The New Craft Beer World E-Book

Mark Dredge

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

With more amazing beers available than ever before, it's hard to know which ones to choose. That's where The New Craft Beer World comes in. Gathering together over 400 of the most innovative and tastiest beers you need to try, and divided into 50 different categories, you will find the best of the best each style has to offer. Every category comes with an explanation of the key characteristics of the style – whether it's an American IPA bursting with citrusy C-hops or an Imperial Stout full of dark roasted malts – along with an example of a classic brew and a selection of cutting edge versions that are certain to become instant favourites. So whether you're looking for bitter beers or balanced flavours, a hit of hops or a hint of coffee, the reviews will point you in the right direction to find the perfect beer to suit your tastebuds. Also included are interesting nuggets of beer information, covering everything from the catalyst that has caused the astonishing growth in craft beer through to matching beer with food and how to serve your drinks.

Leseprobe

THE NEW

CRAFT

BEER

WORLD

MARK DREDGE

THE NEW

CRAFT

BEER

WORLD

CELEBRATING OVER 400

DELICIOUS BEERS

Published in 2021 by Dog ’n’ Bone Books

An imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd

20–21 Jockey’s Fields

341 E 116th St

London WC1R 4BW

New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Mark Dredge 2021

Design and illustrations © Dog ’n’ Bone Books 2021

Photography: see Picture Credits on page 224

The History and Evolution of IPA on pages 84-85 is updated from Mark Dredge’s book The Best Beer in the World.

The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-911026-79-2

E-ISBN: 978-1-912983-48-3

Printed in China

Editor: Caroline West

Designer: Geoff Borin

Illustrators: flavor wheels on pages 17 and 39 by Andrew

Henderson with text by Mark Dredge; other illustrations by Anna Galkina.

Art director: Sally Powell

Production manager: Gordana Simakovic

Publishing manager: Penny Craig

Publisher: Cindy Richards

CONTENTS

Introduction

Craft Beer Today

The Ingredients of Beer

World of Hops

The Brewing Process

When Beer Goes Bad

Beer Glossary

Beer and Food

Popular Beer Styles and What to Eat with Them

Beer Flavor Wheel

THE WORLD’S GREATEST BEERS

Pale Ale

American IPA

The Regional IPAs of America

Session IPA

Double IPA

Hazy Pale Ales and IPAs

Hazy DIPA

English Pale Ale and IPA

Pacific Pale Ale, IPAs, and Summer Ales

Red IPA

Black IPA

The History and Evolution of IPA

Other Pales and IPAs

American Wheat Ale and White IPA

Blonde and Golden Ales

Pale and Hoppy

Amber and Red Ale

Traditional British-style Ale

Modern British-style Ale

Brown Ale

Porter

Dry Stout

Sweet Stout

The Story of Craft Beer

Baltic Porter

Imperial Stouts and Barrel-aged Stouts

Pastry Stouts

Barley Wine and Strong Ale

Classic Pilsner

Modern Pilsner

The Importance of Classics

Pale Lager

Amber Lager

Dark Lager

Strong Lager

Hoppy Lager

Traditional Lager

American Pilsner and Light Lager

Hybrid Lagers and Ales

The History of Lager

Weissbier

Witbier

Saison and Farmhouse Ales

Indigenous Beers

Belgian Pale and Amber Ale

Belgian Tripel and Strong Golden Ale

Belgian Dubbel, Quadrupel, and Strong Dark Ale

Belgian Oud Red and Oud Bruin

Lambic and Gueuze

Spontaneously Fermented Beer

Slow Sours and American Wild Ale

Fast Sours

Fruit Sours

Fruit and Spice Beer

Low-No Alcohol and Lo-Cal Beer

Gluten-free and Alternative Grains

The Beer Bucket List

Index

Learn More

Picture Credits

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Beer continues to excite and surprise me—and sometimes challenge me, too. My love for beer started with the taste and the continual search for something new in my glass. I wanted to try everything. I wanted to know what every single beer tasted like and I was forever searching for the next beer—for the best beer. After a decade of writing about beer I’m still looking for the best and while the excitement of opening something new hasn’t disappeared, I now also feel more balanced by context and the social situations and stories of beer, and that’s where my love of beer is today—a beer glass has become a consistent lens through which I can learn about the world, a lens that opens to reveal experiences, cultures, customs, and characters.

Beer has forever been evolving and progressing, changing with technology and trends. That’s been true for hundreds of years, but never have those changes happened more rapidly—and perhaps unexpectedly—than right now: there are more breweries, more beers, and more styles; more people drinking beer in more places; new processes, ingredients, and different taste expectations. And that makes my job as a beer writer always varied and interesting, but it does mean that illustrated books like this come to reflect a moment in time.

I wrote my first book, Craft Beer World, in the summer of 2012. I wanted it to be a book that looked for the most interesting and innovative world beers. I wanted to find unexpected breweries in unexpected places. I wanted to include the curious local styles, and I wanted the classics of the world of beer to sit alongside the best new beers. But those new beers didn’t stay new for long and the constant progression of the industry meant that the book was getting increasingly out of date and less relevant to drinkers, with many well-known breweries and beer styles not represented. It was time to write a new book.

This is a complete rewrite of Craft Beer World (only 20 or so beers feature in both books), though a handful of the early pages may look similar because I like what I wrote before and there was no need for a full revision. Hopefully, you’ll see that I’ve learned a lot more about beer in the intervening years, that I’ve drunk more broadly, and that I still have the same love for excellent-tasting beers and the stories behind them. You might notice that alongside the excitement for the new brews, I’ve discovered a deeper enjoyment and respect for the classic beers, or classic examples of styles, because I think that the continual presence of these classics gives us a foundation of knowledge which we need in order to understand the world of beer; without the classics we’re potentially just looking at fads and fashions.

I’m still on my never-ending search for great beers, and this book is a celebration of the best brewers and beers in the world—and it is fully global, featuring beers from over 50 countries. Beer is a drink with a rapidly progressing present and a future that makes us wonder what we’ll be drinking next week, month, or year. Beer is also a drink with history, traditions, and classics. It’s that intersection of innovation and tradition which makes it an especially fascinating drink for me.

My aim with this book is to give a snapshot of craft beer as we progress through the early 2020s, pouring you a worldwide mix of classics, classic-interpretations, modern evolutions of traditional styles, and completely new brews following the contemporary trends. Some may excite, some may surprise, some may challenge, but they are all interesting in their own way.

CRAFT BEER TODAY

Craft beer and small-scale brewing has truly become a global phenomenon and there are very few places in the world where you can’t find a local craft beer now. Writing this book allowed me to look all around the world to see what brewers are making, no matter whether I was looking in Vancouver, Miami, Manchester, Oslo, Athens, St. Petersburg, Seoul, Sydney, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, or Bogota, the trends were the same.

The significant global craft beer trends in the early 2020s have, arguably, been popularized and impacted by social media; by the visual impact of beers on image-sharing platforms like Instagram and in beer-rating apps like Untappd. What’s most interesting to me is that so many of these new beers don’t taste or look like traditional beer. By that I mean that I often can’t taste the malts in them (or they are so strong that they’re almost cartoonishly sweet), while some are so fruity that it’s sometimes hard to believe the aromas actually came from hops, with shopping baskets of flavorsome adjuncts being added to them and many looking like smoothies (you want tropical, berries, or chocolate?). Far from being a negative thing, this is drawing in more and more drinkers. But it has significantly changed what we drink.

A decade ago, a list of the world’s highest-rated or best beers was quite predictable: some Trappist Quadrupels, some bourbon barrel-aged Stouts, some bitter Double IPAs, and probably a classic Belgian Gueuze or two. Today there are still the barrel-aged Imperial Stouts, only they’ve gotten stronger, sweeter, and fuller-bodied, often containing additional ingredients like chocolate, vanilla, coconut, and lactose (milk sugar). Alongside the sugary Stouts, Sour Beer has developed from a niche nerdy brew into something far fruitier and sweet, brewed with large volumes of fruit to be thick, sweet and sour, and strong, like actual smoothies. And the big styles that are now trending everywhere are Hazy IPAs and Double IPAs. These are beers that look and smell emphatically like glasses of tropical fruit juice. Whether we’re looking at Stouts, Sours, or Hazy IPAs, we find that they all share several traits: full textures, smooth bodies, intense flavors, high strength, and a side-step from traditional beer characteristics.

A colorful tasting flight in South Africa, with a beautiful view of mountains in the background.

Go to almost any taproom, anywhere in the world, and the beer choice has become greater than ever before, but that breadth belies a lack of actual variety, because the tap lists are universally saturated with IPAs and Sours. There are more beers and breweries than ever before in history, but we’ve arguably got less style variety than we’ve ever had. And everywhere you look brewers are moving in the same mass direction. It’s like watching a load of six-year-olds play soccer, all chasing the ball until someone boots it in another direction, then everyone going after it again. There’s excitement in that movement but there’s also an instability to it, and no one quite knows for sure where we’re going to end up.

Yet one of the consequences of several years of wild experimentation is a refocusing on classic beer styles and beers that have a more permanent appeal. The revolution is to go back to the basics and reconsider them, refresh them, and revive interest in them. There are now more great lagers being brewed by small breweries; the pulpy popularity of juicy IPAs has seen brewers revert to the kinds of bright, bitter West Coast IPAs that probably got them into brewing in the first place; there are more brewers making wild and spontaneously fermented ales which are aged for years before they can be drunk. And local tastes are becoming increasingly important: local ingredients, local influence, seasonal variation. As one side of craft beer goes bonkers for newness, so the other side settles down and relaxes back with a renewed focus on traditions. The constant forward momentum alongside the foundation of history is what ensures that beer remains a diverse and remarkable drink.

The Craft Beer Market restaurant in False Creek Olympic Village, Vancouver, Canada.

My concerns for craft beer right now are not that there’s too much newness, or that some older styles have been forgotten (because they’ll be back again, for sure), it’s that not every beer that’s brewed is excellent. Many aren’t of a high quality, or they suffer from brewing faults, especially with the more progressive styles. If a brewer wants to make a classic Pilsner or Porter, then there are recipes, but there aren’t many recipes for these triple-fruited brews which are sweet with adjuncts. Sometimes these beers are approximations and best-guesses, and often brewed to match a certain appearance as much as an intense flavor profile. Also, because many of these beers are only brewed once, there’s rarely the chance to perfect that recipe. And that troubles me, as the lack of consistent brewing and refinement of recipes gives too much variation in quality. The enormous worldwide growth of the industry is incredible to see, but just because it’s new or from a small brewery doesn’t automatically make it good or better than the beer from a big national brewery. It’s very easy to make a beer with lots of flavor in the same way that it’s very easy to make a chili which is so spicy it’s inedible…

The current state of craft beer is one that is often looking for what’s new. That makes the writing of a book like this a challenge because what was new yesterday is out of date tomorrow—and I’m writing this months or years before you’re reading it. At the same time, the return to a focus on classic styles, and on making beers more local and seasonal, is seeing the industry evolve in numerous different directions. This makes craft beer more exciting than ever before. I don’t know what’s next, but I’m looking forward to drinking it and seeing how this great industry is able to change beer-drinking around the globe, whether that’s with a crisp Pilsner, a classic Pale Ale, or a super-strong Stout with several pounds of chocolate whipped into it.

THE INGREDIENTS OF BEER

Beer-making is as old as civilization. Sure, it’s been refined and improved over the millennia, made in larger volumes, in more places, and with more variety, but the essence of combining water, grain, hops, and yeast to make beer is remarkably similar to the earliest brews.

Beer’s surface simplicity belies the complexities of brewing: the limitless possible processes and the variety of ingredient combinations; how different grains can be mixed together to create flavor, texture, color, and sweetness; how the timing of adding hops can maximize the desired characteristics, affecting bitterness, flavor, and aroma; the importance of manipulating billions of living yeast cells to ensure a good fermentation and flavor; the ways that a couple of degrees in temperature can change a beer entirely; and how using ingredients beyond the traditional four can give beer completely new characteristics. Here we look a little closer at the main ingredients of beer and how they combine to create the great beer varieties we know today.

This panel, dated 1874, on the facade of an old brewhouse shows how the basics of making beer have not changed over the centuries.

Water

Water is fundamentally important to brewing great beer. When you think about the brewing process, the beer we end up drinking is essentially a glass of water that has been infused with the flavors of grain and hops—in a way, it’s like producing a broth or stock from bones, vegetables, and fresh herbs, only brewers take it a little further and convert its essence—the sugars in the liquid—into alcohol.

Consider water as the foundation of beer, with the malt being the base structure and the hops and yeast the decorations. Each beer needs a good foundation and that foundation will vary depending on the beer being made. Water’s mineral composition varies depending on where you are—even just pouring a glass from the faucet or tap in different cities around the world will give you subtle differences.

An ancient well in the Kronenbourg brewery, Strasbourg, France.

You’ve probably heard of soft water and hard water, the difference being their mineral content. Rainwater is naturally soft, and it absorbs minerals from the ground, so, depending on where your water is coming from and what the water has flowed through, the mineral content will vary. This means, for example, that a city in the mountains will have a different local water from a city by the sea.

Different waters in the brewhouse will have an impact on several elements of the beer’s overall balance and composition, with an oversimplification being that softer waters give a softer, cleaner, gentler malt flavor, while a harder water profile will sharpen the flavor of hops and dark malt, perhaps also leaving a dryness on the palate.

Historically, brewers could only make beer with the water source local to them, often drawn from a well. From this we can see how certain important beer styles became linked to a place, and in turn linked to the water of that place. For example, Pilsen, in the Czech Republic, had very soft water, which helped the brewers there make soft-textured Pilsner; the hard waters of London balanced the dark malts of a Porter; and the mineral-rich waters of Burton-on-Trent, in the English Midlands, enhanced the dry bitterness of India Pale Ale. Back then, brewers couldn’t easily change the water, but now they can.

Today, every brewer can control their brewing water, sometimes just by adding different minerals, and at other times by first using a water treatment like reverse osmosis. All beers have a specific water composition, which is adjusted to suit the style of beer. This control is essential to brewing great beer. Water might not be an exciting ingredient, but it’s a vital one, and there’s a lot more to it than just using what comes out of the faucet or tap.

A handful of barley in the malthouse.

Malt and grain

The base of any great beer is built on grain—it’s the structure of a beer, and its heart. Malted barley is the most common brewing grain and it gives beer several important qualities and characteristics: color, which can range from pale yellow to black; texture and body, which could be tonic-dry or syrup-thick; flavors that range from bread and toast to caramel to chocolate and coffee—basically anything you might find in your local bakery; and the alcohol content, which is derived from the grain’s sugars, where an average brew will ferment around 70 percent of the malt sugars into alcohol, leaving the rest as body and flavor.

Barley is the best brewing grain for a couple of simple reasons. On a chemical level, it contains enzymes which, during the brewing process, are able to turn its own unfermentable starches into fermentable sugars. It also has a husk, which helps during the separation of wort and spent grain (if that doesn’t make sense now, then it should do in a few pages’ time—see page 22).

The brewhouse at the Orval Brewery, Belgium.

The broad spectrum of flavor and color in beer mostly comes from the malting process. Malting makes barley into something usable in the brewhouse. In the natural world, barley grows and its kernels fall to the ground, hopefully landing in a puddle of water and growing into a new plant, forever repeating this life cycle. When barley kernels are harvested, they are effectively put into a dry hibernated state until they get to the malthouse (historically breweries had their own maltings, but now only a few do this themselves), where the first stage of the malting process is to steep the grain in water. This awakens the barley, so that it comes back to life and begins to grow. After a day or two, the barley is taken out of the water and it germinates, with rootlets sprouting from the grain. After a few more days, the maltster needs to stop the grain growing, which they do by kilning it. This reduces the moisture content considerably to leave a dry and crunchy malt kernel, and it’s here that the kilning temperature and duration will influence the characteristics of the grain in a way that’s similar to cooking toast: it’s pale and bready to begin with, then caramelized and sweet, then black and burned. You might also see crystal malt, which goes through a stewing process that converts the starches into sugars, so when it’s kilned those sugars crystallize, giving a sweeter, caramelized flavor to the final beer.

There are dozens of types of malt, each with a different color, sweetness, and character. Most beers use a combination of different malts to build the beer’s structure. There will always be a large percentage of a base grain used and this will provide most of the fermentable sugars, which will become the alcohol—even in a strong Stout, something like 90 percent of the grain bill will be the sugar-rich pale malt, with the dark grains giving color and flavor.

Barley is not the only brewing grain. Other common grains include wheat, which has a higher protein content than barley and leaves more haze and more body in a beer, but not necessarily a strong flavor; oats give a full, smooth texture; rye adds a nutty, spicy flavor; rice, corn, or maize—often referred to as adjuncts—will lighten the body and flavor of a beer and give a crisper finish; while other grains like spelt and buckwheat can also be used to give their own flavors or different characteristics.

In addition to the grain’s natural sugars, brewers can add actual sugar to their beers to give more fermentables to the yeast. These sugars will typically contribute to the alcohol content but, because they are completely fermentable, they won’t leave much body or flavor in the beer, therefore leaving it dry. It’s long been common for Belgian strong ales like Dubbel and Tripel to use sugar for this reason. Brewers can use simple table sugar and dextrose, which will give alcohol but little flavor; muscovado and dark candi sugar, which will give both color and a caramelized flavor; or honey and maple syrup, which will add sweetness, potential alcohol content, and some flavor.

Common Malts

Here are some of the most common malts you’ll see in beer today:

Pilsner malt

Very pale base grain, light biscuit taste

Pale ale malt

Lightly toasty, cereal-like base grain

Wheat malt

Very pale, light bready taste, gives fullness, foam, and haze

Munich malt

Toasty, bread crusts, adds reddish color

Caramalt

Toffee, chewy, sweet, raisin

Crystal malt

Caramel sweetness, bulks bodies in beer

Chocolate malt

Dark and bitter, big roast, low sweetness

Roasted barley

Black, acrid, sharply bitter, stains beer black

Oats

Creamy, smooth texture, can add haziness

Grain Bills in Common Beer Styles

Here is how you might expect the above malts to be combined to create the base recipe structure for popular contemporary beer styles, though every recipe will vary:

Pilsner: 100% Pilsner malt

Dunkel: 75% Munich malt, 25% Pilsner malt

Hefeweizen/Witbier: 50% Pilsner malt, 50% wheat malt

Saison: 70% Pilsner malt, 20% wheat, 5% oats, 5% spelt or specialty malt

Dubbel: 80% Pilsner malt, 10% dark candi sugar, 8% wheat, 2% chocolate

Tripel: 90% Pilsner malt, 10% dextrose/candi sugar

American Pale Ale: 90% Pale ale malt, 5% wheat malt, 5% Munich malt

West Coast IPA: 100% Pale ale malt

Hazy DIPA: 80% Pale ale malt, 10% oats, 7% wheat, 3% dextrose

Red IPA: 80% Pale ale malt, 10% Munich malt, 5% crystal malt, 5% Caramalt

Best Bitter: 90% Pale ale malt, 5% Caramalt, 4% crystal malt, 1% chocolate malt

Porter: 85% Pale ale malt, 5% Caramalt, 5% brown malt, 5% chocolate malt

Imperial Stout: 85% Pale ale malt, 5% Caramalt, 5% chocolate malt, 5% roasted barley

To begin the brewing process, the grain is milled and mixed with warm water in the mash tun. There are two typical methods for mashing the grain in modern breweries. The first is an infusion mash, where the water is heated to the desired temperature (around 153°F/67°C), mixed with the grain, then held at that temperature for an hour. The other is the step mash, where the temperature of the mash is gradually increased in step increments—this has the benefit of holding at specific temperatures to try to maximize the enzymes activated in the grain (brewing is a complicated science…). There’s also an old European mash process called decoction. Many Central European brewers, especially in Germany and the Czech Republic, still use this, and some modern brewers do, too. It involves mashing in and removing a portion of the grain and water, boiling that portion separately, then putting the decocted mash back into the mash tun. This raises the overall temperature and will also produce some sweeter flavors and more body. Some beers use a double or even triple decoction.

Hops

Hops have become the defining ingredient in craft beer. It’s these perennial, varietal flowers that give beer its bitterness, much of its flavor, and most of its aroma. This aroma could be anything that you might find in the fruit and vegetable aisle of the grocery store: juicy tropical fruits, sweet citrus flesh, tangy citrus pith, stone fruits such as peaches and apricots, berries, grapes, gooseberries, hard green herbs, floral herbs, peppery spices, even onion, garlic, and—not typical in most grocery stores—pine and marijuana.

Hop flowers are harvested once a year in each hemisphere—they are picked in September in the north and March in the south. Once picked, they are dried and can then be baled as flowers or processed into smaller pellets—most breweries use hop pellets, which are a more efficient product with a better possible extraction of flavors. Hops can also have their bitter acids and aromatic oils extracted to be used as a liquid (I’ll explain the acids and oils separately), while the desire for maximum fruity aromas has given us Cryo hops, which have been frozen with liquid nitrogen and processed to capture as many of the pure aromatic oils as possible.

Hops have been used in beer for at least a thousand years, but it wasn’t until around the 16th century that they became the almost exclusive bittering and flavoring ingredient. One main reason that hops got this job was because they’re naturally antibacterial, keeping out any bacteria that could do harm to the beer or the drinker, while also preserving the liquid for longer.

In brewing, we can think of hops in the same way as seasoning, herbs, and spices in the kitchen. Some dishes just want salt and pepper in the same way that some beers, like Light Lager, Witbiers, or Sours, just want a light or neutral bitterness to balance and complete the flavor. Some dishes want herbal, grassy, spicy, and zesty flavors, like using hard green herbs, fragrant spices like ground coriander, aniseed vegetables such as fennel, and a squeeze or zest of lemon—these are the food equivalents of the hops in styles like Pilsner, Saison, or Belgian Tripels. Then there are the dishes that combine handfuls of strong chili peppers, aromatic spices like star anise and cinnamon, soft herbs such as Thai basil and cilantro (fresh coriander), and squeezes of lime juice. These are your IPAs and DIPAs.

Hops are typically added to the brew kettle during a one-hour rolling boil, and often there are three separate additions: the first will give bitterness, while later additions give more flavor and then aroma. It’s common in the most aromatic of beer styles, like IPAs, to add hops after the boil has finished, and then again as a “dry-hop,” which happens toward the end of fermentation and into its maturation (this is on the “cold side” of brewing instead of the “hot side” in the boiling kettle). In simple terms: the later the hops are added, the more you’ll smell them.

Any hop varieties can be added at any time and in any combination throughout the brewing process, but some hops are seen as better for giving bitterness, while others are more desired for their aroma profiles.

Understanding the composition of hops and the brewing process helps us to see how these flowers give beer both bitterness and aroma, and why those characteristics differ by variety.

Hops contain acids and oils; the acids will give bitterness and the oils give flavors and aromas. Each hop variety has a different composition of acids and oils, which means they will produce different potential characteristics as well as varied volumes of bitterness and aroma.

Hops on the bine, soon to be picked.

Adding dry hops at the Orval brewery.

The hops are added to the brewing kettle where the wort is boiled for an hour or so. Hops added as the wort reaches boiling point will therefore be boiled for an hour. During that time the acids will isomerize (becoming water soluble), giving out their bitterness and boiling away all the aromatic oils, which are volatile. Hops added later in the boil will not have as much chance to add bitterness to the beer, but will contribute aromas—think of it as being like adding fresh basil to a ragu. If you cook the basil in the sauce for an hour, it will add flavor, but use it as a garnish when you serve up the ragu and you’ll get all of those great aniseed, spicy aromatics. Dry-hopping works in a similar way and is used to bring out the aroma. It’s like adding mint to a pitcher of water, where all the natural oils in the mint give the water a new flavor and aroma. We look more into specific hop flavors over the following pages.

America is now the world’s leading hop-growing nation, accounting for something like 40 percent of global hop production, with most of it grown in the Pacific Northwest. Germany grows around 36 percent of the world’s hops, mostly in the Hallertau region, north of Munich. Third comes the Czech Republic, with less than 5 percent of all the hops. Then come China (bet you didn’t expect that—they grow for their domestic production and, as the largest beer market in the world, they need a lot of hops), Poland, Slovenia, England, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Spain. And do you know the top three hops in the world in terms of acreage in 2020? It’s German Herkules, Czech Saaz, and American Citra—the last only introduced to the market commercially in the early 2000s.

There are now more than 200 commercially available hop varieties in the world, and more are appearing every year as a result of successes in global hop-breeding programs. Many of the more popular contemporary hops have come from breeding programs where the aim is to get either a strong acid constituent for bitterness or a bold, flavorsome oil potential with lots of tropical and citrusy aromas, all with good agronomics for the farmers. Each new variety brings different flavor profiles, some with characteristics like chocolate, oak, coconut, berries, and more. See the Hop Aroma & Flavor wheel opposite or on my website, www.beerdredge.com, for an example of these hop aromas.

Yeast and fermentation

Yeast metabolizes sugars and creates alcohol and carbon dioxide, plus some aromatic by-products. More prosaically, yeast eats sugar, digests it, pees alcohol, burps bubbles, and sweats different smells. That doesn’t make it sound delicious, I know, but it’s pretty much what happens to turn sweet, malty, and non-alcoholic wort into a glassful of dry, fizzy beer.

Yeast is a living microorganism and a great variable in the brewing process; if the yeast isn’t happy or healthy, then it won’t produce a good beer. Before the end of the 1800s, every beer would have most likely been what we now call “mixed fermentation,” meaning it contained a variety of different yeast strains and probably some bacteria. From the mid-1880s onward brewers were able to isolate single strains of yeast and brew with just those—the scientific discovery of pure yeast, which happened in Carlsberg brewery’s laboratory, was one of the most significant events in beer’s history as it helped brewers make more consistent beer with less chance of spoilage.

There are many strains of yeast, each of which is often linked to a particular classic style (and derived from a classic brew). So, for example, a brewer might use an American ale yeast in a Pale Ale, Vermont yeast in a Hazy IPA, a Bavarian lager yeast in a Dunkel, or a Belgian Saison yeast in their Saison, with these yeast strains contributing to the expected characteristics of those beer types.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cells.

Step back from the style-specific strains and look at beer’s family tree, and you’ll see that it can be split into three: ale yeast, lager yeast, and wild yeast (and bacteria). Ale, lager, and wild are different species of yeast. It’s sort of like gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos—all are similar-ish, and have some distant relations and breeding history, but each is now a different species that lives and behaves differently.

Ale yeast—scientifically known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae—typically prefers ambient to warm conditions, fermenting in the range of 59–77°F (15–25°C). This temperature pushes the yeast to work to metabolize the malt sugars in 3–5 days and will naturally produce a variety of different aroma compounds—known as esters and phenols—although they won’t always be prominent. Ale styles like Hefeweizen, Witbier, Saison, and most other Belgian ales will often ferment at the warm end of the range and that warmth helps to produce the strong aromas common in those styles. The yeast used in Hazy IPAs often produces a large amount of esters which contributes to the fruity aromas in the beer—esters are an often-overlooked part of the flavor profile of most beers. Common ester aromas are sweet and fruity, like banana, pear, stone fruit, rose, and vanilla.

Lager yeast—scientifically known as Saccharomyces pastorianus—prefers cooler temperatures and will work well in the range of 46–54°F (8–12°C), where it’ll take 4–10 days to ferment the sugars, typically producing fewer esters. S. pastorianus is a hybrid of S. cerevisiae and another Saccharomyces yeast, and, while it isn’t known where or how they hybridized, S. pastorianus got its cold tolerance from the non-S. cerevisiae strain. This ability to thrive in a colder environment, along with the Bavarian process of storing—or lagering—beer in cold cellars for an extended amount of time, created a perfect combination of circumstances to produce what we now call lager. Crucially, this maturation time allowed any potentially negative characteristics given out by the yeast during fermentation to be reabsorbed, leaving a better-tasting beer.

Historically, ale yeast was referred to as top-fermenting and lager yeast as bottom-fermenting, named because of how the yeast was collected by brewers either to be reused or removed from the fermentation vessel. Ale yeast was cropped off the top of the open-topped fermenter (because all fermenters were once open-topped), whereas lager yeast was removed from the bottom of the fermentation vessel after the beer was drawn off and moved into a storage barrel. Today, the distinction of top and bottom is less valid as almost all yeast has been trained to be cropped from the bottom of the tank—a modern evolution that suits the enclosed cylindroconical vessels used by most brewers.

Wooden barrels filled with maturing beer at a Lambic brewery.

Wild yeast is the third family and it can produce a more rustic or “wild” collection of flavors and aromas, sometimes also producing acidity if combined with bacteria like Lactobacillus or Pediococcus (wild yeast doesn’t necessarily make a beer sour on its own, whereas a mixed fermentation of yeast and bacteria will usually create acidity). The primary wild yeast is Brettanomyces and there are numerous strains that produce varying characteristics, sometimes being more earthy, funky, and barnyard-like, while others can be fruity like pineapple. Typically, they can ferment more of the malt sugars and work over a longer period of time, producing an overall drier—and often more complex—beer (if allowed to work for longer, that is; some brewers use this yeast in non-aged beer like IPA). For Spontaneously Fermented beers, the natural wild yeast in the environment of the brewery will begin the fermentation, with yeast resident in old wooden barrels additionally influencing fermentation. Those Wild Beers that aren’t spontaneously fermented will have a cultured and cultivated strain of Brettanomyces added.

Fruit, spices, barrels, and other ingredients

Beyond the four core ingredients of beer, brewers are able to add whatever else they want to their tanks. Fruit is common and increasingly so with more fruited IPAs and Sour Beers being brewed—citrus and tropical fruits are most popular in IPAs, while berries and stone fruits are the common choice for Sour Beers. Fruits can be added in various forms and can be fresh or frozen, peel or pith, puréed or pulped, or even extract or syrup; sometimes these fruits will be added to give fermentable sugars (meaning the yeast converts the fruit sugars into more alcohol), while at other times they will be added to give as much fruity flavor as possible.

Chocolate, cacao, coffee, coconut, honey, and vanilla are also often used in beers. Spices, like ground coriander, ginger, chili, and pepper, and hard herbs are popular. Then there’s everything else—if you can think of it, then it’s probably been used in a beer.

Barrel-aging continues to be popular. This process of putting a beer into a barrel to mature draws out new flavors from the wood and pushes them into the beer, while microflora might also contribute new complexities or acidity, depending on the barrel and the type of beer being brewed. The barrel, the amount of char inside it, and whether that wood previously held a different drink—like wine or whiskey—will all impact the finished beer. The two most common kinds of barrel-aged beer are dark, strong ales matured in old whiskey barrels to pick up caramel, spice, and vanilla flavors, and beers matured in old wine barrels—these may or may not give acidity to the finished beer, which could be a variety of styles and strengths.

Vanilla

Rosemary

WORLD OF HOPS

Alongside the different hop varieties and their specific acid and oil composition, the location where the hops are grown also contributes to their qualities, with the soil and weather having an impact—in the same the way that winemakers talk about the terroir of a grape.

Hop-growing regions

THE BREWING PROCESS

Brewing begins by combining milled grain with hot water in the mash tun. The grains steep or mash for an hour before the liquid—now known as wort—is separated from the spent grain, often in a vessel called a lauter tun. The spent grain will usually be sent to feed livestock while the sweet wort moves into the kettle and is boiled for an hour, which is when the hops are added, often as three separate additions—the first for bitterness, the later ones for flavor and aroma. Next, the hopped wort is cleared of the hop particles (they disintegrate but don’t dissolve in the kettle), usually in a whirlpool, then it’s cooled down, and the liquid moves into a fermenter, where the yeast is added, and fermentation begins.

The actual brewing process takes 4–8 hours. Fermentation typically takes 3–10 days, depending on the beer style, and most beers are then matured until they are ready—each beer type will be different, ranging from a few days to a few years, though 2–6 weeks is common for most craft beers, and they are most often held at close to 32°F (0°C). When the beer is ready, brewers can (but don’t always) centrifuge or filter it to remove the hazy yeast, then it can be packaged and drunk.

The Kühlschiff or coolship at the Schafferhof brewery in Germany. See pages 192 and 194 for more about the role coolships play in brewing certain kinds of beer.

WHEN BEER GOES BAD

Not every beer is good. Some just won’t be to your taste, whereas others are technically faulty. There are a number of factors that can contribute to the detection (or not) of actual faults in beer. Firstly, some people are “taste-blind” to certain flavors, so they might not be able to taste some of these faults; secondly, the quantities present in a beer can vary—at low levels some of these characteristics might be pleasant, while at high levels they may be revolting; and thirdly, it’s all dependent on the beer style, where, for example, a banana-like aroma is great in a Hefeweizen, but bad in a Pale Ale.

Butter, buttered popcorn, butterscotch, fatty mouthfeel

What? Diacetyl

Why? A natural by-product of fermentation. If it’s in your beer, it could mean the beer was hurried out of the brewery or the brewers didn’t make time for a diacetyl rest. It can also mean infected yeast, a by-product of a lactic fermentation, or a result of beer that’s sat in a dirty beer line for a while.

Appropriate? Only in trace amounts in some Lagers and British ales. It can totally unbalance hoppy beers. Some drinkers are strongly averse to diacetyl, while some like it, and others are taste-blind to it.

Apple skin and juice, cider, paint in high volumes

What? Acetaldehyde

Why? A natural by-product of fermentation. If present it’s because the beer is “green,” usually due to haste in the brewery, or the yeast is of poor quality. If it becomes cidery, then it’s got to an extreme level.

Appropriate? No, although some Light Lagers have this present.

Sweetcorn, stewed vegetables, cabbage, tomatoes

What? Dimethyl sulfide (DMS)

Why? Comes from pale malt if it hasn’t had a vigorous enough boil in the kettle. Could also appear if fermentation has been slow.

Appropriate? Only in very small amounts in some Pale Lagers, where it can add a pleasant malt-sweet aroma, but it should never become overstewed or cabbage-like.

Bananas, pear drops, apples, stone fruit, strawberry, honey, pineapple

What? Esters, including isoamyl acetate (bananas and pear drops), ethyl caprylate and caproate (apples and aniseed), ethyl acetate (solvent), and phenylethyl acetate (honey, roses)

Why? Fruity aromas that are a by-product of fermentation.

Appropriate? Yes, but appropriateness is down to the detectable level and the style of beer. Expect banana in Hefeweizens and maybe in Witbier or other Belgian ales, but it’s often a fault in other styles. Can be more evident in strong beers. The recent trend for very fruity IPAs has seen brewers using yeasts that naturally produce more of these fruity esters to enhance the general fruitiness of a beer. Lagers have a subtle ester profile, but it’s often a key quality of the beer.

Clove, smoky, Islay whisky, band-aids, disinfectant, vanilla, drying tannins

What? Phenols

Why? Aromas that develop with fermentation or may be a result of bad temperature control in the brewery. It could come from bacterial infection (you might taste this in some Sour Beer) or from high chlorine levels in brewing water.

Appropriate? Where esters are often okay in beer, phenols are not so good, although in some styles you can expect a small amount of phenols from the yeast—Hefeweizen, Witbier, and some Strong Belgian Ales, for example—which can positively add to the character of the beer. Some drinkers are strongly averse to phenolic flavors.

Paper, cardboard, stale, sherry, caramel

What? Oxidized

Why? Oxygen is not good for beer and will turn it stale. It can totally change a beer and make it thin and papery. In very hoppy pale beers, oxidation can taste like an unwelcome caramel flavor.

Appropriate? Never in fresh beer, but can be an integral part of aged beers like Barley Wine, Old Lambic, or Strong Belgian Dark Ales, and contribute to their character.

Eggs or burning matches

What? Sulfur, of which there are two main kinds: hydrogen sulfide is eggy, while sulfur dioxide is like a struck match.

Why? Could be from the yeast or from water with a high sulfur content. It could also be a sign of infection or of a young beer. It’s a volatile aroma, so while you may smell it to begin with, it could dissipate as you drink.

Appropriate? Only in small amounts in some British ales and some lager styles, especially unfiltered lagers—lager naturally produces more sulfur and this can be pleasant and add a sweet fruitiness (Augustiner Hell classically has a little fresh sulfur in the aroma). No one wants a beer that smells like eggs, though.

“Skunky,” rotting vegetables, garlic, marijuana

What? Light-struck

Why? UV rays can break down hop molecules, causing a sulfurous reaction and producing some of the same stinky chemicals as a skunk.

Appropriate? Never. Avoid beer in clear or green bottles as they can’t block out the UV light. Keep beer out of direct sunlight as it can be light-struck very quickly (even in a glass in the beer garden). The aroma tends to be volatile, so may disappear after a few minutes.

Soy sauce, burned tires, Marmite

What? Autolyzed yeast

Why? Yeast that has died and ruptured its beer-spoiling guts into your beer.

Appropriate? In some aged beers it’s acceptable in small volumes as it can add complexity.

Sour milk, vinegar, lemon juice

What? Your beer is sour.

Why? It could be a number of things, but often it’s due to a bacterial infection in the beer (the same kind of bacteria that makes yogurt tangy). This could come from the brewery or could be a result of a slow-selling beer in dirty lines.

Appropriate? If the beer is meant to be sour, then it’s fine. If not, it’s a problem.

Cheesy, sweaty socks

What? Isovaleric acid

Why? Could be a bacterial infection or a sign of using old, oxidized hops.

Appropriate? No. Beer that smells like sweaty socks is rarely going to be delicious.

BEER GLOSSARY

Beer has its own language full of scientific and brewing terms, plus trendy words, slang, and abbreviations. Here’s a beer glossary to tell you all you need to know about what you’re drinking.

ABV Alcohol-by-volume. This is the percentage of ethanol per 3½ ounces (100ml) of liquid. In beer it can range from less than 1.0% to more than 15.0% ABV.

Ale A large family of beers brewed with a Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast. Many of the most popular beer styles are ales: Pale Ale and IPA, Stout and Porter, British ales, Witbier and Hefeweizen, Saison, and most Belgian beers, like Tripel and Quadrupel.

Alpha acid This is where hops’ bitterness comes from. The alpha acid in a hop variety can range from less than 3 percent to more than 20 percent. The alpha acids need to be isomerized to contribute their maximum bitterness and this happens as the hops are being boiled in the brewing kettle. A high alpha hop is like a chili with a high Scoville score.

Attenuation A measure of the percentage of sugars that the yeast converts during fermentation. A highly attenuated beer will be dry, whereas an under-attenuated beer will have a sticky residual sweetness. It’s common for most beers to attenuate in the 70 percent range, but particularly strong beers will be lower than that (and therefore sweeter), while some Belgian-style ales, especially sour ales, can attenuate further—it’s possible for some beers to finish with zero residual sweetness, making them the same “sweetness” as water.

Balance My favorite characteristic of great beer, this is where the flavors of malt, hops, and fermentation come together in harmony. There’s a reason why so many drinkers enjoy pale, simple lagers and that’s because they are always perfectly balanced. This doesn’t mean that balance is synonymous with boring, however. The best beers—whether Sour, DIPA, or Barley Wine—need to work together to be enjoyed.

Beer A fermented drink made from grain. The best drink in the world.

Body Light, thin, heavy, full, rich: this is the weight of the beer in the mouth. It comes from a combination of the grain base and whether the beer is filtered or not, and is dependent on the residual sugar in the beer.

Bottle-conditioned beer Beer that undergoes an additional fermentation in the bottle. A priming sugar and yeast are added to the bottle when it’s filled with flat beer, and this starts a slow, gradual conditioning process that produces carbon dioxide. As that carbon dioxide can’t escape the bottle, it’s absorbed into the beer, making it fizzy. Be careful to store these bottles upright and pour them without the sediment, unless you want to drink the yeast. Strong bottle-conditioned beers can be good candidates for aging over an extended period.

Clean Clean means an absence of unwanted flavors and a clarity of good flavors. My favorite analogy here is of looking at a photo of a beautiful landscape. If that photo is perfectly in focus, then you can see everything clearly, but if it’s a bit blurry, then it’s not so enjoyable to look at. A clean beer is perfectly in focus.

Collaboration brews Beers made by two or more different companies. These beers are often creative, one-off specials.

Color From very blonde to opaque black. Most of us will just say yellow, gold, red, brown, or black, but beer color can be measured on two different scales: Standard Reference Method (SRM) and European Brewery Convention (EBC). A Pale Lager will be as low as 1 SRM or 2 EBC (yellow). American IPA ranges from 6–14 SRM or 12–28 EBC (gold to amber). The darkest stout will be 70 SRM or 138 EBC (black). The majority of beers get their color solely from the grain used, but some heavily fruited beers might take on a red to purple color from the fruits added.

DDH Double Dry-Hopped, with two additions of dry hops. A lot of IPAs and DIPAs are DDH’d.

Degrees Plato A way of measuring the alcohol content in beer. This is drinker-facing in Central Europe and brewer-facing around the rest of the world. In countries such as the Czech Republic you’ll see beer listed as 10° or 12° on the tap or menu. This refers to the number of dissolved solids (basically malt sugars) in wort, where 10°P means 10g of sugar in 3.5 ounces (100ml) of wort, and where the higher the percentage of sugars, the higher the expected alcohol content. What you need to know when ordering is that a 10° beer will be around 4.0% ABV, 12° is about 5.0% ABV, and 16° is around 6.0% ABV.

Dry-hopping Adding hops to beer during or after fermentation to give extra aroma and flavor. Brewers can—and do—dry-hop any style of beer. The hops are often added while the beer is still in the warmer fermentation temperatures and before it’s cooled to near freezing.

Esters These come out of beer as aromas that are created during the higher temperatures of fermentation when alcohol and organic acids react with each other. They are often fruity aromas but can be potently harsh and veer toward nail polish remover. Expect banana, pear, apple, rose, honey, stone fruit, and light alcohol/solvent. Sometimes these are brewing faults and other times they are desirable—it depends on the beer style and the volume at which they are present (they are in every single beer, but in many of them they are low or below the flavor threshold). Esters are part of the essential characteristics of most Belgian ales, all German Hefeweizens, some British ales, and modern Hazy IPAs.

Finish A word we’ve borrowed from wine to indicate how the flavor ends in the mouth and then hangs around. It could be short or long, dry, bitter, sweet, or sharp.

Gravity Original gravity (OG) and finished gravity (FG). Gravity is the weight of the wort relative to the weight of the water and it’s the brewer’s measure of sugars in the beer—it’s an alternative measure of Degrees Plato. OG is the sweetness out of the mash tun and FG is after it’s finished fermenting. The OG is a guide to what level of alcohol can be expected in the finished beer and the FG will tell you how sweet or dry the finished beer is, depending on how it has been Attenuated. 1.000 means no sugar. A Pale Ale or Pale Lager with an OG of 1.050 and an FG of 1.012 will give a beer of around 5.0% ABV and a balanced sweetness. An FG of 1.005 will be very dry, while 1.030 will be very sweet.

Hoppy A general term used to describe a beer with a dominant hop character. I use it primarily to talk about the aroma, where a “very hoppy” beer is one that has an abundant and fresh hop aroma.

IBU International Bittering Units. Also known as EBU (European Bittering Units) or just BU. This is the measure of bitterness in a beer and represents the parts per million of dissolved isoalpha acids in the beer. Each beer style will have an appropriate IBU level. A Light American Lager might be 10 IBU, Pilsner will be between 25–40 IBU, IPAs will range from 40–70 (though the Hazy IPA trend has lowered the bitterness levels for that sub-style), Stout might be around 50 IBU, while Imperial Stouts and Barley Wines can get to 100 IBU. This used to be a more common measure and one communicated to drinkers, but it’s now less prevalent. IBU is also only a useful measure if you understand the sweetness; a 50 IBU Pilsner will be very bitter, while a 50 IBU Imperial Stout will taste very sweet––bitterness is always relative to sweetness (a pot of black coffee served in two mugs will taste different if one of those mugs has a spoonful of sugar in it).

IPA The style that continues to define and drive craft beer. It’s become its own family of beer, one that is a showcase for hops. If we see IPA on a beer, then we know to expect aromatic hops, but we will also look for a qualifying prefix such as Session, Double, Hazy, Sour, or Black.

Lager A family of beer brewed with Saccharomyces pastorianus. These are fermented at cooler temperatures than ales and typically undergo an extended cold lagering time of a few weeks or months. The name comes from the process of lagering, or storing, beer in a cold place for it to mature. Lager is not just cold, fizzy, yellow beer—there’s a huge variety of different styles.

Malty Typically used to describe a prominent flavor of malt, often toasty or biscuity, but it could also go toward a darker, more roasted flavor.

Mouthfeel How the beer feels in the mouth: prickly, delicate, creamy, sharp, dry, smooth, tannic, fizzy, flat, light, heavy, rich.

Nitrogen/Nitro If you see a gas beer described as Nitro, this means it’s had nitrogen added to it. Nitrogen has smaller bubbles than carbon dioxide and they don’t pop in the same way, so you get a full, creamy, and smooth mouthfeel. It’s most often seen with Stouts, though some brewpubs will push nitrogen into a wide variety of styles.

Pastry Stout Like many of the other beers in this edition, Pastry Stout wasn’t in the beer lexicon when I wrote Craft Beer World back in 2012. Pastry (not just linked to Stout) refers to a rich and sweet beer that’s loaded with adjuncts like chocolate, vanilla, nuts, lactose (milk sugar), and other flavorings to deliberately make it sweet, decadent, and dessert-like.

Session Beer The idea of the “session” is a British way of drinking where you go out and drink lots of pints, often of the same beer, over a long period of time. The beers typically drunk are low in alcohol (4.0% ABV or less), facilitating a day of drinking. The session idea was appropriated by American craft beer and applied to any beer of moderate strength, with the word “session” becoming a by-word for lower strength, but not necessarily for drinking lots of the same beer. Ironically, many Session Beers have an ABV of 4.5% and over and are inherently unsessionable because of their strength and the volume of hoppiness.

Sour Beer A family of beers that all have a sour taste. They could be Fast Sours, like Berliner Weisse or Gose, made in a couple of weeks and often soured by bacteria, or they could be Slow Sours, spontaneously fermented or brewed with wild yeast and bacteria, then allowed to evolve over months or years to develop complexity. Most are acidic, like lemon or yogurt, while some are acetic, like vinegar. “Sour” has become the cool and established way to describe acidic beers, though describing classic styles like Lambic and Gueuze in this way is scorned by the traditional brewers who use the word “sour” to mean bad (as in: “This beer has gone sour!”).

Spontaneous fermentation Beer that ferments with natural wild yeast and bacteria found resident in the atmosphere and brewing environment (wooden barrels, old vessels, old farmhouse breweries), instead of a cultured pitch of yeast being added. It’s the traditional way of brewing Lambic and has become more popular with world brewers.

Trappist brewery An appellation for beers brewed by Trappist monks. There are some rules: it has to be a monastery that follows the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance; the beer must be produced, or overseen, by the monks; brewing should not be intended for profit, and any money made should go toward funding the monasteries and local communities. Some Trappists are very large, while others are very small. Most are in Belgium but there are also Trappists in the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Spain, France, England, and the USA. As Trappist is an appellation and not a style of beer, monasteries can make any beer they want—the Spencer Trappist beers from St. Joseph’s Abbey in Massachusetts make IPAs, for example.

Unfiltered Beer that hasn’t had the yeast filtered out of it. These beers are generally hazy and have more flavor and texture than their filtered equivalents (though I’d argue that sometimes the crisp character of a filtered lager can be better than the unfiltered version). It’s now common to see hazy and cloudy beer as standard—it’s even become an integral part of some styles, like the Hazy IPA, where the haze is a mix of grain proteins and hop polyphenols, plus some residual yeast.

Wild yeast and bacteria If these get into a brew unintentionally, they can turn the beer sour. However, some brewers deliberately add wild yeast and bacteria to get funky aromas and a sour taste. A good beer made with wild yeast (like Lambic, Gueuze, and Wild Ales) will be sharp, without a vinegary quality, and clean-tasting. Brettanomyces is a common wild yeast and Lactobacillus and Pediococcus are common bacteria.

Yeast These living microorganisms are responsible for producing the alcohol in beer. There are several species of brewing yeast and many different strains, with each working slightly differently and producing a variety of characteristics. The beer styles with the most obvious yeast character are Belgian ales (Witbier, Tripel, Saison, etc.) and German Wheat Beer.

BEER AND FOOD

Want to know the perfect beer to go with your dinner? Planning on opening a beer and need something great to serve it with? Here, I’ve made some suggestions for how to bring beer and food together in the best ways possible.

A sweet Stout or Wheat Beer and chili con carne

The first and main consideration for bringing beer and food together is the intensity. Session IPA and Double IPA have comparable taste profiles, but the stronger beer typically comes with way more impact, flavor, and body. You wouldn’t put a Session IPA with a citrus cheesecake, for example, and you wouldn’t necessarily want a Double IPA with a Vietnamese salad. Likewise, a Dunkel lager will be great with a roast chicken or cauliflower, yet washed out with a banoffee pie, whereas a Doppelbock would be perfect with the dessert but would overpower the chicken or cauliflower.

Then it’s important to consider the mouthfeel and texture of a beer, which will work in different ways with different foods. Is it full-bodied and smooth? Is it light and briskly carbonated? A full-textured beer like Imperial Stout is rich and luscious, while that prickly Saison is crisply refreshing, providing an invigorating effervescence.

Watch out for chili heat. Capsaicin is the active ingredient in chili that gives the feeling of burning, which is actually an acute and temporary irritation (the pepper hasn’t actually burned you; it just feels like it has). Some beers will ignite the fire of hot chili while others can help to cool it down. You want something smooth and full-bodied to try to balance and cool down the spice, with sweeter Stouts and Wheat Beers being good choices, while a classic and simple Pale Lager is often pleasingly refreshing with moderate heat. High carbonation and bitterness can both irritate and increase the burn sensation.

The Three Bs of Beer and Food

Bridge, Balance, and Boost are the three concepts you should consider to help you achieve the best beer and food combinations.

Bridge