Wednesday, November 16, 2011

A Short Guide to Beer


It usually happens like this: a conversation turns to a subject I happen to enjoy, beer.  The other people in said conversation say something along the lines of either a) “I don’t like beer,” or b) “I only like microbrews from strange and exotic locations that make less than a hundred gallons a year.”

For a judge, that is
one bad-ass mustache!
I can’t help but think that someone in this conversation is missing the point.  And I don't think it's me.  The other night at dinner a friend of mine commented, “I never liked beer before I met you. Then, I tried some Belgian beers, and I now I realize I just don’t like crappy beer.”
Exactly.  Beer can run the spectrum from crappy to great, like any other beverage in the world. 

In the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
"Deep-seated preferences cannot be argued about — you cannot argue a man into liking a glass of beer."  But I can try to convince you
that maybe, just maybe, you haven't given beer a fair shake, and maybe help you identify different styles of beer that you will like.

And despite the microbrew revolution which has created a fair number of great beers and raised the bar for beer quality around the world, the sheer production volume or geographic location of a brewery is not in absolute indicator of quality.  The only guides to what is good and what is not are your own senses.
So how do you make sense of beer, and find that delicious rose among the zymological thorns?
Why don’t we start with the understanding that beer is not a one-dimensional drink.  Rather, it’s two dimensional.  It can be neatly divided into either ale or lager, the difference lying in the yeast and (to a lesser but related extent) the fermentation temperature.  Ale yeast, which is essentially the same species as bread yeast, ferments ideally under warm temperatures, around 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit.  Lager yeast is a close relative that was discovered in northern Europe where brewers stored their beer in cold caves, and which can continue to ferment at temperatures that would cause ale yeast to go dormant, close to freezing.  Each kind of yeast lends a particular flavor to the beer, from the crisp, clean aftertaste of lager to the subtle fruitiness of ales, but for the most part, you’re either drinking ale or lager.  Figure out which one you prefer, and go from there.
Those of you who like nice, neat answers to problems should stop reading now and go have a beer.  The story hereafter gets very, very complicated. 

The primary difference from between ales and lager is the species of yeast
and the ideal fermentation temperature.

Within each category, there are nearly infinite permutations, from pales ales to stouts, from pilsner to schwartzbier, based on the ingredients and techniques used to brew.  And each style of beer can also boast dozens of variations, some sublime, some much less so, some down-right crappy.
To help make some sense of this, it might help to look at what beer is really made of.  Besides yeast, all beer is made from some kind of malted grain and almost all use hops for bitterness.  Oh yeah, and water.  Simple, right?  Not so fast.  The grains being used can be barley, wheat, corn, rye, and more, each adding a unique flavor to the brew.  Hops come in close to a hundred different varieties, each with its own characteristics.  Four simple ingredients can lead to tremendous variation of styles.
So, for instance, India Pale Ale, porter, and stout are all ales, all made from the same basic combination of ingredients, but it’s the proportions that make the difference.  More malt leads to darker color and stronger taste, and more hops lead to higher bitterness, and sometimes the two can be strong but balanced, like in the best varieties of stout (which generally get their dark color from malt that has been roasted to a darker color), while less malt and more hops lead to the powerful hoppiness of the IPA. 
Likewise with the range of lagers, where pale malts result in pale lagers, often with a strong hop bitterness like in the case of pilsner, and darker, stronger malts resulting in doppelbocks and schwatrzbiers.  There are some outliers, like the wheat-based witbier and weissbier, some of which traditionally leave out hops in favor of orange peel and coriander.  And, it should be noted, while darker beers do generally have a stronger taste than lighter colored beers, color is a poor indicator of overall strength.  Certain Belgian styles, for example, use pale malt and candy sugar to produce pale, malty beers that taste light but pack a strong alcoholic wallop!  


And then some people do really crazy stuff to make their beer unique, like use smoked malt, or add extra hops after fermentation, or throw in a slab of bacon.  You name it, somebody's tried it.  Sometimes to good effect, sometimes less so.
And then there is the North American pale lager, the beer most non-beer drinkers think of when they hear the word, "beer."  Many homebrewers turn up their noses at such beers, believing beers with names like Pabst, Schlitz, and Busch are the bottom of the quality barrel and not worth their consideration, when in reality these breweries are named for the pioneers of lager brewing in America.  These nineteenth century brewers and their pale creations changed the way Americans and, eventually, the rest of the world thought about beer, as important to the history of beer as Fritz Maytag and his tiny microbrewery in San Francisco.
I could go on for another thousand or so pages, but that’s basically it.  These are just the most broad guidelines of what makes a beer one way and not another.  What to do from here?  How do you take this admittedly oversimplified breakdown of beer styles and find the ones you really like?
Keep it simple.
Start drinking beer.  Grab as many different styles as you can, and try them.  Every one of them has something important to say, something to contribute to our larger understanding of beer history, culture, biology, chemistry, ethnogeography, and creativity; what a beer anthropologist might call the Great Six Pack of Life.  Each style is going to tell you something special and unique about how and why the style was first brewed and continues to be brewed today.
Be prepared to take some time.  I’ve been at this for almost four years, and I’m still trying new styles.  (I’m about to try a batch of Rye-P-A; I’ll let you know how it turns out.)
As you do, you will find many tasty beers, and just as many that you do not care for at all.  And a few that are downright crappy.
And when you find that great beer, enjoy it.  But remember this: that great beer has some less handsome, less interesting, dumber cousins.  They’re still family.  They deserve a little respect.
I’ll drink to that.

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