BRIATRIBE #2 - BEER GLOSSARY

A GLOSSARY OF BREWING & BEER TERMS IN THE 21^st CENTURY (Part I) 

There are many glossaries to be found on brewing but they tend to state what words should mean rather than what they do mean. This is because language evolves and also there are some people out there who want you to give them your money and are quite happy to mislead you – unintentionally or otherwise – to do so. This is why I wanted to set down what various words mean in reality irrelevant of their dictionary definition:

BEER STYLES

ALE – Suggests a top-fermenting beer brewed with malted barley but usually implies an old-fashioned style nowadays and is used to make a beer sound like it is a traditional or old product even if the beer has only just been brewed for the first time. A catch-all word that doesn’t really mean anything specific anymore other than you can expect a cask beer that is probably brown in colour. May be all malt but could contain any adjuncts (rice, wheat etc). A redundant, overused word now, unfortunately, so any great ales are lost in the mire with the ones only fit for the drain.

BEER – Not as obvious as you might think. Beer is the name given to all styles of fermenting grain and not only the lager or ale types but includes all kinds of specials and seasonal drinks including those using fruit or herbs. This is at the top of the brewing family tree below which is dozens of different styles. So if you think you like beer you may be surprised to learn that you won’t like all beers as some could be made with bog myrtle or airborne yeast or cherry juice.

BITTER – The king of British beer styles is now a lost one. Up to the 1970s most family breweries only brewed a mild, a bitter and maybe a strong winter ale occasionally. That was it. No silly names, no weird colours and no peculiar ingredients. When national marketing became the key to success branding was the answer with clever, evocative and memorable names. Even before this there was famous names like Red Barrel and Double Diamond but by the 1980s most brewers had a much larger beer portfolio than 3 and many of them began calling their beers by idiosyncratic names which people could supposedly identify with. At the heart of this though was most brewers’ flagship beer was still Bitter and usually about 3.5-3.8% alcohol. It is increasingly rare for a brewery to name a beer just ‘Bitter’ anymore though. Just like mild became a no-no of a name in the 1980s so did the name bitter a decade or so later. The style still exists in abundance but the name seems to have faded as it is perceived as too old-fashioned, unimaginative or just plain dull. I’m not suggesting that this is particularly a bad thing as it used to imply that the beer was going to be standard but not exceptional - not worthy of its own unique identity but just another beer. The days of people walking into a pub and just asking for a ‘bitter’ or, indeed, a ‘lager’ with no brand name seems to be disappearing but then how many people ask for a glass of ‘cola’ or a cup of ‘coffee’ in a cafe?

BEST BITTER – See BITTER (qv). Browner than a Bitter and about 3.9%.

IPA – Okay, I admit it: This is what made me think of writing this glossary in the first place. The single most used/overused/misused term in brewing this century is IPA. There is even an International IPA Day ( 2nd August). Surely, most people know what it stands for – India Pale Ale – but that only makes it more bizarre how the term is used as many of the beers labelled as such aren’t even what would be considered Pale Ales never mind of the style that was supposedly shipped out to the British who wanted English beer whilst occupying India during the days of Queen Vic’s empire. The phrase doesn’t appear to be patented or owned by a particularly brewery although it is generally reckoned that the best examples were from Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire where the water on its own is probably tastier than most beers that are now called IPA. They were supposedly heavily hopped and high in alcohol in order to be able to mature on the long months it would take the beer to get to India. It has been reported that very little of the beer ever reached India as it was so good the ships’ crews consumed it all before it arrived  - something that is unlikely to happen with airline meals. True or not – which it isn’t – most beers that pose as IPA now can hardly make the journey down the M11 (for example) before it would give any drayman scurvy. This is the primest (is that a word?) case of misrepresentation, if not outright deceit, by calling a beer one thing and it being another. I thought the idea of labelling a product was to indicate to the consumer what type of product they were purchasing. If you buy a curry you would expect some indication of whether it was mild, medium or hot. It is meant to aid your choosing the correct product for you. I have all but giving up on drinking any new beer that is called IPA. Many of them are below 5% and nearly all of them are sparingly hopped. To counter this, thanks to our brewing friends in the USA, there are now Double IPA beer (DIPA), sometimes called Imperial and labelled IIPA, and even *hushed tones* Triple IPA beers (IIIPA)! They are very well hopped, usually at several stages of the brewing process, and high in alcohol (usually 9% or more). I haven’t mentioned the malt. The malt in an IPA was traditionally pale malts making the beer pale in colour (what a surprise) but our Stateside pals have come up with Black IPA (qv) beers. There are great British IPAs to be had but they are rarer than the fakes, unfortunately. The alcohol strength is some indication as most brewers who have gone to the bother of brewing what is considered a niche product is more than likely going for a discerning market rather than a mass one. Still, there are some strong IPAs out there that are just sickly sweet. We all have our own favourites but I would like to see a list of all the IPAs together graded by the drinking public. The biggest selling one will not be in that list - unless there are CAMRA members voting as they did in 2004 to make it Champion Beer Of Britain. Ha ha ha. Some brewers are trying to help as now there are considered styles named English IPA or American IPA (or APA) with the American ones being the stronger more heavily hopped. American Indian Pale Ale, of course, has nothing to do with Native American tribes. It’s all rather unnecessarily confusing and misleading really.

BLACK IPA – An India Pale Ale style but brewed using darker malts giving you the benefits of a pale hoppy beer and dark, malty one all in the same glass. If you have not yet tasted one I suggest you do so fairly urgently and watch your future change in front of you.

SAISON – Traditionally brewed out of season when there were precious little hops or even much malted barley around, Saisons were unusual brews using whatever fermentable commodities were around at the time. Now it’s a catch-all phrase for unusual beers where malt and hops are not the dominant flavours and may not contain one or either of those two even. Likely to taste like a ‘Belgian beer’, if such a style can exist, but that often catches the essence of many of them. A great exercise in seeing what a brewer can produce using fruit, wild yeasts and things that you never imagined could be used in a beer.