I can trace my beer awakening to precisely a long 4th of July weekend in 1970, when we went with a Canadian couple to his parents log cottage/lodge on a 2-3 acre island they owned in the Thirty Thousand Islands of Georgian Bay in northern Lake Huron, Ontario. On the way up we bought a case of Molson Stock Ale and maybe a sixer of Molson porter.

More about the porter in a moment, but it was the stock ale that was the eye-opener (so to speak) for me. The scales fell from my eyes - this was beer! Copper colored, malty, hoppy, rich. Wow. I could never go home again - at least not to Schlitz, which was my beer of choice at the time. Unfortunately, it wasn't exported, so I had to do with Molson Export Ale, which still wasn't bad, but it wasn't the same. We made the trip across the Detroit River often until I started brewing a few years later.

Now the Molson porter - also very good. LaBatt's also made (and may still make?) "Velvet Cream Porter," which was a thin bodied, rather forgettable beer. The Molson was not like any porters we may make as homebrewers - no real roasted grain flavor. More like a Munich Dunkel. I wonder if they used Porterine or some similar caramelized concentrate to darken it, or Munich malt. As I recall, it was dark but not black, rich, caramelly, fairly sweet, but with some lightness of body that in retrospect I think came from corn. No particular bitterness. Maybe a little licorice. It was used in old North American porters. All in all, a good, interesting beer, if not my favorite style.

In his 1st edition of his Pocket Guide to Beer 1982, Perigee Books, later he went to Simon & Schuster), Michael Jackson gave it three stars. He mentioned that it was brewed only Molson's Barrie, Ontario brewery. The porter had disappeared by the 1991 edition. Jackson also gave 1-1/2 stars to LaBatt's porter, which is still brewed, and which he still scores the same. The Molson Stock Ale he gave the maximum 4 stars in 1982, but it fell to 2 stars by 1988. I don't know if it fell in quality or he considered. It retained 2 stars through the 6th edition, but isn't mentioned the latest (7th). He gave the Export Ale 3 stars in '82, but 2 stars in '88. It's only 1-1/2 stars in the 7th. How the mighty have fallen! The porter was 5% abv, which would correspond to 1.050 OG or so. I think if you used a base of Munich (N. American 6-row Munich, such as from Breiss, would be most authentic), some crystal and some corn (20-25%?), maybe a very little (1 oz)Carafa III or debittered black malt and some brewers licorice, you would get somewhere in the ballpark. Around 20 IBU bitterness, and no hop aroma.

A search for recipes for another old-style North American porter, Yuengling, might give you some clues. Here is a 1947 recipe from Nugey's Brewers Manual for 100 barrels of 1.052 porter (divide by 620 for a five gallon batch, or maybe by 600 to allow for a homebrewer's lower efficiency). I think it might be a little more robust than I remember Molson.

3300 lbs. 5-7L malt [this would be like Munich]
100 lbs. color malt
1075 lbs. caramel malt
1175 lbs. flaked maize
6 lbs. licorice
60 lbs domestic hops

Hope this helps.

Jeff

- --
Jeff Renner in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA,
JeffRenner@comcast.net
"One never knows, do one?" Fats Waller, American Musician, 1904-1943