“Would you believe it, though water is to be had in abundance in London and of fairly good quality, absolutely none is drunk? The lower classes, even the paupers, do not know what it is to quench their thirst with water. In this country nothing but beer is drunk, and it is made in several qualities. Small beer is what everyone drinks when thirsty; it is used in even the best houses and costs only a penny a pot. Another kind of beer is called porter, meaning carrier, because the greater quantity of this beer is consumed by the working classes. It is a thick and a strong beverage, and the effect it produces, if drunk in excess is the same as that of wine; this porter costs threepence the pot. In London there are a number of alehouses, where nothing but this beer is sold. . . . It is said that more grain is consumed in England for making beer than for making bread.” i
This observation by a French visitor to London in 1726, neatly summarises the significance of Porter. As a drink it was ubiquitous and its sheer ubiquity placed it ideally to be the eighteenth century’s crucial agent of change. Unquestionably Porter was the most important style in the history of beer, if not the most significant beverage in the history of modern civilisation.