Wow, “personal preference”—now there’s an interesting concept. Here’s a little example of how it works. In Los Angeles, we can get the Abbey Ale Maredsous 10 both on draught and in bottle. Maredsous 10 is a Tripel, with 10% ABV. It has big malty sweetness; a doughy richness; and spicy, peppery notes. Now, personally, we like this beer better from the bottle than on tap. Why? The whole carbonation factor. To us, the higher carbonation that’s only possible in the bottle provides a better mouthfeel, lifting up what could be a cloying beer. On tap, that crisp, effervescent snap, that balance we like, is lessened. Now, that’s just our opinion. Perhaps someone else would prefer the different flavor and mouthfeel that comes from Maredsous 10 on tap; maybe she likes a less carbonated Maredsous 10 and thinks it’s better balanced. Who are we to say that she’s wrong?
So, in the big draught versus bottle debate, you have to take a lot of factors into consideration. You have to think about what style of beer you’re drinking. You have to think about the quality of the draught lines and system, you have to consider the brewer’s intent with the beer, but most important you have to make your own decision based on your personal preferences. We defer to Sir Randy’s credo and New Wave band Devo’s lyrics: “Use your freedom of choice.”
THE WAITING IS THE HARDEST PART: BOTTLE CONDITIONING
Some beer labels will include the phrase “bottle conditioning.” Okay, what the hell is that? Simply put, this is the process of an additional fermentation in the bottle, which can add flavor complexity, CO2, and more alcohol to a beer. Sometimes this is accomplished by filtering the beer and adding fresh yeast and sugar to the bottle to allow some further magic to happen. This may add another layer of flavors in the form of more alcohol and CO2. Other times the beer is left unfiltered, allowing the original yeast to work away, usually on an additional sugar added to the bottle. The effects of bottle conditioning can be slight or quite pronounced depending on the amount and type of yeast and sugar.
Bottle conditioning is a bit tricky, since brewers can only control a certain amount of what happens in the bottle. Knowledgeable brewers will know which and how much yeast and sugar to add to a bottle to produce certain effects, but once the bottle is sealed with cap or cork, the yeast does what it likes. This may mean that more CO2 than desired will occur, and the opened beer may shoot like a geyser. In fact, many bottle-conditioned Belgian beers boast a ton of foam. Or perhaps the complexity from the yeast has added unbelievable fruit and spice flavors that the brewer hadn’t even considered possible. The thing to remember is that bottle conditioning can produce higher alcohol and CO2 but usually it’s primary function is to add to the complexity of the flavor profile. We love bottle-conditioned beers; they may take a little more time but are always worth the wait.
We hope you are now inspired to go forth and taste the artful creations in craft beer. You are about to get into different styles and details about each brew, but keep your criteria for evaluating beer close at hand. Don’t judge a beer by its label or its color, but by your palate. These criteria will no doubt change with every new beer style, as one’s palate tends to embrace flavors it once abhorred. After you’ve examined every style, come back to the Art of Beer and see how much you’ve changed. You may laugh at what you once thought was a quintessential Hefeweizen. By the time you’re brewing your own, your list of favorite beers will have varied greatly and your philosophy of beer will have deepened.
THREE
The Neophyte
A fine beer may be judged with only one sip ... but it’s better to be thoroughly sure.
—CZECH PROVERB
Walk Before You Run
We envy you, the newly converted, the Neophyte, just setting out on your Beer Journey, with all those beautiful beers ahead of you, just waiting for you to taste them for the very first time. You are standing on the precipice of your journey, and with Beer 101 under your belt and a respect for the Art of Beer, you’re ready to make your taste buds ridiculously happy. But this moment is tenuous. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Many of the newly converted tend to take their beer info and run with it. They go to the bar and demand the strongest craft beer with the highest ABV. Yes, once you have a taste of quality, you, too, may have the overwhelming desire to go huge! But believe us when we warn you that there have been many potential beer aficionados who have been foiled by an overconfident headfirst dive into the deep end of the beer ocean. You are in danger of sampling beers that are way too big and powerful for a young craft beer palate. While we appreciate and sometimes exhibit this kind of bravado ourselves, and while this kind of maverick beer experimentation can lead to a happy accident, it’s more likely to lead you to a bad beer incident that could leave you doubting yourself and, even worse, doubting the goodness of beer (The Horror!). That’s not a risk that we are willing to let you take.
We believe that the right path to fully assimilating your palate means starting out with lighter, more delicate beers. This will train your palate to recognize the most delicate of flavors, from the dry to the bitter hop, from the biscuity to the nutty malt profile, and from the fruity to the buttery yeast esters. And don’t forget the extreme difference between the mass-produced and the artisanal craft brews. These beers are the same style as the mass-produced lagers, but they have more interesting, fresher flavors. This will teach your palate to pick up on nuance and quality.
These lighter beers are also great for your friends who say they don’t like beer and don’t know what to order from a craft beer list. It’s important to understand, and for you to tell them, that light should not equal flavorless. This is one of the greatest misconceptions about beer. Easy drinking implies that you should bypass your taste buds, but this shouldn’t be your mantra where craft beer is concerned. Start with the beers discussed in this chapter and savor their refined profiles. You will begin to acquire a taste for the true flavors of a lager, the fruity notes of a real Bavarian-style Hefeweizen, and the tartness of a deliciously sweet and sour Lambic Ale. When you begin to distinguish the lies from the true flavors, you’ll be able to carry that knowledge with you throughout your entire life of beer drinking. These are lessons you can really use in your beer life. No more drinkin’ for the man; burn those corporate beer logos and begin to live! Reclaim your beer freedom!
Tastes Great, Less Stupid
Pale Lagers are the most common beer style attempted by the giant beer corporations. So in some ways, you may be most familiar with this style, but sadly most of us are familiar only with the crappy kind. Drinking a mass-produced lager and then tasting a true Pilsner from the Czech Republic is like eating waxy Halloween chocolate as a kid and then, years later, tasting a bar from Italy made with 80% cacao. It’s as if you’d never had chocolate before. You laugh at your childhood notions of chocolate. One is a taste of your youth, when getting more Halloween loot than your friends was more important than the quality of the candy. Similarly, the beers of your youth were made for plentiful consumption (chug, chug, chug!) but lacked taste. The beers that we want you to begin your journey with are still often lighter in alcohol and lighter in body (and yes, still chuggable, if you must), but they give your brain some flavor to mull over. It will be as if you’d never had beer before. Trick or treat.
Pilsner, I Hardly Know Her
THIS BEER’S FOR YOU IF YOU LIKE: CRISP TASTES. CLEAN FINISHES. REFRESHING DRINKS. READING KAFKA IN PRAGUE. LOW ALCOHOL. LOW BITTERNESS. NO FRUIT, NO FRILLS. BRIGHT AND CLEAR BEVERAGES.
As we said earlier, the majority of beer produced and consumed in America today—particularly mass-produced, industrialized beer—is made in the Pilsner style. We should know what that is then, shouldn’t we? Wait, so what is that?
A Pilsner (or Pilsener, or Plzen), which means “green meadows,” is a type of lager named after the city in which it was created, Plzen, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. The Bohemians, who had created a brewers’ guild called the People’s Brewery to improve the quality of their beer, were fed up with cloudy, funky, heavy, dark
brews that seemed to turn sour. They recruited genius Bavarian brewer Josef Groll, who produced the first batch of Pilsner in 1842. Pilsner beer was a revelation and completely free of the funky look of the darker, sometimes murky ales because Groll used the German lagering method (brewing with lager yeast at a low temperature) to ferment only pale malted grains (instead of a mélange of darker malts). He also mixed in a good dose of Czech Saaz hops. This, combined with the native soft water, produced a beer that was crisp, clear, light straw to golden in color, biscuity, clean, and dry. To this day, good Pilsners still have those same qualities. So don’t be fooled by mass-produced Pilsners that claim to be light and clean but are mostly flavorless and drinkable. Yes, Pilsners are light, but they should not remind you of water.
Note: Sprechen Sie Tschechen? Wait a minute. Couldn’t you have sworn that Pilsners were German beers? And what about all the American Pilsner styles that everyone’s been drinking? WTF? Czechs may have been the Pilsner originators, but they are not the only masters of the Pilsner. Not to be outdone, the Germans, seeing the popularity of the sparkling, clear, and clean beer, created their own version of the brew. Theirs has a similar flavor profile to the Czech style but is even more pale in color and often more effervescent. The German Pils also boasts a heftier dose of hops, with a bit more spice and citrus.
So if you want a Czech-style Pilsner, make sure to order a Bohemian Pilsner, and if you want a German-style brew, then order a German Pilsner. There’s quite a bit of confusion regarding American craft brewers and Pilsners because often American brewers will make a Pilsner in the Czech or German style or create an amalgamation of the two. An
THE BUD WARS
If you know nothing about beer, at least you can be certain that you know that there is only one Budweiser “The King of Beers,” right? Well, think again. There is a little town in the Czech Republic called Budweis, which, just like the city of Plzen, has its very own style of clean, bright lager beer that is sometimes called, you guessed it, Budweiser, which, literally translated, means, “of Budweis” or “from Budweis.” This is a style of beer and not necessarily a particular brand of beer that had been proudly brewed in the Budweis area since 1265. But in the late 1800s, German-born American Adolphus Busch (yes, of Anheuser-Busch), wanting to conjure ideals of history and excellence in brewing, decided to name a clear, light, bright lager beer from St. Louis, Missouri, Budweiser. It was to be the start of much controversy and legal wrangling in the beer world.
Several Czech breweries were already brewing Budweiser beers, and as Anheuser-Busch got bigger, the use of this moniker became quite an issue. For almost a century, the Czech Budweiser brand made by Budejovice Budvar Brewery and Anheuser-Busch have been butting heads over who has the right to use the Budweiser name around the world. Anheuser-Busch won out in the United States, and Budvar must call their beer Czechvar in the States. Internationally, however, the right to use the Budweiser moniker is relegated on a country by country basis. So both companies use the name throughout Europe, causing a lot of confusion and, we’re not going to lie, some hurt feelings as well. And around and around we go as the trademark debate still continues.
The question as to who is the original Budweiser may be up for grabs, but we can say for sure that the Czech Budweiser is an excellent, well-balanced beer, a little creamier and a little sweeter than the American version. But why don’t you decide? We suggest you buy both Czechvar and American Budweiser, gather your friends together, tell them the story, and wage the war at home with a taste-off!
American-made Pilsner might not be as authentic as the beers from Das Mötherland, but the craft creations are much more delicious and complex than the mass-produced Pilsner styles that most Americans are used to. Here are some of our favorite Pilsners and Pilsner-style craft beers that are perfect for taking baby steps:
KROMBACHER PILS: Krombacher Brauerei, Kreuztal-Krombach, Germany. Quintessential German-made German Pilsner from a family-owned brewery. It starts hoppy and herbaceous with a longer malty finish. 4.8% ABV.
REALITY CZECK: Moonlight Brewing Company, Fulton, California. An American made Czech-style or Bohemian Pilsner. Toasty and
biscuity up front and finishing with a nuanced, crisp hoppiness. 4.8% ABV.
PRIMA PILS: Victory Brewing Company, Downingtown, Pennsylvania. An American made German-style Pilsner with a nice maltiness up front and a mild, dry, hoppy finish. Subtle sweetness in the front with clean, dry, crisp hop bitterness at the back end. Superb! 5.3% ABV.
CZECHVAR (BUDWEISER BUDVAR): Budweiser Budvar/B.N.N.P., Ceske Budejovice (or Budweis), Czech Republic. A Bohemian Pilsner with a light malt sweetness, creamy head, and floral grassy dry hops. 5% ABV.
What’s in a Name? Helles and Blonds
THIS BEER’S FOR YOU IF YOU LIKE: BLEACHING YOUR HAIR. GERMAN LAGERS. A TOUCH OF SWEETNESS. LOW ALCOHOL. THINGS THAT ARE EASY.
When we were new to beer, we were shocked at the multitude of light, crisp, clean styles out there. Just like the Bavarians who fell in love with the crisp clean Czech Pilsner style and made one of their own, many other European countries started brewing beers in a similar style. Some added a little more hops, some added a bit more malt for sweeter notes, some relied on the water source of their region to put their distinctive stamp on the beer, creating a general style called European Pale Lagers that serves as a kind of umbrella title for this style of beer. The great thing about this variety is that even if you never move from this stage of beer drinking, preferring only light, clean, and subtle beers, you will still have a plethora of beers to choose from.
One of these styles is Helles Bier (helles means “pale”), created by taking only pale malts and brewing them with the lager method. Helles Lagers are generally a bit more malty and therefore a touch sweeter than Pilsners, but they’re still light and nicely hopped. Helles Bier is common in Germany but relatively rare in the United States, so if you see one, grab it and try it.
Another light style that fits under the Pale Lager umbrella is blond (or blonde) beer. This can be a vague and confusing category. Blond beer is one of those modern inventions—a style named because of what it brings to mind: something that is easy on the palate. Many people order a blond because it sounds light. Some brewers do officially call their beer a blond, typically showing a beer that is pale in color, low on the hops, low in alcohol, with subtle fruit or honey and biscuity flavors, and a fairly clean finish on the palate. However, other brewers, especially Belgians, can call their beer a blond even when it has quite a bit of alcohol content and maltiness. We’ve found that Belgians are generally referring to a paler malt when they calls their beers blond, and American blond beers tend to relay attributes that we Americans often apply to blond people, like bubbly, bright, light, and easy. So if you want a lighter style of blond beer, you might want to make sure that you are drinking an American version. Here are some great pale beers with which to while away your Neophyte days:
WEIHENSTEPHANER ORIGINAL : Brauerei Weihenstephan, Freising, Germany. A Bavarian Pale Lager. Biscuity with a clean touch of sweetness. 5.1% ABV.
AYINGER JARHUNDERT BIER: Privatbrauerei Fanz Inselkammer KG/Braurei Aying, Munich. A light honey and citrus, with grassy hops and a dry finish. 5% ABV.
SAMUEL SMITH’S ORGANIC LAGER: Samuel Smith’s Brewery, Tadcaster, UK. Described by some as “Britain’s best lager”; gentle, smooth, and clean. 5% ABV.
GRIMBERG EN BLONDE: Brouwerij Alken-Maes, Alken, Belgium. A delightful Belgian Blond with honey notes. Bready and dry with nice carbonation. 6.7% ABV.
Unfiltered and Unfettered: The Wide World of Wheat Beer
We frequently get requests for a good wheat beer. Many people ask for a wheat beer because they think of it as light and refreshing, mainly because they are used to seeing it with a big fresh lemon wedge attached. But the lemon doesn’t make it a wheat beer, so what does? Simply put, a significant quantity of the grain used as malt should be wheat, typically between 30% and 70% wheat malts and the remainder is regula
r barley malt, usually of a pale variety. Though there are many different styles and substyles that can be called wheat beers, they all share certain characteristics. Wheat has a lot more protein in it than barley, which contributes a cloudy haze and creates a thick, long-lasting head on the beer. Wheat has very little flavor, sometimes a sourness, but it does contribute a distinctively silky mouthfeel.
A lot of people think that all wheat beer tastes the same or that wheat beer is one style of beer. These are major falsehoods. Even though wheat beers do share some common characteristics, they can also vary a great deal in color and flavor. For instance, one of the most popular wheat beer styles in the world is called Hefeweizen. We’re sure you’ve heard of this beer style before. Most people use the terms “Hefeweizen” and “wheat beer” interchangeably, but the truth is, a Hefeweizen is one substyle of wheat beer, and not all wheat beer is Hefeweizen.
True Bavarian-style Hefeweizens taste very different from American Hefeweizens. Belgian Wheat beers (called Witbiers) taste quite different from any Hefeweizen. There are also several beers and beer styles that use some wheat as a malt source for flavor and for the creamy mouthfeel attributes, but these beers wouldn’t be considered wheat beers because they don’t use a high enough percentage of wheat or don’t have the flavor attributes of a quintessential wheat beer. We know it’s all a bit confusing, but we’re here to help point out the differences. Many wheat beers are a great jumping off point for beer Neophytes because they are light on the palate and offer different flavors than a Pilsner.
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