Ask Me Anything about Beer

So maybe a decade ago I liked IPAs.  Now they all taste like grapefruit.  I understand most of that is due to the cascade hops?  Why did everyone start going to that? When are they going to stop?  Where can I get an IPA that doesn't taste like berkeleying grapefruit?

Following.  I'm a fan of beer.  Mostly IPAs & German Lager.  Lagunitas Supercluster is probably my favorite at the moment and Founders all-day-IPA is my go-to..especially when I don't want something with 6% ABV.   Cigar City Jai Lai is my favorite FL beer, although I've had several others that I've liked a lot. Bittburger & Spaten are some of my favorites, but they're tougher to find. Becks tends to be continually on-sale...so I usually have some in the fridge.  I also have a soft spot for Labbatt Blue & Molsen Golden., but they're usually pretty expensive in FL.  

Let's talk beer glasses (not beer goggles):

I received a fancy beer glass for Christmas this year.  Is it really better and/or worth it?  It may sound weird, but I do like drinking beer out of a stemless wine glass and have noticed more flavor/smell compared to a pint glass.  

3 years ago I received a set of double-walled beer glasses.  They both died...but I did get another one ~2 years ago that has still survivied. I don't use it much, but they do really help keep your beer cold and sweat-free.  They are kind of a pain to clean well...it's tough to reach the very bottom of the glass.

Driven5 said:

But how much of that is a self-fulfilling prophecy? When I go into a brewery with good selection, typically any given style I try has a unique and multi-dimensional flavor profile. When I look around I see people drinking every type of beer on the menu, since there are multiple on tap that any given person will enjoy... While some will always sell more than others, and some I will enjoy more than others, essentially all of them seem to sell well enough in addition to being properly drinkable.

Partly it's the market. There are a lot of people that only know "IPA" is cool. I've literally heard someone say, "I don't like India Pale Ale, but I love IPA." The bourbon analogy earlier is apt. I've also heard, "I like bourbon, but not whiskey."

I think partly it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

I think a part of it is lack of skill and creativity. IPA is probably the easiest style of beer to not berkeley up. You can do a "different" IPA by adding more or different hops, or upping the ABV. I think that's what drove the bitterness wars and what is now driving the haziness wars.

Ultimately, it's the path of least resistance.

I'll also say that I almost never order an IPA when I go out. If a bar has 10 IPAs on tap, I'll probably like 2. I'm not going to sift through the list of, "It's a local IPA, so it will sell," when the bar manager has made the effort to actually curate the two Belgian style beers on the menu.

Hoondavan said:

Let's talk beer glasses (not beer goggles):

I received a fancy beer glass for Christmas this year.  Is it really better and/or worth it?  It may sound weird, but I do like drinking beer out of a stemless wine glass and have noticed more flavor/smell compared to a pint glass.  

Absolutely. Glassware makes a HUGE difference. Most of what we perceive as flavor is actually aroma. A glass that holds and project that aroma into your nose and does a good job of spreading the beer into the right parts of your mouth does a lot to change how you perceive that beer. The standard strait walled shaker pint is one of the worst types of glassware to pour beer in.

That fancy beer glass is a decent one. That's what we use as our standard at the brewery. That style is actually designed primarily to serve well in craft bar use. It's designed to stack neatly so they can be stacked tall, carried around, and not bind or break. But to also do a good job presenting the beer with the rigors of bar service in mind. The bell holds aromas you can get your nose in, and the lip drops the beer at the front of your mouth instead of shooting it to the back of your throat.

That double walled would be fine, but is kind of gimmicky.

Nice wine glasses and such can also be very good. Different glassware style does a good job of accentuating different things about a beer.

If you want to have fun, get a set of Spiegelau craft beer glasses. These are *really* fancy and designed to accentuate different beer styles. We've had fun pouring the same beer into different glasses to test how each one changes the perception of the beer. It makes a surprising difference.

I don't know if this was asked yet.... but here's my beer question: Why is it so good?

Ranger50 said:

My hometown brewery follows the German purity law pretty damn close and when I talked to the brewer/owner, he said they have brewed 40 some odd brews over the past year or year and a half, maybe 2 or 3 were ipa style.

Ugh. I can rant about the purity laws. Frankly, they're stupid industry protectionism for German breweries. Even most German breweries bend and break them when no one is looking.

Even our most purity-law-faithful beer still breaks it because of *one* ingredient: carbon dioxide.

What? But... doesn't carbon dioxide get added to every beer? Yup. But the German purity laws insist that the source of carbon dioxide has to come exclusively from beer fermentation. Because we use food grade carbon dioxide that is gathered some other way, it's not truly following the purity laws.

When you get to the point of just following the spirit of the purity law... it really doesn't limit you that much. Water, malt, hops, and yeast? You can do a *lot* with those. But that's still limiting it prevents great styles like oatmeal stout, which is hardly wild and adulturated.

What I do wish we'd move towards in this country is treating flavored beers like they do in Germany. Germans flavor a lot of their beers, they just do it in the glass instead of the bottle or keg. Adding fruit puree into a glass and then filling it with beer is a much better system than adding a bunch of fruit juice to a keg where it could referment.

So why the pepper taste with ipa's? Is that the bitterness?

Umm... I'd have to drink a beer to know which specific flavors you're thinking of as "pepper". That's probably not bitterness. If I had to guess, that's more likely how your pallette perceives certain sulfurous compounds in hops. There are hops that taste like onion or garlic to me.

bobzilla said:

I don't know if this was asked yet.... but here's my beer question: Why is it so good?

Because [insert deity of your choice] loves us and wants us to be happy.

In reply to Beer Baron :

Those stupid purity laws also ban delicious gose beers. 

Is gose pronounced like "go-zah" or "goes"?

Is there something like a belgian triple in regards to flavor depth and complexity without a high abv?  (Likely a dumb question, I know)

Would just love to hear you ramble about belgian triples and the process on those. Learn me some background on my current favorite? (If I have to name a favorite, allagash curieux which is bourbon barrel aged)

thatsnowinnebago said:

In reply to Beer Baron :

Those stupid purity laws also ban delicious gose beers. 

Is gose pronounced like "go-zah" or "goes"?

"Go-zuh" or "Go-zeh".

Gose is grandfathered into the purity laws as a historical regional style. They are permitted to brew with added salt and corriander. However, all the other standards of the purity laws still apply. As a wheatbeer, the mash has to be at least 50% wheat.

Also... gose is the style I rant about most that the American version bares ZERO resemblance to the German version. German gose is very lightly tart and refreshing. It is almost lemonade like and super drinkable. People get really surprised when they try mine.

One of my classmates from brewing school did his internship at Bayerischer Bahnhof, *the* gosebraurei, in Leipzig. I got an opportunity to chat with the brewmaster there and pick his brain. Also get tips from him on, "If we weren't constrained by these purity laws, we'd just do [a much simpler souring procedure]."

Apexcarver said:

Is there something like a belgian triple in regards to flavor depth and complexity without a high abv?  (Likely a dumb question, I know)

Would just love to hear you ramble about belgian triples and the process on those. Learn me some background on my current favorite? (If I have to name a favorite, allagash curieux which is bourbon barrel aged)

I love Trippels. Trippel Karmeliet is my all time favorite beer. Curieux is delicious.

There are similar-ish beers. Belgian blondes or singles and the like. They still tend to be around 6% and the fruit character won't be quite as rich and intense.

If you can find St. Bernardus 4, that would be a winner. I don't think I've seen it anywhere though.

In reply to Beer Baron :

This came up during our Zoom meeting tonight.  How much does yeast selection affect beer vs. distilling?

Teh E36 M3 said:

- I'm a little sick of the anti hop crowd. Don't drink hoppy beers dudes. Also- the new hoppy beers aren't pine cones. They have amazing new hops that give fantastic flavor.  

I'll chew on some straight aromatic hops when I'm brewing beer, but I can't berkeleying stand the saturation of sub-par IPAs that's out there right now. As others have said, it's not about being anti-hops, it's about the market flattening towards IPAs, much like it flattened to American Lagers for decades.

A good hoppy beer has my attention, just like any other well done beer will. A one note beer that's nothing but hops? I'll drink whiskey, thanks. 

 

Stampie said:

In reply to Beer Baron :

This came up during our Zoom meeting tonight.  How much does yeast selection affect beer vs. distilling?

Yeast selection matters a lot for both. It does some similar things, and some different things. The traits you want in a good beer strain vs a good distilling strain are different.

Both of them produce lots of aromatic compounds that contribute to flavor. Distilling takes out some but removes others.

For beer, you want a yeast that has a pleasant flavor profile and that ferments clean. That is to say, you don't get enough fusel alcohols to notice at the strength its being brewed or any weird off flavors. You are fine with residual sweetness.

For distilling the main goal is something that makes as much alcohol as quickly as possible. You want something that will ferment higher abv (>10%) and will leave few residual sugars. You don't care about the yeast producing fusels or off flavors, because those will get stripped out when distilling.

Brett_Murphy said:

I'll chew on some straight aromatic hops when I'm brewing beer, but I can't berkeleying stand the saturation of sub-par IPAs that's out there right now. As others have said, it's not about being anti-hops, it's about the market flattening towards IPAs, much like it flattened to American Lagers for decades.

A good hoppy beer has my attention, just like any other well done beer will. A one note beer that's nothing but hops? I'll drink whiskey, thanks. 

Well said. I think that's really the issue. I like lots of good beers. No one style I drink exclusively. I like a good IPA. Sometimes that's what I'm really in the mood for.

Unfortunately, there are so many mediocre to bad IPAs out there that I usually skip over the IPA section on bar menus.

Have you had Midas' Touch?  It's my favorite beer, although I'll admit referring to it as "beer" might be a bit of a stretch considering it's sort of a beer/wine/mead blend.  Amazing though.

I've always been a huge fan of dubbels and some quads.  And the trappist/belgians tend to always top my list - chimay, st bernardus, rochefort, westmalle, achel, every one of them is great.  I especially love Orval, with the addition of brettanomyces yeast to give it that extra funk.  I actually had a beer once brewed entirely with brettanomyces.  Cold, it was very funky but enjoyable.  As it started to warm up it tasted a bit more and more like a sweaty horse.  Still a unique experience though.  I haven't had a good belgian in a while, I should remedy that.

Mark me down as a guy who doesn't like the smell of beer so I abstain. What I do like is someone who knows their stuff and is so excited to share with others, well done.

itsarebuild said:

I have been adding a sugar syrup to the bottling container and stirring it in before bottling. I suspect it may be a temperature issue as mad scientist mentioned? I group bottles on a stone countertop that stays moderately stable temperature wise but there may be some heat build up in some parts of the grouping?

That's weird then.

Temperature shouldn't have an effect on total carbonation. It might affect how quickly bottles finish carbonating, but not the final level. That's purely going to be how much sugar gets into each bottle.

It sounds like your dosing sugar just isn't distributed evenly? Some falling out of solution as you bottle?

The other factor would be if you give the CO2 enough chance to actually dissolve. If the bottles don't get enough chance to chill and sit before serving, you'll end up with a lot of CO2 coming out of suspension when you open them up.

infinitenexus said:

Have you had Midas' Touch?  It's my favorite beer, although I'll admit referring to it as "beer" might be a bit of a stretch considering it's sort of a beer/wine/mead blend.  Amazing though.

Used to be one of my wife's favorites. Haven't had it in a while.

Orval is amazing. Interestingly, it's different in the U.S. than in Europe, and I think for the better. It's fresher in Belgium, so doesn't have as much of that nice funk.

bobzilla said:

I don't know if this was asked yet.... but here's my beer question: Why is it so good?

I know this is facetious, but I actually thought about this.

Objectively: beer is really complex. In it's basic form, it joins together three disparate ingredients and then leaves it up to a microorganism to metabolically chew everything up and spit it back out. It has a whole mess of complex aromatic compounds. More than any other strait alcoholic beverage (as opposed to mixed drinks).

Thinking subjectively: it is also the most crafted strait alcoholic beverage. It has the potential to be art. A brewer has a lot of power and options to try to craft a specific flavor profile. To creatively make each of their beers something unique and distinct. Wine is mostly about growing good grapes in the right climate. It's not about the winemakers craft or vision. Distilled spirite can have some level of craft to them, but not nearly to the same degree as you get with beer. There is some art involved in blending wines or spirits, but still nothing compared to coming up with creating a beer.

Of course, being art doesn't make it better. Just different. Like, the difference between walking through an art gallery instead of a botannical garden. There may be some crap paintings up. It may well be more enjoyable to look at a gorgeous rose bush.

I am really happy to see a few of the local Cincinnati area breweries introducing radlers and shandys  with warm weather right around the corner.  Either is a nice alternative to a High Life after cutting the grass.

HI Baron, first time listener long time caller. 

About five years ago AB made a product labeled Busch Signature Copper Lager. I brought some to the $2016 Challenge poolside board meeting. Great balance, sweet and nutty, high alcohol content but not to where it affected the ability to enjoy the beer. 

MegaBeerCorp axed it, likely due to the Busch branding not fitting a premium drink and the introduction of Budweiser's limited release products that we starting to ramp up. 

What are the chances that someone could get AB to release the formula? Or how hard is it to replicate that beer? Is a 5 year old dead formula still a trade secret? 

Asking for a fiend. 

QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:

What are the chances that someone could get AB to release the formula? Or how hard is it to replicate that beer? Is a 5 year old dead formula still a trade secret? 

Slim to none. Definitely still intellectual property, and I'm sure AB guards that carefully.

As for replicating it... I'd be willing to bet the recipe was actually quite simple. However, actually executing it would be incredibly difficult. AB has all kinds of money to spend on the fanciest equipment. The recipe wouldn't be a big deal, their procedure and equipment would be the tough thing.

What is one style beer you'd like to see more US breweries give a try?

Bashing AB and other big mega-breweries is often rather trendy. Can you go into more detail about what these companies are doing right? That side doesn't get talked about very much.