Taste-related Beer and Brewing Trivia by Cub Lea Last updated 09/00

General Trivia | Taste-Related Trivia

The "fruitier" taste of ales comes from the use of yeasts that can't digest complex carbohydrates called esters. Lagers owe their "cleaner, crisper" flavor to the use of yeasts which are more efficient at digesting all the available carbohydrates into alcohol.

Malt isn't a powder or a syrup...it's germinated grain that's dried and kiln-roasted before it has a chance to sprout. Germination creates enzymes that break down starches into sugars that yeast can digest into alcohol during fermentation.

The origins of the English word "beer" are unclear. Some speculate that it stems from "bere" or "beere", an old English term for a plant once used in brewing. Others say it comes from the Latin bibere, which means to drink.

Hops can be added to the filtered barley mash (wort), or before, during, or after fermentation. The earlier it is added, the more bitterness it contributes to the flavor. The later it is added, the more it contributes to the aroma.

There are two main types of yeast used to brew most of the world's beer: top-fermenting "ale" yeasts and bottom-fermenting "lager" yeasts. The wide range of flavors that yeasts can help produce comes from the hundreds of different strains of these species available to the brewer. Yeast selection can be critical to determining the resulting flavor of the beer, as each yeast produces its own unique levels and types of...(ahem) byproducts.

The Reinheitsgebot, the famed Bavarian Purity Law or "brewer's law", instituted in Germany in the 1516, stipulated that only malt, hops, and water could be used to brew beer. That law, made before we knew that yeast was a living organism, is still in effect today. This essentially makes every German brewer a lawbreaker. This is the oldest food law in the world which is still on the books, although considering the yeast problem, one wonders how seriously it's enforced.

Forget what you think you know about beer and St. Patrick's Day. "Green beer", to a brew connoisseur, is beer that has not been aged, or "conditioned", long enough to bring out its full and proper flavor.

Professional beer inspectors prior to the 18th century, known as "conners", would traditionally pour beer on a chair and sit in that chair in leather pants until the beer dried. If the leather stuck to the seat, the brewer was accused of adulterating their beer with sugar...a heinous crime in a time when beer was considered a vital foodstuff. Brewers often tried to pass improperly-conditioned ("green" or young) beer off as a way of boosting brewery output and profits. From this comes one of the most famous legends of brewing. It is said that a green beer contains unfermented barley sugars which can could be detected by a conner dousing a chair with the beer and sitting in the chair in a pair of leather pants (lederhosen). If the pants stuck to the seat after the beer had dried, the brew was "obviously" green. This conner's legend is often improperly told as involving the addition of sugars to beer, but the rarity and high cost of sugars in Europe before the 1800s makes this highly doubtful.

The height of the head depends in large part upon the amount of natural carbonation in the beer. Its durability depends upon the amount of glutinous grain proteins dissolved into the mash and pushed out of the beer by the bubbles. Any bitterness in the head is a mixture of aromatic oils from the hops and residue from leftover yeast proteins. These are among the most nutritious and well-balanced of any known food protein.

"Balance" describes the way a beer's maltiness matches the bitterness of the hops. "Body" describes not the thickness of the brew, but the persistence of the feel, or "mouthfeel", created by the amount of sticky grain carbohydrates called dextrins left in the beer.

Lager is a class of beers made with bottom-fermenting yeasts, and includes pilsners, malt liquors and bocks. Lagering, on the other hand, is another word for conditioning, or the aging process that all beer must go through to reach full flavor.

Beer color is determined as much by the type of malt used as the quantity. Some malts are dried as light as straw; others are slow-roasted to a shiny deep black. Light malts give a clean taste to lagers and a fruity taste to ales; dark malts impart anything from a caramel to a chocolatey taste.

Barley isn't the only grain used to make malt. Wheat malts are used in many fine beers. Rice malt is typically used in many mass-market beers due to its low cost, and corn malt is often used in non-alcoholic beers.

The only part of the hops plant used in brewing is the flower, the part of the plant richest in aromatic oils and flavor constituents. Hops is also the closest living relative of the cannabis plant. Coincidence? You decide.

Most bottled beers have the yeast filtered out prior to bottling to preserve taste and clarity and enhance shelf life. Some specialty beers are unfiltered to encourage additional fermentation after the beer is bottled or kegged.

Craft beer is typically defined as beer brewed in a traditional manner using only hops, barley, yeast and water. Craft beers typically have more defined flavor and aroma and fewer unwanted brewing byproducts than commercial beers. Micro-brew, on the other hand, is a description of volume. A micro-brewery in Canada is one with an annual production volume of 15,000 barrels, or 1.76 million litres, of beer annually.

The "clean" taste of lagers and pilsners comes from yeasts that ferment at the bottom of the brew. These lager yeasts are more efficient at digesting sugars than top-fermenting ale yeasts.

Hops wasn't used as the main seasoning herb for beer until about the 11th century, and for long afterwards, a mixture of herbs known as grut or gruit continued to be used as the main seasoning. At one time the gruit lobby successfully had hops outlawed in much of Europe for use in beer.

There are dozens of varieties of hops used in brewing beer. Some impart a floral or earthy character. Others can be almost citrus-like.

The potent hoppiness of India Pale Ale stems from its tradition as a beer brewed for shipment from Britain to India. The beer had to survive two equatorial crossings without spoiling, which was only possible with the natural preservative characteristics of an extra high level of hops.

The only ingredient in beer that a brewer can truly fine-tune is water, because it's a recipe and not a living thing. Hardening water (using only pure, naturally occurring minerals, of course) decreases the solubility of flavor constituents in malts and hops. Softening helps bring out a fuller flavor. Adding pure mineral salts to water to harden it, giving it a characteristic much like water from a spring or aquafer, is not considered to be outside the craft tradition, since the resulting water's mineral salts are not fundamentally different from the same salts in natural spring water.

The most commonly used malt in North American beer is rice malt. It was originally used because it is so much lighter and less flavorful than barley malt that big brewers hoped it might attract a larger female clientele. It's now the most common malt in light beers, and far cheaper than more flavorful barley malts. One wonders if beer commercials today might be less abusive toward men if the origin of rice-malt lagers was more widely known.

Is milk less fattening than beer? It depends on the beer...and the milk. Whole milk will pack on the pounds faster than all but the heaviest stouts. Skim milk might be somewhat less fattening than a rich porter, but even without the fat there is still plenty of sugar calories in milk from its lactose content.

Among the more unusual seasoning herbs used in beer before hops became the standard round about the 1500s were henbane and thornapple (both dangerous hallucinogens more at home in a witch's brew than in yours), St. John's wort (the self-same "herbal Prozac" that's been making so much noise lately), and gentian root (a toxic herbal remedy typically defined by governing bodies as "not for internal use").

Congeners are toxins created in the fermentation process and found in every alcoholic beverage that play a significant role in "hangover". In the case of some distilled spirits, like scotch, they play a large role in defining flavor. In the case of beer, they're unwanted leftovers. The more unnatural the ingredients and the brewing process, the higher the congener content.

"Finish" refers to the way a beer's taste treats your palate after you've swallowed. Choice of hops, the way in which different hop strains are blended, and the point in the brewing process at which they're added all play significant roles in determining a beer's finish. Even the hoppiest beer can have a smooth finish if the right hops are selected for aroma. Choose the wrong hops blend, and you've got "hang", or aftertaste.

The butterscotch-like flavor in some darker beers is produced by a substance called diacetyl. This substance's flavor should normally be light in most ales, and almost non-existent in all but the darkest lagers.

Pure water is no good for making beer. Water needs a certain mineral content before it can effectively dissolve most of the constituents that make up the flavor of a great beer. Tiny amounts of sodium salts (softeners) tend to enhance the fullness of flavor, while calcium salts (hardeners) produce a cleaner taste.

The yeasts for most lager-style beers can't thrive in an environment of more than 5% alcohol by volume. Ale yeasts aren't as tolerant to colder temperatures, but can produce substantially more alcohol than lager yeasts, in some cases as much as 11-12% with the right brew.