Wednesday, March 19, 2014

The Beerening: Beer 101

I had originally begun writing a much different article to follow up my last beer op-ed about the problematic aspects of exposing non-beer people directly into the previously insulated internal conversation of the beer geek community.  As a quick summary, I felt that as nerds in love with the flavors of beer we tended to gravitate the conversation towards extreme styles with the current trend being extreme degrees of hop aromas and flavors.  This, coupled with the popular myth that hoppy == bitter, can lead people dipping a toe into the ocean of craft beer we're producing now getting a really skewed impression of what good beer is.

I once saw someone refer to Heady Topper as ho-hum because it's just another West-Coast-Style Double IPA, like any produced by a dozen other local breweries on that side of the country and the only reason it was being paid attention was because it was produced in Vermont instead of San Diego.  My own feelings about the beer aside, we have to admit that Double IPA is an extreme style and there are people complaining that this beer is not extreme enough to stand out in its category and warrant as much praise as it gets.  I can't even begin to imagine how I would have reacted to something with that much raw hop power 6 years ago, but now I'll gladly sip a can of it and pick it apart and feel like I know what I'm talking about.

So anyway, I began writing a follow up, setting out to educate the non-initiated about the whats and hows of beer.  Thinking it would be a great idea to try to talk in a clear and easy way about how what goes into a beer affects what it tastes like, that knowing about these things would help people nail down some flavors they liked and find other beers with similar builds.  After all, everyone knows that wine is made of grapes and no one thinks twice about ordering a wine while out for dinner: "I like red wine and robust seems like a good word, please give me this red wine".  But after reworking that about 3 times I felt like I was at an impasse.  And I think that's because I forgot to answer something very important: Why beer?


Because beer is cool, and I like it.

Alright so that's a cop out, but the fact that beer exists at all is pretty amazing, given the process.  Especially when you consider that people have been making beer intentionally or not for some 7000-9000 years and the act predates the written word.  There is a lot of cool history that follows the making of beer.  But really drinking it is what makes it fun.  Beer is a phenomenal confluence of so many little details that produce an incredibly tasty beverage, and there's so much variety in beer that I really think there's something for everyone.  Nothing tastes like beer and one beer can not resemble any other beer at all.

Beer is a simple thing that becomes greater than the sum of its parts.  Beer is so simple that in the late 1400s the Germans were able to decree that only 3 ingredients were to be used in the brewing of beer:  Water, Hops, and Malted Barley.  Yeast hadn't been discovered yet, we just knew that beer fermented.  But that's it, and for the most part these ingredients still make up the majority of any beer brewed in the world.

And that's the beauty of it to me...that I can decide on any given day that I would like to drink a beer that tastes like sweet orange zest and go to the store and buy a Belgian Witbier. The next day, maybe I want a beer that tastes like caramel and toffee and get a Scotch Ale, or maybe I've decided that I'm an adult so if I want to, I can have an entire wedge of brie for dinner so I go out and buy a bottle of a Rauchbier (a German style known for using heavily smoked malts, giving the beer a profoundly smokey and meaty flavor) which pairs great with creamy cheeses.

That variety is why I think beer and the associated community is such a great thing to be part of, but also what makes me a little sad when people get turned off to beer because they're not aware what they're drinking is actually an extreme representation of one facet of beer.  There's so much else going on that I feel like so much focus on the one style does beer a disservice.  And that's why I wanted to do a Beer 101 post/series, to talk simply about the "how" of all the different kinds of beer and hopefully give people an idea of beer beyond simple styles.

So that's why.  See you in another 12 re-writes.

--PXA

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