336: Reimagining London Porter and Stout with the Kernel’s Evin O’Riordain

The Kernel founder Evan O’Riordain embodies a few interesting contrasts—he’s an Irishman in London committed to shining a light on the city’s own dark beer past, and he’s a brewer in Britain who caught the craft bug after experiencing hop-forward beers in the United States—but it’s this dynamic range that drives and defines Kernel today. History is important, yet no modern techniques or ingredients are off the table, as the beers they make respect and reference the past without dogmatically recreating them. There’s no such thing as textual accuracy when ingredients have changed so much over the past 100 years. Every act of recreating an old recipe from original text is an act of interpretation, and what matters most now is connecting that past to where drinkers are today.

Over the past decade and a half, O’Riordain has focused particular energy on stout and porter, and we focus on that in this episode. Along the way, he covers:

embracing hops as a defining creative angle

helping rekindle London’s dark beer lineage

interpreting historical stout and porter recipes

using brown malt as a main signifier of “London flavor”

debunking the idea that British beers are less bitter

the history of East India porter

using whole-leaf hops for texture in dark and pale beers

fermenting historical styles with London and California ale yeast strains

And more.

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