Have you ever been around that know-it-all beer prick who talks all these technical terms to try to make himself sound cool, but really he's just a wanna-be beer snob? Well, let's break down some of those terms you may not know and teach you some other homebrew terms.
Beer Snob: Someone who refuses to drink certain styles of beer. Some of you may call me that. I will let it be known that there are times when I reach for a Miller Lite. Examples: Packers Games, Bars where clearly the only thing drank is your cheaper beers, Really hot days after doing yard work, Etc etc. There are also wannabe beer snobs who really don't know anything, just act like they do. Those people bug the shit out of me. Example:
Finnegans Irish Amber is brewed with potatoes. It says that on the bottle. They do it as a marketing thing because of the whole Irish potato famine thing. I know this because I'm friends with the owner of Finnegans. I also know that the amount of potatoes used is about the equivalent of a bag of hash browns per BATCH of beer. Each batch is hundreds of gallons of liquid. Potatoes are a starch, fancy word for sugar. Sugar is what the yeast eats to make CO2 and alcohol. So when the guy at the beer festival I was said "Yeah, I don't like Finnegans because all I taste is the potatoes", I promptly laughed in his face. Moron. I'm sorry asshole but no, you don't taste potatoes because the low amount of potatoes used would not produce a flavor that one could pick up, even with the best of palates.
International Bittering Unit (IBU): Oh boy, the poster-child of the beer snobs vocabulary. People I've been to *a lot* of beer festivals and I hear this one thrown out more then Brett Farve throws interceptions.
IBU's are a measurement of how bitter a beer is. Nothing frustrates me more then when people say "I don't like dark beer because it's too bitter." It's not the color of the beer that makes it bitter, it's the hops and the amount of hops that give it that bitter taste. I'll give you a beer as light in color as Miller lite, yet more bitter then you can handle.
IBU is a number the can sometimes be found on the bottle or on a website. They range from single digits (Really lite beers like that 64 crap) to one of the highest I've had was 114, Surly Abrasive Ale. I would say most beers are in the teens to 40's. Beers starting in the 60's are going to have a bit of a kick.
Why people like talking about IBU's is because some less-educated wanna-be beer snobs feel that the higher the IBU, the better the beer is. I'm sorry but this is false. Don't get me wrong, I love myself an IPA or some sort of very hoppy beer, but that doesn't mean it's awesome. It's easy to make a hoppy beer, it's hard to make a hoppy beer that is balanced.
IBU's are measured by the alpha level and amount of hops in the beer, along with different grains which are used. My IBU levels are automatically calculated for me through the use of
Beersmith, the program I use to help me develop my beer.
For me personally, I switch what style beer I like all the time. A lot of times it goes with the seasons. Right now I'm on a bit of a dark beer kick. I must say though, I always have great respect for a beer lighter in color but complex in flavor. As a homebrewer, that's one of the hardest beers to make. Two of them that get my highest respects are
Fulton's "The Lonely Blonde" and
The Herkimer's "Sky Pilot".
Gravity: No, I'm not talking about the stuff that keeps us planted to the Earth. Gravity is a measurement of beer. Using a hydrometer, a brewer determines how dense the liquid is. This equals a specific gravity of fermentable liquid. 1.000 is pure water. Why brewers care about this is because the gravity level is equal to the alcohol level. Taking the starting gravity minus the finish gravity, a brewer can figure out the alcohol level of his or her beer. Remember back in college when you'd find a few bucks and go down to the store to get the highest alcohol beer the had? Most likely it said "High Gravity" on it and it was running somewhere in the 9%+ alcohol range. It should all make sense now. If you had a real high gravity number, like 1.090, and your finishing gravity was really low, like 1.012, you'll produce a really high alcoholic beer.
Most beer has the same general range for finishing gravity, which when I brew seems to be around 1.012. When I brew the beer and find out the starting gravity, I typically have a good idea of how strong it will be. My last batch of Helle had a SG of 1.065. I knew it was going to be a pants kicker.. and my friend Tony can agree on that ;)
SMaSH: So this is a newer term for me that I just learned about, but I would like my blog followers to know. It stands for "Single Malt and Single Hop". The idea is one kind of grain, one kind of hop, one style of yeast. That's it. The simplistic of beer brewing. I'll dive deeper into smash when I release the contents of the SMaSH beer I'm working on. It should be interesting.
Boil Over: Every homebrewers worst fears. During the boil stage, when adding hops it tends to flair up the liquid. Sometimes that flair up goes up over your kettle, causing you to lose beer. It sucks and has happened to me a few times, as shown to the right. Typically boil over is followed with the words "Ahh shit!"
Prost!: German for "Cheers!"
Michael Jackson: No, I'm not talking about the black man turned white man who could dance like no other, but thanks to his dad he was pretty f'd up in the head. I'm talking about the well known beer critic. Michael Jackson wrote a large amount of books about beer and was one of the foremost authorities on beer. He unfortunately passed away in 2007.
Here's a link to his Wikipedia page.
Brewhouse Efficiency: Homebrewers use this number to figure out how much of the possible potential sugars in the grains they have actually extracted. It's typically only used by All-grain brewers. I like to shoot for 75%, but at times that can be hard. The higher the number, the better. Commercial brewers strive for the highest because unspent grains means they are wasting money. For someone like myself, If I only get 70%, it really only means that I maybe lost $1 worth of grain. For a bigger brewer, that could be hundreds to thousands of dollars. Once again, I use Beersmith to calculate that for me. It's something I like to keep track of to see how well I'm brewing.
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Beer is in some ways a lot like wine, though it doesn't get that same elitism. When you go to drink your next beer, I'd like to you do a few things:
1.
Pour it in a glass. Seriously I don't care if you're drinking PBR, just pour it in a glass and let it open a little. Anyone who knows me knows that I often times pour my beer in a glass, even if it is right from the can.
2.
Look at the beer. Enjoy the color. Is it cloudy? What's the carbonation like? Is it large carbination bubbles or small? Is your glass clean or is it time to find a new watering hole? Did your girlfriend/wife steal a drink from your glass before you had a chance to enjoy the first drink? As as homebrewer, I look at color a lot because I strive for my beer to look like the flavor I'm shooting for; which I must say is harder said then done.
3.
Smell the beer. Smelling the beer should give you a preamble of how the beer is going to taste. Is it flowery and full of hops? Is there a strong malt smell? Do you smell hints of chocolate?
4.
Taste and enjoy. Do try to think about what the brewer is trying to accomplish with the beer. If it's an chocolate oatmeal stout, is it smooth with chocolate undertones? If it's an IPA, do you taste that hop bitterness but with a smooth finish?
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So hopefully that's some new stuff for you all. As I think of new terms I'll make sure to post them.
I want to leave this post with a little web comic that was sent to me a while back. Hopefully you all enjoy it.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/beer
Prost!
-Ryan
