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Beer is basically sugar water and it would be too sweet to drink if it weren’ t bittered in some way. If you’ ve ever tasted a soda that’ s gone flat, you’ ll understand how the bitterness of the carbonation masks the sweetness of the soda. The same is true in beer. Throughout history many botanical herbs have been used to bitter beer to make it palatable. Ever heard of heather ale? Heather flowers are a flavorful and aromatic bittering herb that grows all over Scotland. Thanks to the English and the Germans, hops are the bittering herb used worldwide in brewing today. Hops are potent pinecone-shaped flowers that grow on very fast-growing vines. Their potency comes from lupulin, a yellow powder produced in the flowers that contain very aromatic bittering compounds and essential oils that not only make beer easier to drink, they also stabilize the flavor and keep it from spoiling. Hops have very potent aromatics that modern hop breeders and growers have been enhancing. Old hop varieties have very subtle herbal, piney, spicy, and citrusy qualities. A classic German pilsner made with heirloom hop varieties will have aromas of wildflowers, hay, cut grass, earth, and white pepper. An English pale ale will have hop aromas that complement the caramel maltiness like forest floor, tea leaves, and oak. While classic hops will always be loved for their refined subtleness, modern hop varieties have been designed to knock your socks off! They have been bred to not only increase their potency but to produce new flavors and aromas. They feature fruit aromas like peach, pear, mango, pineapple, guava, cherry, and raspberry as well as white wine, cedar, sage, and mint just to name a few. These new hop varieties gave way to new brewing techniques and styles to showcase all of their flavors and aromas. A properly made, fresh New England, or“ hazy,” IPA will have a tropical or citrus fruit juice aroma, flavor, and mouthfeel. If it can be confused with juice, that’ s a great beer!
Beer wouldn’ t be beer, in fact it is not even allowed to be called beer, without yeast. Yeast are single-celled organisms that are compelled to eat sugar and convert it into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process is a very stressful one for the yeast so the brewers do their best to make it as easy as possible on them. They produce a lot of flavors and aromas while they’ re working, so adequate oxygen, nutrients, and temperature are provided to them to ensure they make all of the flavors and aromas we want them to and none of the ones we don’ t. In their efforts yeast produce fruity esters that will smell and taste of apples, pears, bananas, or peaches as well as flowers like chamomile or roses. Yeast also produces spicy phenols that will remind you of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper. German hefeweizen yeast will showcase clove and banana aromas. English bitters smell of peach, pear, or plumb with a little butterscotch. Belgian ales take the cake on yeasty aromas, as Belgian ale yeast is always front and center. A Belgian strong ale is supremely complex with a wide array of yeast flavors and aromas like black pepper and allspice combined with bergamot, cherry, dried fruit, and peach rounded out with rose and lavender. If you didn’ t know I was talking about beer, you might think I was talking about perfume!
All of the work that went into designing and growing these aromatic ingredients is so they can be turned into great beer. It requires some effort on our part to get the full experience. First and foremost, drink your beer from a glass! Even light, mass-produced beer tastes better when you drink it out of a glass. Drinking beer from the can or bottle hides aroma from your nose and can reduce the flavor, make the beer taste unbalanced, or even make it taste bad. I remember tasting a Chimay Tripel out of the bottle and all I could taste was the hop bitterness. There was none of the floral, fruitiness that is the main character of that beer. Any glass is better than none, but the best glasses will have a tapered rim to guide aromas to your nose. Don’ t drink it too cold. Cold temperatures mute aromas and flavors. American light lagers are really the only ones that taste good ice cold. Craft lagers and wheat beers do well at around 40 ° F, ambers and IPAs 45 ° F, and dark, strong, and barrel aged beers 55 ° F. Don’ t let it go flat. Those bubbles are little pops of aroma! Lastly, and just as important, drink it fresh! There are very few beers that get better with age and most of those will be aged by the breweries themselves. All packages have dates on them somewhere, either a born-on date or a best-by date. Most beers start getting stale at three to four months. Darker and stronger beers can go longer. Bottle conditioning lengthens freshness time because the fermentation in the bottle removes oxygen. Oxygen is the enemy of fresh beer!
We all learned a lot at that seminar. He taught us how to properly taste not just beer but anything. My food, coffee, even my cigars taste better from the experience. Most of what we tasted that day was Miller Lite spiked with common off flavors we all needed to recognize and avoid: wet cardboard, green apple, movie theater butter, creamed corn, and even... baby vomit! Yuck! At least he saved that one for last. We all needed a beer after that!
Chris Keller has worked in beer sales for a distributor, as a brewer for Saint Arnold Brewing Co. in Houston, and is the owner of Pint and Barrel Drafthouse in Palestine, Texas.
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