1861 Running Porter, Orbit

1861 Running Porter 5.3% Orbit/Anspach & Hobday

Two South London brewers, Anspach & Hobday and Orbit Beers, have combined forces to produce a Porter based on a Victorian recipe.

Paul Spraget and Greg Stork, head brewer and lead brewer at Orbit joined Paul Anspach and his lead brewer Dan Gambino to brew 1861 Running Porter (5.3 per cent) at Orbit’s plant in Walworth in April. They were inspired by the tradition of storing and serving beer from wooden casks.

The beer is based on the “running beers” of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, which indicated fresh, young beers served as soon as brewing was completed. They were different to the “keeping beers” of the time, which meant ales that were stored in wood for weeks and months to develop maturity and flavours imparted by oak and wild yeasts trapped in the wood.

1861 Running Porter is based on a recipe for Truman’s Running Stout: the strongest version of Porter was known as Stout Porter, later reduced simply to Stout. The beer is brewed with pale, brown and black malts with English-grown Bullion and Chinook hops and fermented with Lallemand London ESB yeast.

The beer is walnut brown in colour with aromas of malted milk biscuits, chocolate and hazelnut and a hint of freshly-cut grass from the hops. There’s velvety malts, milk chocolate and caramel sweetness on the palate with a soft, bitter finish and light carbonation.

The breweries have held back the final batch of the beer that will be aged in wood and served at a later stage as 1861 Keeping Porter.

The bottled version of the beer can be bought from Orbit, £28.50 for a box of 12, £54 for a box of 24.

www.orbitbeers.shop/collections/white-label-series/products/1861-running-porter