We live in the Golden Age of craft beer in the US. Now that we have over 7000 active breweries we have more variety and experimentation going on than ever before. Today that experimentation seems to be rooted in the drive to find great new flavors and differentiate your brews in the crowded beer marketplace.

But beer innovations of a couple of hundred years ago were much more practical. It was things like making beer able to withstand long sea journeys or putting it into a cask in such a way that prevents infection. The brewers were concerned with way more back then. But one motive that provides endless fascination is that many great beer innovations were just trying to make beer more nutritious. In the modern era, we recognize beer as a vice meant to be enjoyed in moderation. But that wasn’t always the case throughout human history.

Porters and stouts started it all

Back before things like refrigeration and water treatment systems beer was seen as a safe source of calories and water. Thanks to its slight alcohol content and antiseptic hops. So it’s no surprise that many great beer innovators were trying to make this safe source of water as nutritious as possible. Porters and stouts share basically the same history.

Stouts are descendants of porters and these beers burst onto the London beer scene in the early 1700s as brewers were trying to differentiate themselves from all the sweet brown ales and new pale ales. This style was named after the loyal blue-collar customers, the street and river porters. Porter gave itself a full dose of bitter English hops to get away from the lightly hopped sweet brown ales. And was made from much cheaper and rougher dark malt. As opposed to expensive and delicately roasted pale malts that were new at the time.

It was these unique flavors and approachable price points that allowed porters and their close cousins stouts to come to dominate the beer industry in Britain and their Empire over the next 100 years. But like every other popular beer style, it wasn’t too long before the new challengers emerged to try and take that top spot.

How milk got into the picture and the beer

Porters and stouts weren’t just popular with London’s working men and pubs after a long day on the job. Their wives and mothers also enjoyed having cheap brews every now and again. And whether it was to cut through some of the bitterness or make beer drinking just a little bit healthier it was fairly common practice for women to mix porter with a little bit of milk for a delicious and relatively nutritious treat.

And some pubs would even mix you up a milk beer on request if you wanted something with a little more substance after work. Most notable of milk beer experiments was done by John Henry Johnson of Lincolns Inn Field who patented a nutritious version of the milk beer mixture in 1875. He envisioned a product that was brewed using barley, hops, and lactose, which is a byproduct of cheese making, and whey to make some sort of fermented milk beer hybrid. He never could really figure out how to get all the milk fats to properly integrate into beer.

So after failing to realize his dream the idea was taken up by two enterprising brothers. In 1907 the brother owners of Mackeson in Kent brewed a stout with just lactose this time and released it in 1909 to celebrate the 240th anniversary of brewing in their plant. In their initial marketing, they claimed that each pint contains the energizing carbohydrates of 10 ounces of dairy milk. This creamy and sweet stout was an instant hit with the drinking public.

How lactose influences the beer

Almost immediately the new beer had several imitators and after a few patent disputes the Mackeson company decided it would be easier to license the recipe to other brewers than battle every single copycat in court. This license team strategy actually proved quite lucrative for them and allowed the new style of beer to spread incredibly quickly across the British Isles and over into North America.

Lactose is a sugar molecule. It’s a very huge molecule. Because they are so big they are a tough energy source to tap into for many microbes. Lactose intolerance in humans is simply being unable to properly break down these molecules and energy and instead, they manifest themselves into painful symptoms.

Brewing yeast has a hard time breaking down lactose sugars to convert them into alcohol and CO2. So most of the lactose added by the brewer makes it into the final beer, allowing its sweet taste and lending extra body and creaminess.