Session #150 round-up: thoughts on stout and porter from around the world

We revived The Session for a one-off event to celebrate the work of the late Martyn Cornell, asking people to write something in response to his final book Porter & Stout. We were encouraged in this by Alan ‘A Good Beer Blog’ McLeod whose. We don’t ‘own’ The Session, and neither does he, but we do seem to be equally keen on making it happen from time to time. More on that at the end. Alan’s own entry for the session, like several others, finds an ‘in’ to an intimidatingly large book through the personal: Alan is in the index and is cited in a section about ‘Sand Porter’. He writes: I don’t think I have ever written all that much about porter. But apparently once upon a time I did. And it illustrates a point about the obsessive completeness that is found in the book. The reference in the index is to a passage about “Sand Porter” where I am quoted as suggesting a certain etymology for the phrase. I have no idea that I ever said such a thing. But Martyn also quotes Gary Gillman with an…