The porter predates the IPA, the pale ale, and most of the styles that currently define British beer culture. It was the dominant drink of eighteenth-century London — dark, roasted, sustaining — and it was already well-established as a style when Samuel Smith Old Brewery opened in Tadcaster in 1758. The Porter Beer from Samuel Smith is a continuation of that tradition: deep brown-black, chocolate-malt body, roasted coffee notes, smooth medium body at 5.1% ABV. It is a beer made by one of Yorkshire’s oldest breweries in a style older than the brewery itself, which gives it a provenance that most dark beers cannot claim. If you are British and living in Tokyo and the Friday pub night calls for something dark and considered, the Samuel Smith Porter is the bottle that belongs in that conversation.
Yorkshire’s traditional English porter, from 1758
Samuel Smith Old Brewery was founded in 1758 in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire — Yorkshire’s oldest brewery, independently owned, operating on the original site with the same Yorkshire Stone Squares slate fermentation system the brewery has always used. The Stone Squares are credited with producing the smooth, slightly creamy mouthfeel that characterises Samuel Smith ales and dark beers, a texture that results from the particular yeast behaviour in the traditional slate vessels rather than from any modern process. The Porter Beer is the brewery’s expression of the English porter tradition — a style that emerged in London in the early eighteenth century and that breweries across Britain maintained through the industrial era.
The English porter sits between a brown ale and a stout in character: darker than the former, lighter than the latter, with chocolate-malt body providing the dominant flavour and roasted coffee notes adding depth without the sharpness of a full stout. The pour is deep brown-black and the medium body is smooth rather than heavy, which allows the chocolate and coffee notes to carry the flavour without the beer becoming dense across a full glass. At 5.1% ABV, the Porter sits at an accessible strength — substantial enough for the occasion, manageable enough for the Friday evening that extends past its original endpoint.
How Samuel Smith Porter Beer [ 355 ml x 24 Bottles ] is drunk at home
Cheers, mate! (CHEERZ-MAIT) — the British toast, at the pub and at the kitchen table with equal reliability. Bottoms up! when the glass is nearly done; Down the hatch! when the round has arrived faster than expected. For a dark porter from Yorkshire’s oldest brewery, Cheers, mate sets the right tone — direct, unpretentious, and followed by a longer first sip than the standard round receives.
In the UK, a porter at 5.1% with chocolate-malt and roasted coffee character belongs to the Friday pub night’s more considered end — the beer ordered by the person who wants something dark and smooth rather than the session bitter or the standard lager. The Sunday roast is where the Porter earns its most natural food pairing: the chocolate-malt body alongside roast beef and the caramelised edges of a Yorkshire pudding, the roasted coffee note cutting through the richness of the gravy, the smooth medium body carrying the meal without requiring a lighter beer to precede it. A ploughman’s lunch works in a different register — the mature cheddar alongside a dark beer with coffee and chocolate notes is a combination that pub food has sustained for as long as ploughman’s have been served, the salt and the fat of the cheese finding the roasted depth of the porter directly. Fish and chips is a lighter pairing than the porter strictly demands, but the salt of the chips and the clean fat of the battered fish provide the neutral backdrop against which the chocolate and coffee notes come forward clearly.
Premier League football on a Saturday afternoon tends to run on standard lager, but the Samuel Smith Porter is the beer that appears when someone at the table decides the afternoon has earned something with more depth than the opening round provided.
How to drink it in Japan
The Samuel Smith Porter is a cold-season beer in Japan — November through March — when the chocolate-malt body and the roasted coffee character suit the temperature and the slower pace of winter evenings. It is also the beer most suited to the British occasions that gather the community in Tokyo as the year closes: Bonfire Night on November 5, Christmas, the year-end dinners that mark December as different from the months that preceded it.
At 7-Eleven, try it alongside a chocolate cornetto or a dark chocolate bar — the roasted coffee note in the Porter and the bitterness of dark chocolate find each other directly, the smooth medium body of the beer providing a rounded close to each bite. For a composed pairing at home, serve it with nikujaga — the Japanese meat-and-potato stew braised in soy and mirin — where the slightly sweet, reduced soy broth and the collapsing potato find a counterpart in the chocolate-malt sweetness and the roasted depth of the Porter. The pairing follows the same logic as a Sunday roast alongside a dark beer: a slow-cooked, slightly sweet braised meat dish meeting a beer with enough roasted character to deepen the combination rather than simply accompany it.
Samuel Smith Porters appear in Tokyo’s specialist import shops occasionally, but not with the consistency that a case purchase from Omori Mart provides. By the case — 355ml × 24 bottles — the per-bottle cost is considerably more accessible than on-trade pricing, and the case covers a British winter in Tokyo from first cold evening to last.
Get Samuel Smith Porter Beer [ 355 ml x 24 Bottles ] delivered in Japan
Samuel Smith Porter Beer [ 355 ml x 24 Bottles ] is available from Omori Mart, delivered nationwide across Japan.
- Free shipping on orders over ¥15,000
- Pay at FamilyMart, 7-Eleven, or Lawson — or by bank transfer or card
- Nationwide delivery to any address in Japan
Rakuten and Amazon Japan do not carry this label. Omori Mart is where British residents in Japan find the Samuel Smith range in full — including the porter that carries a tradition older than the brewery itself.
[Shop Samuel Smith Porter Beer →]
http://omorimart.com/product/samuel-smith-porter-beer-355-ml-x-24-bottles/
Cheers, mate in Tadcaster, where Samuel Smith Old Brewery has been fermenting in the same stone squares since 1758 in a style that London invented a generation before that, and kanpai at a Tokyo table in December — deep brown-black, chocolate and roasted coffee, smooth to the finish.
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