A GLOSSARY OF BREWING
& BEER TERMS IN THE 21st 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.
For
a real write up on beer styles, by people who know their stuff, may I suggest
the Brewers Association who may or may not be as flippant about it as I am:
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