Beer Style Definitions
Sing along now: 60 bottles of beer on the wall, 60 bottles of beeeeeeeer! That’s right, there are about 60 different styles of beer. That means there’s one, or two, or more for you. Click here for a list of all beer styles. Below is a list of the six major categories of beer styles. Click on any one to see the styles it encompasses and definitions of each style. Let us know when you’ve tasted them all.
Beer and Food Pairing: Beer Snobbery Laid Bare
Things have progressed since the Middle Ages, when beer was safer to drink than the untreated water. In those days, the prospect of being afflicted by waterborne disease was a compelling enough reason to drink beer with food. Drawing on the traditions of older beer cultures and the culinary frontier of the United States today, there are many possibilities to explore. An increasing number of good brewpubs with attached restaurants feature imaginative beer and food programs.
Serious beer and food pondering would merit a book, but the much simplified rules of thumb are easy to grasp. Sweetish paler meats such as pork or chicken often work best with beers displaying a malt accent, typically a malty lager. Red meats such as game, lamb, or beef have greater affinity with richer, fruity ales. Spicy foods are best foiled by lagers, but this is too simple. Thai cuisine, being piquant and delicate, works best with a clean, delicate lager like the Thai brand, Singha. Robust Mexican spicing invites the accompaniment of one of that country’s fine, mildly sweet, Vienna-style beers such as Negra Modelo. Barbecued meats, dear to the heart of so many Americans, find a natural kinship with drier, smoky examples of American craft-brewed stouts and porters. Of course most of this advice applies equally well when actually cooking with the same beer that you propose to drink with the meal, though this is a more complicated matter.
Cooking with beer
The art of cooking with beer is dificult to address in a few short sentences. The essential principles are, as with all culinary principles, quite simple. The flavor profile of beer boils down to a balance of sweetness and dryness (a factor of malt character and residual sugars) balanced by the bitterness of hops. Beer can contribute richness-even sweetness and body-to sauces. Beware of the hops. They will change in nature in the cooking process, particularly when reducing sauces, and take on a bitter character that will dominate. One has to be sparing when cooking with American pale ales and particularly IPAs. When hoppy beers are reduced they become much more bitter. Doppelbocks, English brown ales, Belgian ales, and Scottish ales are all good culinary additions due to their lower hop bitterness and richer malt accents, when brewed in the classic styles.
Classic beer pairings
Many people may have heard of classic wine pairings with food. Certain beers also have recognized pairings with foods.
Irish stout and oysters. Irish-style dry stouts are every bit the equal to any white wine when paired with oysters. Note that good draft Guinness, or an equivalent (i.e., nitrogen-flushed to give a creamy smooth head), will work better than some stronger, more acrid and much hoppier U.S. craft-brewed stouts. Oatmeal stouts with restrained hop bitterness will also work very well. The burnt barley flavors, and particularly, the smooth texture, offset the indescribable sensation of saline, slithery bi-valves. Another coupling with oysters that is greater than the sum of its parts, for very different reasons, is hoppy American pale ale. The residual iodine and brine of the oysters work well with the citrusy hop flavors of the beer.
Ploughman’s lunch with bitter. The English are famously uncelebrated for their cuisine. Nonetheless, beer and cheese is a well-understood pairing in Britain that is traditionally indulged at lunchtime with the ploughman’s (or plowman’s) lunch. A plate of strong English cheese, such as farmhouse Cheddar or even Stilton, accompanied by pickles, relishes, and bread is available at most pubs. These cheeses, so difficult to pair with wine, work effortlessly with stronger fruity English-style ales. The earthy, toasted malt flavors and balanced hop accents of English and English-style ales have an affinity with sharp cheeses, and cope well with the salty, sharp nature of Stilton. When concluding a meal with Stilton, try a strong English-style ale or even a barley wine, instead of port and walnuts.
Bratwurst with German fest-märzen beers. The Germans have refined the art of pork and lager pairing by means of the sausage. Beer-soaked brats and fest beers probably need no introduction to readers who have had some contact with Octoberfests staged by local breweries. The general principle is that sweeter, toasty malt flavors with relatively subtle hopping (i.e., bitterness) pair well with rich though not strongly flavored pork. The brats, of course, will have been soaked in beer prior to cooking. Vienna-style lagers also work well in this situation. A hoppy pale ale, though not a culinary crime, would tend to overwhelm the pork flavors. For pale ale drinkers who desire phallic pieces of meat, the "kilbasa" or Polish Sausage is a better bet, with all the trimmings, naturally. Taking this to its basest level, the celebrated former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka has been quoted as saying that "a seven-course meal for a Grabowski (Chicago parlance for a blue-collar Pole) is a hot dog and a six pack." He must have been referring to an American pale lager, surely the ideal match for a hot dog.
Mussels with Belgian gueuze. This is an esoteric pairing of the tart lambic beers of the Brussels area and the national staple of Belgium, moules (mussels). If you have not tasted a lambic, specifically a gueuze, you will have no idea how beer and shellfish could possibly work in a classic manner. Gueuze is unlike conventional beer. It is tart, dry, and very acidic in the same manner that wine is. In culinary terms it can be interchangeable with acidic white wine, to the point that you can even steam the mussels in gueuze rather than white wine. Surprisingly, the Bruxelloise do not do this as often as they ought to. Given the availability of imported gueuze in major U.S. markets, this is one of the more delightful, easy, and sophisticated pairings that any beer connoisseur should be able to pull off.
Beer and chocolate. From time to time wine and food writers love to speculate about what, if anything, to serve with dark chocolate. The answer is...beer, of course. There are a number of possibilities but here we have to get brand specific. A first choice would be a barley wine or strong bottle-conditioned ale with some aged, mature character. The classic example from England is Thomas Hardy’s from Eldridge Pope. Other possibilities are McEwan’s Export Scotch Ale, Young’s Old Nick Barley Wine, or even Samuel Smith’s Imperial Russian Stout. The basic principle is to match the bittersweet flavors of dark chocolate with sweet but dark-roasted malt flavors of specific beers.
Understanding the brewing process
Brewing in Six Easy Steps
Beer begins on a farm and ends up in a glass. Brewing is a simple process that can be made very complicated with the application of scientific techniques to perfectly control the process. Here the process of brewing has been divided into six major steps.
- Farm-grown hops are used almost exclusively for making beer. These green, cone-shaped flowers come from tall, fast-growing vines. Dozens of different hop varieties are grown, and each contributes a unique flavor to beer. After harvest, the hops are dried, baled, and shipped to the brewery.
- Barley, a grain similar to wheat, serves as the basis of most beers. Other grains, such as corn or rice, may also be used, mainly as "adjunct" ingredients. Before it can be used in brewing, barley must first be "malted." The "maltster" soaks the barley in water to awaken the tiny proto-plant inside each barleycorn, and allows it to sprout for a very short time. This activates enzymes that start to convert starches in the kernel into simple sugars, primarily maltose. This malted barley is then dried. Maltsters roast some malt to produce darker colors and flavors that vary from biscuitlike to burnt.
- Brewers combine ingredients in many combinations to produce different types and flavors of beer. First the brewer combines the malt and other grains with hot water to produce a mash. This converts the complex starches of the grains into simple sugars that can be fermented by yeast. Mashing yields an amber, sugar-filled liquid called wort.
- Next the brewer boils the wort for 60 to 90 minutes. Hops added at various times during the boil produce different characteristics such as bitterness, flavor, and aroma.
- After boiling, the brewer cools the wort and transfers it to a fermenter. Here yeast is added. Brewers pick from scores of different brewing yeasts, each of which will produce a slightly different character in the finished beer. The yeast type dictates the exact time and temperature of fermentation, but most do best under one of two general programs. Lagers ferment at 50 to 55F for 10 to 14 days, and then cold-condition (or lager) for two to eight weeks at 35 to 40F. By contrast, ales usually ferment at 65 to 70F and are generally ready for consumption within two weeks.
- These days many brewers add specialty ingredients to their beers. They may add specialty grains such as oats or rye during the mash. Other ingredients such as honey, spices, and fruit may be added during the boil or even during fermentation.
Freshness counts
Beer is food, and it is perishable. Here are some tips on getting the fresh beer. Why does that beer taste like #%$!*!!!? Could be it was poorly made, or it could be poorly handled. Learn what can go wrong.
Glassware for Beer
Glassware used for beer drinking in various cultures has evolved through tradition in different ways. In England it will not be unheard of for a drinker standing at the bar to stick with the same pint glass all night long without so much as a drop of soapy water seeing the glass. This is a minimalist approach that would make a Belgian waiter’s moustache lose its waxed point. Belgium is the land of the beer glass fetish. In a Belgian bar or café, each brand of beer must have its own particular glass, each with a unique size or shape. Germans still opt for traditional "mug" shaped beer steins that can hold as much as a liter when in full fest trim.
In the United States, the standard, straight-sided, 16-ounce pint glass has gained ground on the traditional 12-ounce pilsner glass. Here, the greatest concession to ceremony is usually reserved for imported weisse beers, often treated to a tall Bavarian weisse beer glass with a citrus wedge perched on the rim.
Beyond traditional practice, does glass shape and size actually influence the taste of beer when one is drinking at home? The answer is yes, up to a point. Conventional ales and pilsner style beers have no special requirement other than a glass that has an appropriate size to easily take a 12-ounce pour and leave room for the head. Life is too short to wait around for heads to settle before pouring the last dregs of the bottle. If you value a head on your beer, make sure that there are no traces of detergent in the glass. Detergent neutralizes head formation and will prematurely flatten your beer.
In the case of Belgian ales, there is no need to go to the extreme of having a different glass for each brand of beer. However, the Belgian approach is still useful when it comes to appreciation of Belgian-style beers. Belgian abbey ales and other Belgian specialty styles are meant to be constantly savored for their aromas as well as their flavors. The principal feature of specialty Belgian beer glasses is their wide, sometimes bulbous shape, with a tapered upper section that serves to keep your nose close to the beer and enveloped in aromas as you drink it. The glass must be big enough to accommodate the beer in the bottle in one pour unless you want yeast sediment clouding the second pour. If Belgian beers are going to be a part of your life, then by all means equip yourself with all-purpose Belgian abbey beer glassware.
Barley wines are best appreciated from a large brandy snifter that will capture complex vinous aromas while not making the necessarily small pours of such heady brews seem disproportionate to the glass.
Finally, the Bavarians figured out that their extravagantly frothy weiss beers need something tall to accommodate all the foam, not to mention wedges of citrus fruit beloved by Americans. If imported weiss beers are your potion at home, then the appropriately tall, slender glasses will be a wise investment.
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