Stout and porter are dark beers made using roasted malts or roast barley. There are a number of variations including Baltic porter, sweet stout and Imperial stout.

Originally, the adjective "stout" meant "proud" or "brave", but later, after the fourteenth century, "stout" came to mean "strong." The first known use of the word stout about beer was in 1677, the sense being that a stout beer was a strong beer.