Beer For Dummies

 Introduction

Like many people, I first discovered beer while sitting on my father’s knee. My earliest recollections of the beer that Dad drank were that it was always ice cold and foamed like soapsuds — probably an accurate taste descriptor as well. Too bad Dad bought the cheap stuff.

After years of unconsciously buying the cheapest beer, like my father did, I found that my regular beer started to become regularly boring and much less appealing. By chance, a tour of a famous brewery — Molson’s, in Toronto — that made fresh, tasty beer in a number of traditional styles, opened my eyes to an undiscovered world of beery possibilities unavailable in the United States at that time. Beer drinking for me would never be the same again because I had discovered the secrets to true beer happiness: freshness and variety. From that point on, I went in search of good beer and got an education in the difference between it and mediocre beer (and worse).

Learning this difference wasn’t only easy but also fun — so much fun, in fact, that I now make a living doing it! But even for the casual beer drinker, a little beer knowledge can turn a possibly daunting experience into an enjoyable one. Good beer, unlike fine wine, is widely available and relatively inexpensive, but choosing among all the various styles can be a little confusing without some help. If you’ve fallen in love with beer, you have plenty of ways to increase your beer appreciation. This book should be of help to neophyte and serious beer enthusiast alike. And the best news is that in the United States, good beer is being offered by more brewers every day.

And that’s something to drink to

Drink Up! Beginning with Beer Basics

To most people, beer is a simple, one-dimensional product that serves two primary purposes: as an antidote for thirst and as an inexpensive, easy-to-obtain intoxicant. (One’s viewpoint is often determined by one’s age.) In American culture, beer has generally been considered a blue-collar beverage, undeserving of respect or a rightful place on your dinner table.

From a more worldly perspective, particularly in those countries known for their brewing expertise, beer is an unpretentious — but respected — socially accepted libation meant to be enjoyed on any occasion or at any time of day. It’s also produced in various flavors and regional styles that make it more conducive to comparative tasting and even (gasp!) enlightened discussion.

Historically speaking, beer was for the longest time a staple in the human diet, as well as the respected handicraft of the local brewer. Beer was not only a means of refreshment but also an important source of vitamins and nutrients in a form that was happily ingested and easily digested. Looking far beyond written history, beer has also been theoretically linked with the civilization and socialization of mankind. Impressive, no?

In this chapter, I give you an introductory tour of the wonderful world of beer: its ingredients, its styles, its uses, and much more. Enjoy!

Introducing Beer’s Building Blocks

So what is beer exactly? By excruciatingly simple definition, beer is any fermented beverage made with a cereal grain. Specifically, beer is made from these four primary ingredients:

Grain (mostly malted barley but also other grains)

Hops (grown in many different varieties)

Yeast (responsible for fermentation; based on style-specific strains)

Water (accounts for up to 95 percent of beer’s content)

Grain provides five things to beer:

Color: The color of the grains used to make a beer directly affects the color of the beer itself.

Flavor: The flavor of the beer is primarily that of malted barley, although hops and yeast characteristics play a secondary role.

Maltose: Maltose is the term for the fermentable sugars derived from malted grain. Yeast converts these sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Proteins: Proteins in the grain help form and hold the head (foam) on the beer.

Dextrins: Dextrins are the grain components that help create mouthfeel (the feeling of fullness or viscosity) in the beer.

Archaeologists and anthropologists have helped shed some light on the development of beer around the world. Evidence of beer making throughout the millennia has been found on six of the seven continents on earth (no harvest in Antarctica). Wherever grains grew wildly, the indigenous people made a beer-like beverage with them. Here are some examples:

Asians used rice.

Mesopotamians used barley.

Northern Europeans used wheat.

Americans used corn.

Africans used millet and sorghum.

Over time, beer makers discovered that barley lent itself best to beer making, with the other grains playing a lesser role.

Hops provide beer with four attributes:

Bitterness: Bitterness is essential to the flavor balance of the beer; it offsets the sweetness of the malt.

Flavor: Hops have flavor that’s distinctly different from bitterness, and it adds to the overall complexity of the beer.

Aroma: The piquant aroma of hops, which mirrors their flavor, is derived from essential oils in the hops.

Stability: Hops help provide the beer with stability and shelf life; their beta acids stave off bacterial contamination.

Brewers choose yeast strains based on which style of beer is being made (see the next section for an introduction to beer styles). The two main classifications of beer yeast are

Ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae): Top-fermenting

Lager yeast (Saccharomyces uvarum): Bottom-fermenting

The quality of brewing water is extremely important because beer is about 90 to 95 percent water. The mineral content of water can be manipulated and adjusted according to the requirements of the beer style being brewed.

For additional information on beer ingredients, check out Chapter 2. See Chapter 3 to find out how these ingredients are magically turned into beer during the brewing process.

Surveying Different Styles of Beer

As a generic word, beer includes every style of fermented malt beverage, including ales and lagers and all the individual and hybrid styles that fall under this heading. I provide a quick introduction to major beer styles in the following sections; for greater detail, check out Chapter 4 and Appendix A.

Within the realm of major beer categories, you find some truly special brews, such as real ale, barrel-aged and wood-aged beer, extreme beer, organic beer, gluten-free beer, and kosher beer. These kinds of beers don’t represent new or different beer styles, per se. Rather, they represent different ways of making and presenting beer. Chapters 5 through 8 provide insight into these beers.

The two major classifications of beer types are ale and lager. Every beer enthusiast should know some basic facts about these classifications:

Ales are the ancient types of beer that date back into antiquity; lager beers are relatively new (only several hundred years old).

Ales are fermented at relatively warm temperatures for short periods of time, while lagers are cold fermented for longer periods of time.

Ales are fermented with top-fermenting yeasts (the yeasts float on top of the beer during fermentation), while lagers are fermented with bottom-fermenting yeasts (the yeasts sink to the bottom of the beer during fermentation).

Painless so far, right? Now to delve a little deeper: Within the ale and lager classifications, major beer style categories include Pale Ales and Brown Ales (in the ale family) and Pilsners and Dark Lagers (in the lager family). And the majority of major beer style categories include several different beer substyles. Here are just two examples of how this beer hierarchy plays out; many others are similar to these.

Hybrid and specialty beers

In addition to the two major beer classifications (ales and lagers), a third beer classification that’s an amalgam (more or less) of the first two is hybrid beers. Hybrid beers cross over ale and lager style guidelines. A beer fermented at cold temperatures, using an ale yeast, is an example of a hybrid, likewise for a beer that’s warm fermented, using lager yeast.

Specialty beers, on the other hand, are practically limitless. This unofficial style of beer covers a very wide range of brews that are hard to define, much less regulate. Typically, specialty beers are brewed to a classic style (such as Porter or Weizenbier) but with some new flavor added; some are made from unusual foods that are fermented. Guidelines are useless, and brewing anarchy rules the brewhouse. The rules-be-damned attitude is what makes specialty beers so fun to brew and drink

Shopping for and Savoring Beer

With the ever-increasing number of flavorful beers being made at craft breweries, along with the growing bounty of beers imported from elsewhere, today’s beer consumers face monumental decisions every time they have to make a beer choice. The following sections provide pointers for buying, serving, tasting, dining with, and cooking with beer.

Buying beer

Beer is food. And like most foods, especially bread, beer is perishable and becomes stale over time, so the fresher the beer, the better it is. Therefore, beer consumers on the way to enlightenment want to consume beer that’s freshly made and has been handled properly to maintain freshness — particularly if it has no preservatives, as is the case with most good beers.

Beer freshness has three enemies: time, heat, and light. Anything you can do to avoid buying beer that’s been mistreated (and to avoid mistreating it yourself) is done in the name of fresh, tasty beer. Check out Chapter 9 for the full scoop on buying beer wisely.

As with all beverages that contain alcohol, governments maintain strict control over the labeling of those beverages. Unfortunately, when it comes to beer, the labels don’t always help consumers understand what they’re really buying. Similarly, breweries take liberties when they market their beers; these marketing liberties also lead to confusion on the part of the consumer. Chapter 10 walks you through this minefield of label laws and liberties to help you make good beer-buying choices.

Serving and tasting beer

Serving and tasting beer don’t seem to be activities that require diligence, but, as a matter of fact, they do. Failing to properly serve a beer can have a measurable effect on your beer drinking pleasure.

 Here are some pointers for proper beer enjoyment:

Make sure the beer is properly chilled or warmed, depending on the beer style. Most beers should be served around 42 degrees Fahrenheit. (Make sure the beer isn’t so cold that it numbs your tongue.) But some beers should be served lightly chilled or at room temperature.

Always pour your beer into a drinking vessel. In other words, never drink straight from the can or bottle. Pouring your beer into a glass releases carbonation, which creates a head (and reduces its gassy “bite”) and brings out more of the beer’s aroma.

Always make sure your beer glasses are properly cleaned and stored. Dirty, smelly glasses can ruin your beer and be a bad reflection on you.

Dining with beer

Where wine was once the preeminent beverage on dinner tables, it’s now being boldly challenged by the formerly blue-collar beverage called beer. People everywhere are discovering just how versatile and interesting beer is when you pair it with appropriate food choices.

Cooking with beer

Sure, cooking with beer has been a kitchen standard for eons — if you consider dumping a can of Olde Foamy into a pot of chili “cooking with beer.” With all the new and interesting beers in the market these days, chefs and gourmands have a newfound interest in beer, and they’re flexing their fun muscles in the kitchen.

Intimidated by the thought of cooking with beer? Consider the following factors when choosing a beer for cooking purposes:

Color: Beers brewed with a lot of dark grain, such as Stout and Porter, are likely to transpose their color to your meal — not an appetizing hue for fettuccine Alfredo or scrambled eggs.

Level of sweetness (maltiness) versus level of bitterness (hoppiness): Malt is by far the predominant beer flavor in a recipe, but beer’s bitterness increases with reduction (that is, the decrease in volume caused by boiling). In general, go with a mild beer rather than a bold one and avoid highly hopped beers, such as some Pale Ales. Reserve the sweeter, heavier beers (such as Belgian Tripels or Scotch Ales) for dessert mixes and glazes. Note: As water and alcohol boil off, both the sweet and bitter flavors of the beer intensify.

Other flavors: Beers are available in a wide variety of styles, many with flavors that aren’t traditionally associated with beer. You may encounter Fruit Beers, Chocolate Beers, Sour Beers, and Smoked Beers, among others. These flavored beers present many culinary possibilities in their own right, but they’re just not meant for use in the average recipe