it was illegal to use anything but malt and hops in beer. Then they changed it so that a brewer could use anything in beer and the tax was on the beer, not the ingredients. So breweries shovelled roast barley in instead of roast malts as it was cheaper. And that's why we think stout should be black.

That's slightly different to the story I got somewhere. My version is porter was made from brown malt until they realised (when the hydrometer was invented) that it was cheaper to use the more expensive pale malt and add roast barley (tax free). Very quickly HMRC banned unmalted (tax free) grains so they used roast malt instead.