It may come as a shock but the most popular beer style today is not lager or India Pale Ale but stout.

Last year sales of Guinness overtook those of Carling and many brewers, large and small, have jumped on the fast-moving stout bandwagon.

To prove the point, I was pleasantly surprised to discover in Budgens the grand-daddy of all black beers, Guinness Foreign Extra Stout.

In spite of the word "export" in the title it’s a beer not often seen in this country but, to add to the delight, it’s also available in Morrisons.

FES (7.5 per cent), as it’s known to its devotees, is sold throughout the world and is a major brand in Africa – Guinness claims it’s the biggest-selling beer in that vast continent.

In the 19th century Arthur Guinness in Dublin became the biggest brewer in Ireland but as the population was small he looked abroad for additional sales.

In 1801 he brewed a special version of his porter – porter was the junior version of stout – that he first called West Indies Porter and was sent to Irish people working in the sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

The success of the beer in a growing number of countries led to it being renamed Foreign Extra Stout. In the 20th century, Guinness entered the African market and in the 1960s it built a brewery in Nigeria at a cost of £2 million and an annual output of 150,000 barrels.

Today more than 4.5 million hectolitres of FES are sold in Africa every year. There are half a dozen Guinness breweries in the continent and FES is brewed in several other African countries in association with the French Castel group.

The version of FES on sale here is brewed in the conventional manner in Dublin but a different system is used in Africa.

As barley doesn’t grow in many parts of the continent, brewers there make a pale beer using sorghum or maize.

This is blended with syrup sent from Dublin that has been mashed and boiled with hops and then dehydrated.

To replicate the character of 19th century porters and stouts that were aged in wood for several months, FES is injected with a lactic yeast culture that gives the finished beer a slightly sour note that is balanced by roasted grain, dark fruits and liquorice with spicy notes from the hops. A bottle in Budgens costs £2.49.

To prove the point that porters and stouts are enjoying great popularity, the Anspach & Hobday craft brewery in Bermondsey, South-east London reports that its London Black porter is now its top-selling beer.

It has launched a 4.4 per cent version in a can that’s a nitro beer. This means, in common with canned regular Guinness, the can contains a widget: when the can is opened, the widget is activated and releases a small amount of nitrogen gas into the beer.

The result is a smooth and creamy beer with aromas and flavours of roasted grain, herbal and floral hops and rich notes of chocolate and coffee from the dark grain.

London Black is accompanied by a stronger beer, The Porter 2024 (6.7 per cent), brewed to celebrate 10 years of brewing in Bermondsey.

It’s a rich and powerful beer made with pale, amber, black and chocolate malts and hopped with Cascade and East Kent Goldings varieties.

Both beers can be bought online at www.anspachandhobday.com. Even better, they can be sampled in draught form at the brewery’s taproom, the Arch House, 118 Druid Street, London SE1.

The taproom is not far from London Bridge station. I enjoyed a beer or two there and can recommend a visit and a taste of beers that made London famous in the 18th and 19th centuries and inspired Arthur Guinness in Dublin to set out on the road to world-wide success.