I noted on the main blog recently that The Porterhouse celebrated thirty years as a Temple Bar pub and associated beer brand with a red ale, whereas normally these anniversaries are marked with a stout. It seems like an appropriate occasion to get out a bottle each of said stouts and see how they're faring.This is my only bottle of the 2016 Celebration Stout, the last and weakest beer to bear the name: down at 6.5% ABV from the original's 10% and the intervening versions' 7.5% and 7%. I have no faith in the pull-tab bottle cap's ability to keep oxygen out, hence didn't keep a substantial number of these. Still, it doesn't smell off, having a lovely vinous port aroma with overtones of dark chocolate and cork: proper vintage stout vapours. The chocolate is at the centre of the flavour, and is more prominent than the hard liquorice bitterness with which it led when fresh. Still no unpleasant oxidation in the taste, though there's a growing meaty quality, suggesting some autolysis may have occurred. It remains good clean fun, however, with a seriousness that belies its modest strength. Boozy fortified wine follows the chocolate, and there's a vegetal old-world hop bite too. Assertive bitterness was rare in stouts then, and it's rarer still today, so I really enjoyed finding one that does it properly. I will look doubly hard to see if I have a further bottle of this buried somewhere in the stash, because I think it will keep a little longer yet.
It's only four years since I last opened a bottle of the 2006 tenth anniversary stout, the full 10% ABV one, in the half-litre bottle. It also made an appearance for its own tenth birthday in 2016. In 2022 I deemed it probably past its best, so wasn't expecting much from this. Certainly, the appearance was disappointing, with no more than a desultory effort at a head. There's a strong hint of cardboard and sherry in the aroma, suggesting oxidation is fully under way, though I got some residual chocolate and burnt caramel as well. So the flavour was a surprise. It's very mellow, with no sharp edges or any strong bitterness. A wisp of bonfire smoke is as severe as it gets, but there's a surprise fruity element: the cherry and raisin of a dense and chewy Christmas cake. Behind it, a metallic mineral rasp where the hops are refusing to age out gracefully, plus a spark of firework or incense spices. This has taken an upturn in complexity and overall pleasantness since I last had it. Maybe there's something to this beer-ageing nonsense after all. I think there was just one bottle left in the box, and I won't be in a hurry to open it.I'll go out on a limb and suggest that it's because these were classically well-constructed stouts from a brewery that knows its way around the style backwards, that they're still both very good drinking, a decade or two after bottling. The Porterhouse doesn't make its own stouts any more, nor are any of its beers bottled and, as we've seen, it was a red ale for the 30th anniversary. That serves to make this pair extra precious. I'm glad they weren't disasters.
