Beer of the week: Highland Oatmeal Porter

Highland Brewing Company was the first brewery in Asheville, N.C., and sold their first kegs in December 1994. Sixteen years later, North Carolina is now arguably the beer capital of the South, with several world-class breweries. And Asheville is the hub, featuring such notables as Highland, Pisgah and French Broad. It’s also home to one of the most popular beer festivals in the world, Brewgrass, which sells out every year months in advance. The state’s advanced beer culture was a major factor in it reforming its 6 percent ABV limit before Alabama, South Carolina, West Virginia or Mississippi.

Highland Oatmeal Porter is the only example of the style I’ve ever run across. It’s not even an officially recognized style by the Beer Judge Certification Program or the Great American Beer Festival. But oatmeal stout is a recognized style, and porters are very close to stouts in flavor and appearance, so I’m a little surprised that more breweries haven’t run with the idea of putting oats in porters.

Beers brewed with oats do not taste like oatmeal. Rather, the oats increase the body of the beer and give it a smooth, silky mouth feel due to their high content of proteins, lipids and gums. Highland does not advertise what percentage of Oatmeal Porter’s grain bill is made up of oats, but I suspect it’s less than the amount common in oatmeal stouts, since it’s a little lighter beer. I’d be surprised if it was more than 5 percent, but a little can go a long way.

Highland Oatmeal Porter is 5.8 percent ABV and hopped with Chinook, Willamette and Cascade. But the hops sit very much in the background on this one. The beer is a very dark brown, with just a bit of translucence that results in a ruby glow as light passes through. That’s when you can be sure you’re dealing with a porter, not a stout. The flavor is rich with a roasted character and some bittersweet, dark chocolate. There’s a little burnt-sugar caramel character underneath. It’s grounded with a solid bitterness and finishes dry with notes of dark chocolate. And this is all carried by that oatmeal smoothness.

Porter is a great style that sits in a gray area between brown ales and stouts. Some brown ales could pass for porters, and many porters could pass for stouts. It’s all very subjective, and brewers have a lot of leeway to classify their beers however they want. Highland Oatmeal Porter sits right in the middle of the style and pretty skillfully exemplifies the porter corner of the beer world. It would be fun (and educational) to pour this up next to a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout and compare and contrast them.

Oatmeal Porter would be perfect with some dark chocolate, but I also think it would go well with some mild smoked sausage.

“Hopped Up” is a weekly brew review by Danner Kline, founder of Free the Hops and co-organizer of the annual Magic City Brewfest. Send your feedback to danner@freethehops.org