Tap Room Testing Stouts and Porters

Finding New Stout and Porter Favs

Welcome to part 2 of testing stouts…and porters. When my sister, Jackie, came to town, we tested a few beers with my kit in my lab (kitchen), and we thought it might be fun to go mobile and hit up a tap room. In Portland, OR, it is quite easy to find a great microbrewery nearby. So I packed a few of my kits in ice and we ventured out to the Pearl District.

If you havn’t been to Portland, OR, please come! One of the best places to hang out, shop, get coffee or get a great beer on draft is in the Northwestern part of the city in an area know as the Pearl District. Just walking through you can quickly eyeball a few pubs worth spending some time in: 10 Barrel, Deschutes Public House and Rogue to name a few. Check out this interactive map for Pearl District pubs.

After jetting around the many fascinating shops and galleries, we landed at Rogue Ales Pearl Public House. A beautiful and modern facility, Rogue has humble beginnings, as many great breweries do, in a garage; in this case, in Ashland, OR. The Pearl Public house has its own roots as the first post-prohibition rum distillery. They offer an amazing number of beers on tap and produce fine whiskeys as well.

Tap Room Testing

A few pointers on testing in a tap room. The beers are frequently rotated across draft lines, there are some exceptions to this in that they will have dedicated lines for perhaps their flagship beers/ales. If you plan to visit a tap room with your own kit, be sure to ask if the line for the beers you are interested in are dedicated, and if not, when was the last time the line was cleaned. I would consider the test good for they day as this environment is not controlled the same way production bottled beer is. As a side note, I have visited many Irish pubs outside of Ireland and I continue to find that they have a dedicated line for Guinness and sometimes two. Kells pub in the Pear District is one such pub that offers a dedicated Guinness line.

Here we go…as I mentioned, stouts and porters are my favorite. Rogue has no shortage of offerings here. So we ordered a dark flight of: Shakespeare Stout, Mocha Porter, Hazelutely Choctabulous Stout & Ale, and Chocolate Stout. Ends up, testing Hazelutely Choctabulous was like testing 2 at once as it is a mix of Chocolate Stout and Hazelnut Brown Nectar Ale. It s known as a candy bar in a bottle – smooth truffle finish, fab!

Test Results

For each of the flight “shots” all of the beers yielded a negative result for <5ppm. See below, there are lines over the C and the O, but no line over the T. See the Test Kit page for more info.

Although this taproom testing is good for just one go-around, it really was a fun experience. My sister and I attracted a lot of attention when we started using the kit, especially when we broke out the pipette. Next time we plan to wear lab coats and see what other nerds we can attract to our testing world. Cheers everyone, and peace on earth for your holiday and New Year.

KJM