Porters are a style developed on the gloomy overcast streets of London, England. It’s a dark style beer utilizing dark brown malts. It is usually well hopped creating a fantastic combination of roasty malts and some great hop notes. With winter just around the corner it’s all about the roasted malts and dark style brew. Grab some porters and stouts, lock yourself inside and crank the heating up. It is going to be  a long winter ahead and these dark styled beers are usually a staple for this season. I personally love my porters. Of course one of my favorites is Hill Farmstead Everett along with the more shelf porters Founders Porter and Deschutes Black Butte Porter. But there are some very fine porters coming out of this cold yet great province of Quebec. I personally would love to see Auval Brewing unleash a porter, the Auval Guerilla Stout was an absolute stunner, I can only imagine what Ben would do with a porter. Below I am covering three of my favorite porters from Quebec, all from well known breweries, and easy to find on shelfs. 

Dieu Du Ciel Chemin Du Croix
Imperial Porter || ABV: 7.5% || IBU: –
January 14 2016 || Drank: April 11 2016

Chemin du Croix is one of Dieu Du Ciel’s Momentum releases, released for a month every year during the month of February. However, if you go to some of the less popular stores you can still find them on shelfs. Porters are much better enjoyed fresh but they do have a great shelf life aswell. And this beer is absolutely fantastic. It is full of roasted malts and strong pleasant rustic flavours. Although it lends to some strong flavours it’s a very smooth porter for a 7.5% ABV. The taste sends off great notes of toffee, coffee, and cacao. The coffee notes seem to be a lot more prominent as compared to it’s other flavour counterparts, but it makes for an amazingly roasted porter with in your face flavours. Just checked the rating and it’s no surprise to me that it is highly rated. Really loving this beer. I do feel a little sense of a strenght overtime, but still greatly enjoyable and still going down very smoothly.

4/5

Dunham Lapatt Porter
Porter || ABV: 6.0% || IBU: 62

Dunham, is one brewery that I have learned to love quiet a bit. Their experiments and the year round beers almost always go down in my books are some very good damn brew. This porter is one that I crave almost everytime I see it on the shelfs. If it weren’t for my depleting wallet, I would like stock up on a 12 pack of these bad boys. It has intense notes of coffee mixed with chocolate and a serene roastyness. Lapatt porter has very mixed flavours that step up like a ladder. It is not a mixture rather each note hits you one at a time in a very fast stepped staircase. The nose is hard to tell due to my stuffy nose. It is a very fantastic porter. Not too much of a heavy body or a heavy mouthful and not light bodied either, it is a perfect middle ground. Along with the notes it has a slight rustic hint, but subtle enough. I don’t mind it if it is strong, but when it is light like with this beer, it allows you to really appreciate the roasted malts a lot more.

4.25/5

Pit Caribou La Gaspesienne
Porter || ABV: 6.2% || IBU: 21

My experience with Pit Caribou started with mostly IPAs and PAs but in recent times I’ve been trying to explore some of their other styles. And of course their porters were on my radar. After having a batch of infected La Huit, I was a bit hesitant about this beer. It says robust and certainly the aroma it gives off is very robust! It is a very nice combination of roasted malts and rustic aromas. I taste very light notes of roasted malts, coffee and chocolate. But it’s a bit thin and light bodied, as if there is a black hole within the beer that’s created a void. It is very unexpectedadly light, but the flavours are very nice. A lot of porters are not always mid to heavy bodied, majority of them are centered around being light bodied. But many also tend to lean to far to being thin, and that can be a turn off for me.

Although light bodied, you still expect a lot more flavours from a porter, and in terms of that, it is’nt very potent or strong. Which maybe some may like, but I enjoy my porters to be stronger and more powerful on the flavour.

3.75/4

Written by HopCitizen. Photography by HopCitizen.