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Know Your Beer

Ale | Lager | Wheat Beer | Porter & Stout | Belgian Specialties

When we drink beer some of us know what we like, others like what we know, but few of us actually know what distinguishes one beer from another. We bandy around terms like lager, stout, pilsner without the slightest idea of what we are talking about. To get the best from your exploration of beer on Realbeers.ie take some time to understand the differences between beer types and what makes one beer tastier than another.

What is beer?
Let’s start with the basics. Beer is an alcoholic drink made from fermenting a cereal, or mixture of cereals, with hops. Typically, beers are made from water, malted barley, hops, and fermented by yeast. Enzymes in the yeast react with sugars in the grains to produce alcohol and other chemicals. Water is an important component of the mix and in fact many beer styles are influenced or even determined by the characteristics of the water in the region.

Barley malt is the most widely used owing to its high enzyme content (which facilitates the breakdown of the starch into sugars) but other malted and unmalted grains are commonly used, including wheat, rice, maize, oats, and rye. Hops are a relatively recent addition to beer, having been introduced only a few hundred years ago. They contribute a bitterness that balances the sweetness of the malt.

Ale
Ale is general name for beer made with a top-fermenting yeast, ie the yeast floats on top of the brew. Prior to the 1800s this was the way all beer was made, so strictly all beers were ales until quite recently. Ale making and drinking goes back to pre-history. Noah is said to have taken a few barrels onto the Ark, and the Sumerians carved recipes for beer onto stone tablets. So you are in august and ancient company. With such an ancient pedigree there are any number of classifications of Ales, but some of the most common you will come across are:

India Pale Ales
When the British ruled India they sent their beer out from Britain rather than brew it there! Brewers found that increasing the hops content improved it capacity to travel, and the India Pale Ale was born. Pale Ale today is a light beer, dry and with a distinctive hoppy taste. Typically golden to copper coloured and pale only in the sense of not as dark as stout.

American Pale Ales
English Ales and American Ales are different mainly in the type of hops used. English hops such as Goldings, Fuggles, and Progress styles give English ales their distinct aroma and flavour. American ales have a more fruity, citrus character. American Pale Ales are the most popular category of beer in American brewpubs. They tend towards bitter, malty but not sweet. Balance is the key. Names of hops to look for include Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, and Willamette. Cascade is the most popular; it gives a distinct fruity and even grapefruit flavor and aroma.

Irish Ales
Irish Ales are known for their reddish colour. They taste malty and have a fruitiness.

Real Ale
Irish brewers are known to use corn syrup in their brew mix and a percentage of roasted barley.

Bitter
Bitter is an English term for a derivative of Pale Ale. Its main ingredient is malted barley, with hops only added at the end to increase its longevity and give it a distinctive smell and taste. Bitter covers a wide variety of taste, aroma and appearance.

Mild
Mild is a British beer developed in the mid 19th century as a cheaper alternative to the darker beers of the time. Brewed with less malt. In the US milds are referred to as Blonds.

Amber Ales
Amber ales are light to medium strong, easy drinking, top-fermented, amber or copper coloured beers, with an alcohol volume between 5 and 8 %, characterised by a soft and creamy caramelised, sweetish, bitterish and /or fruity yeasty taste, followed by a lingering hoppy dry after-taste, sometimes with hints of exotic spices.

Lager
It might be the world’s most popular type of beer but it is a relatively recent invention. While man has been brewing beer since the Stone Age it was only in the 15th century that German brewers discovered that storing their beer in caves for the summer kept it from going sour. Their observations were that the yeast sunk to the bottom of the barrels and the cooler temperatures slowed or stopped further fermentation. (With Ales, the traditional form of brewing, the yeasts stay at the top of the brew and only work at temperatures above 55 degrees Fahrenheit resulting in a sweeter brew.)

By the turn of the 19th century brewers had a better understanding of how yeasts worked and could distinguish between yeasts that worked better at the lower temperatures (40-55 degrees Fahrenheit), thus defining a class of yeasts for lager brewing. So when you next raise a glass of lager to your lips, know that is it distinguished from the glass of ale across the table by the type of yeast used (bottom fermenting), the temperature at which the brewing takes place, and the time taken to brew. The result, as you know, is a dry, crisp and clean flavoured beer. As the lager method spread different regions adapted it creating their own recipes and styles, but you should understand that at heart they are all lagers. These include:

Pilsner
First brewed in the Czech Republic city of Pilsen, Pilsners are light golden coloured lagers with a distinctive barley malt flavour and hoppy dryness. Alcohol volume between 4.5 and 5.5%.

Bock
Once again named for a city, Bocks take their name from the German city of Einbeck. The true Bock is brewed in the autumn and stored, or lagered, over the winter and then drunk in the spring. Think of Bock as a seasonal beer, which are dark coloured, tend towards being strong in alcohol and have a quite malty flavour.

Dortmunder
Named for the region of origin in Germany, Dortmunder beer is prized for what is called its ‘balance’. Its hop flavour and aroma are perceptible but low. Colour is straw to deep golden. Medium bodied. Typical alcohol content 5-6% ABV.

Dunkel
A Dunkel is a dark brown lager originally from Germany. The typical Dunkel has a pronounced malty aroma and flavour that dominates over the clean, crisp, moderate hop bitterness. A classic Munich dunkel should have a chocolate-like, roast malt, bread-like or biscuit-like aroma that comes from the use of Munich dark malt. Chocolate or roast malts can be used, but the percentage used should be minimal. Typical alcohol content should be between 4.5-5.0% ABV.

Vienna Lager
Another style grew out of a brewers work in a district of Vienna, where a popular amber-red brew came to be known as vienna-style lager. Among the most popular of the sweetish and malty Vienna-style lagers is Mexico's Negro Modelo. now a fast-growing beer in the US.

Wheat Beer
Wheat beer is as you would expect beer made predominantly from wheat rather than the more commonly used barley. The beer is lighter, both in colour and mouth-feel and has a incredible acidity. Wheat beer is usually top fermented and hence an Ale.

Porter & Stout
The essential characteristic of stout and porter is the high proportion of roasted unmalted barley used in the process. This gives the drink its bitter taste and dry palatte. Originally Porter was a mix of dark and pale Ale, drunk by London porters, but eventually the name stuck to drink invented by brewers in the early 18th century. They used roasted barley and roasted malt to create a dark rich brew deemed just the ticket for the working man! Stout is a derivative of Porter, invented by Guinness in Ireland, who had taken a London porter recipe and ‘improved’ it to make it richer and ‘stouter’, hence the name.

The creamy head on stout is a modern phenomenon. The traditional head was formed by the protein component of the drink being pushed to the surface by the natural fizz produced by fermentation. Today stouts get their heads courtesy of the nitrokeg system.

Belgian Specialties
Belgium is the home of beer and its styles deserve special mention. Belgian beer classifications deserve an article all on their own, but the main types you will find on Realbeers.ie include:

Trappist Beers
Trappist ales are beers brewed by or under strict control of Trappist monks, within the walls of their Monasteries, according the rules of Strict Observance, as laid down by St. Benedictus, dating from the Middle Ages. There are only six Trappist Monasteries in the world, all in Belgium, that brew beer and can use the legally protected ''Authentic Trappist product'' logo. Each Monastery has it own style of beer, varying in colour, taste and strength, so it is difficult to compare beers from the different Monasteries, besides the fact that they are brewed in a Trappist Monastery. They are however all top fermented, full-bodied bottle conditioned beers, with an alcohol volume between 6.2 and 11.5 %.

Abbey Beers
Abbey Beers are close cousins of the Trappists. Only Trappist Cistercian monastery brewed beer can carry the Trappist name. However many other monasteries got into the commercial brewing business in the late 19th century under the more generic Abbey style. These are typically bottle conditioned ales.

Lambic beers
Traditional Lambic, typical to the region around Brussels in the Zenne valley, is a spontaneous fermented beer, made from a mixture of barley and wheat, which is matured in oak casks. No yeast is added at any stage of the brewing process, but instead micro-organisms cause a natural fermentation during the cooling of the wort in the open copper baths. Lambic can either be drunk on its own or used to create other beers like Gueuze, Faro and Fruit beers.

Fruit beers
Fruit was traditionally added to beer to give it a softer texture and sweeter taste. Nowadays with the variety of fruit flavoured beers, they have become a style of their own, varying in colour, taste and alcohol strength and more in particular the beer, which is used as base. This will determine not only the alcohol content, but also the character and background flavour of the fruit beer.

White Beers
White or wheat beers are light, easy-drinking, unfiltered hazy-yellow coloured beers, made from a mixture of raw wheat and malted barley (sometimes oats are added), seasoned with Coriander and Curacao orange peels, with a refreshing fruity-lemony taste and pleasant lingering spicy aftertaste. Original from the area South of Brussels near the village of Hoegaarden, where Pierre Celis revived this style. Alcohol volume between 4.5 and 5.5%.