Beer style

Beer is produced in a variety of styles. These styles have developed in different cultures throughout history.

History of beer style

The history of beer style would be the history of beer itself. The Alulu Tablet - a receipt for "best" ale found in Ur - shows that even in 2050 BC there was a differentiation between at least two different types or qualities of ale. While the work of Bedrich Hrozny on translating Assyrian merchants' tablets found in Hattusa, revealed that approximately 500 years later the Hittites had over 15 different types of beer.

Documents in various countries over the years reveal comments on different local brewing methods or ingredients. Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia wrote about Celts brewing ale "in Gaul and Spain in a number of different ways, and under a number of different names; although the principle is the same." Anglo-Saxon laws reveal they identified three different ales. While the Normans mention cervisae (ale) and plena cervisia (full bodied ale) in the Domesday Book.

By the 1400s brewers in Germany and the Low Countries were using hops to flavour and preserve their ale - this new style of ale was called beer. When this trend came to Britain and brewers of beer in Southwark, London started to take sales away from the traditional brewers of unhopped ale, there were complaints and protests. Various laws were passed favouring either beer or ale for a number of years, until hopped beer became the standard style throughout Europe.

Also in the 1400s, brewers in Bavaria were storing beer in cool caves during the summer months in order to stop it spoiling. The ale yeast mutated into a slow fermenting lager yeast which allowed the beer to drop bright and remain stable. The beer became known as lager from the German name for store: lagern. This clean, light-bodied and stable lager style of beer initially became popular with brewers and drinkers in Germany and the Czech lands, then gradually spread over the globe.

Although beers using malt dried naturally would have been pale, by the 1600s most malts in Europe would have been dried over a fire, and so become dark, resulting in a dark coloured beer. When coke started to be used for roasting malt in 1642, the resulting lighter coloured beers became very popular. By 1703 the term pale ale was starting to be used. In the mid 1800s Gabriel Sedlmayr took pale ale brewing techniques back to the Spaten Brewery in Germany and made the first pale lager.

While North America developed beer styles into a serious study with fixed parameters of bitterness, colour, aroma, yeast, ingredients and strength, other counties continued to mainly categorise beers loosely by strength and colour, with much overlapping of naming conventions.

Determining a beer's style

Historically the differentiation between beers produced by the same brewery or in the same locality has, from documentary evidence, been in terms of quality and strength. Traditional brewing methods involved using the first wash of the mash or grains to make a strong beer, and subsequent washings to make gradually weaker beer. Sometimes only two washes were done, but a third, mid-strength beer, could be made from mixing the strong and weak beers together.

Better quality and fresher ingredients make better quality beer, and this is a style differentiation that has remained constant from the earliest days of beer making.

The types of grain or starch based material used in making beer form the basis for another differentiation. The main grain used in Europe has been barley, though wheat is also used. In Africa beer has been made from sorghum, millet and cassava root. In South America the main grain was maize, though potato in Brazil and agave in Mexico have been used. In Japan rice is used to make sake. Russians used rye to make kvass. And so on. In modern brewing a mix of grains may be used. A barley and wheat mix is popular in Northern Europe, while a mix of barley and maize is a popular way of making pale lager in Third World countries. The American Budweiser lager is made from barley and rice.

Different flavourings, such as hops, herbs, fruit or lemonade differentiate beers, as well as the yeast, the amount of roasting or kilning the malt had, the filtering techniques used, and the packaging and serving method. In the UK a number of drinkers and commentators, influenced by CAMRA, differentiate between unfiltered beers, termed real ale, and filtered beers, often termed keg beer; additionally, beers which are force-carbonated, either in the packaging or during the serving, are classed apart from naturally carbonated beers.

So the main differences in beer style can be summarised as strength, quality, colour and ingredients, with minor differences appplied to such matters as filtering and serving.

Pale barley-based beers

The main beer style development and the overwhelming majority of beers produced globally are based on barley lightly kilned to produce a pale malt. The main flavouring ingredient for such beers is hops. The majority of such beers fall within a strength range of approximately 4% abv to 5.5% abv. When the strength of such beers starts to climb much above 6% they tend to be classed as strong, with a variety of style names to differentiate them from the average strength beers.

Beers below 4% are common in North European countries where beer is consumed in large quantities, and such beers may be referred to as session beers or, in the UK, as a session bitter. Sweden has lower taxes for beer under 3.6%. Other countries have lower taxes at 2.8%, and the USA, Canada, and nearly all European countries regard 0.5% as the point at which beer is regarded as a soft drink or non-alcoholic. Pale beers may be flavoured with lemonade or other soft drink to create a shandy, also known as panaché or radler, which would typically be under 2.8% for lower tax reasons or on the 0.5% borderline to be classed as both a beer and yet taxed and sold as a soft drink.

Pale barley-based beers may use a mix of both lager and ale brewing techniques - Steam beer, Kölsch and some modern British Golden Summer Beers use elements of both lager and ale production. However the two main strands of these pale beers are: pale ales, produced through standard ale production methods, and pale lagers, produced through standard lager production methods.

The hop flavouring of these pale beers varies considerably, and is seen by most observers as being a key indicator to differentiation. The pale lagers use aromatic hops, known as noble hops, and when such hops add significant flavour and aroma to the lagers they are normally classed as pilsener. British and Belgian pale ales mostly use earthy flavoured hop varieties such as Fuggle, Golding and Bullion. While North American pale ales mostly use citric and pine flavoured American hops such as Cascade, Columbia, and Willamette. There is, however, much cross over and blending of such hops. When the hop flavour and aroma becomes fairly intense the pale ales are normally classed as an India Pale Ale.

Pale ales

Main article: Pale ale

A modern ale is commonly defined by the strain of yeast used and the fermenting temperature.

Strain of Yeast: An ale yeast is normally considered to be a top-fermenting yeast, though a number of British brewers, such as Fullers and Weltons, use ale yeast strains that settle at the bottom. Common features of ale yeasts regardless of top or bottom fermentation is that they ferment more quickly than lager yeasts, they convert less of the sugar into alcohol (giving a sweeter, fuller body) and they produce more esters (which give a fruity taste) and diacetyl (which gives a buttery taste).

Fermenting Temperature: Ale is typically fermented at higher temperatures than lager beer (15–23°C, 60–75°F). Ale yeasts at these temperatures produce significant amounts of esters and other secondary flavor and aroma products, and the result is a beer with slightly "fruity" compounds resembling but not limited to apple, pear, pineapple, banana, plum or prune.

Stylistic Difference to Lager: Stylistic differences between some ales and lagers can be difficult to categorize. Steam beer, Kölsch and some modern British Golden Summer Beers are seen as hybrids, using elements of both lager and ale production. While Baltic Porter and Bière de Garde may be produced by either lager or ale methods or a combination of both. However, commonly, lager is perceived to be cleaner tasting, drier and lighter in the mouth than ale.

Pale lagers

Main article: Pale lager Lager yeast is a bottom-fermenting yeast, and typically undergoes primary fermentation at 7-12°C (45-55°F) (the "fermentation phase"), and then is given a long secondary fermentation at 0-4°C (30-40°F) (the "lagering phase"). During the secondary stage, the lager clears and mellows. The cooler conditions also inhibit the natural production of esters and other byproducts, resulting in a "crisper" tasting beer.

Modern methods of producing lager were pioneered by Gabriel Sedlmayr the Younger, who perfected dark brown lagers at the Spaten Brewery in Bavaria, and Anton Dreher, who began brewing a lager, probably of amber-red color, in Vienna in 1840–1841. With modern improved fermentation control, most lager breweries use only short periods of cold storage, typically 1–3 weeks.

Most of today's pale lager is based on the Pilsner style, pioneered in 1842 in the town of Plzeň, in the Czech Republic. The modern pale lager is light in colour and high in carbonation, with a noble hop flavour and an alcohol content of 3–6% by volume. The Pilsner Urquell or Heineken brands of beer are typical examples of pale lager.

Sour beers

A range of beers are distinguished by their notably sour taste. The souring agent is often Lactobacillus.

Beers with sour notes are as follows:

Spontaneous fermentation

Main article: Lambic

These are beers which use wild yeasts, rather than cultivated ones. Beer before the cultivation of yeast in the 19th century brewers used recaptured yeast from the fermentation process. In the British Isles this recaptured yeast was known as "godisgood" (English Industries of the Middle Ages, L. F. Salzmann).

List of rare beer styles

Bibliography

Jackson, Michael - The World Guide To Beer 1977
Cornell, Martyn - Beer - The Story of the Pint 2003
Arnold, John - Origin and History of Beer and Brewing 1911
Almqvist, Bo - The Viking Ale and the Rhine Gold 1965
Eckhardt, Fred - The Essentials of Beer Style: A Catalog of Classic Beer Styles for Brewers and Beer Enthusiasts 1989
Rhodes, Christine P. - The Encyclopedia of Beer 1995

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