Every Style of Beer Explained | WIRED

when you look at the majority of the beer produced around the world today and a lot of it falls into the categories of things like american lager american light lager international pale lager all of those styles are descended from this one beer [Music] hi i'm pat fahey master cicerone and content director for the cicerone certification program and this is each and every beer style in the wine world experts are known as somalias and are certified by the court of master sommeliers the cicerone certification program serves a similar purpose in the beer world educating both professionals and enthusiasts one of the most important topics that we cover in all of our materials is beer styles and these style guidelines are usually created primarily for the purpose of judging beers in a competition setting so we're going to work within those guidelines we're going to be covering a lot of different classic styles but we'll also talk about some of those variations at the end that brewers use to produce the wide landscape of beers that you see today i broke those styles down into eight different groups primarily based on the flavors that you find in those beers so we're kicking things off with multi lagers we've got 19 of them to cover we're going to see a huge range of different types of malt flavor malt flavor is commonly described as like bakery flavors because a lot of the sorts of flavors that you get in different types of malts are things that you might see in different types of baked goods so on the pale end you might see things like bread dough or crackers or like freshly baked bread and as it ranges and gets darker and darker we go through flavors like caramel nutty toffee on into chocolate and espresso in really really dark malty beers we're going to see kind of the whole range of those flavors here and we're going to find that the color of many of these styles really dictates the sorts of malt flavors that we're going to see so during that final phase of the malting process the grain is first dried and then the maltster will apply some amount of additional heat to the grain to sort of determine what flavors they want that grain to have so to kick things off in the multi-lagers group we're going to be talking about american and international lagers and we're going to start with a style that's one of the most widely available beer styles in the world that's american light locker think of bud light coors light miller lite it's a style that's relatively light in its overall flavor profile american lager was developed before the light lager style came into being light lagers kind of came around in like the mid-1970s but at this point the light lager style is a lot more popular of the two of them they both share a lot in terms of production processes though a lot of times they're going to be brewed using either rice or corn in addition to barley and that addition of rice or corn is used to lighten both the color the malt flavor and the body of those beers one of the reasons that both american light locker and american lager have been so successful is that they don't have a lot in the way of identifiable flavors going on you know they're relatively inoffensive beers designed to appeal to a broad swath of people the next subgroup is a family of international loggers and they're differentiated based on their color we have international pale lager international amber logger and international dark lager international pale lager is far and away the most popular member of the group think beers like heineken corona peroni asahi super dry you know these are beers that look a lot like american lagers they're usually a little bit beefier they're oftentimes not going to be made with corn or rice they could be all malt beverages which is going to give them a little bit more body and a little bit more flavor they also are potentially bitter to a slightly higher level but still very approachable beer is easy drinking widely enjoyed by people all around the world so both international amber lager and international dark lager are not seen quite as often for international amber logger maybe the most common example you'd see would be dosakis amber on the international dark logger side you're looking at something like uh shinerbach international amber lager usually going to have a little bit more malt character and to get that amber color and that's going to give you maybe just a touch of caramel or toast flavor international dark lager on the other hand you might expect that that would have even more malt character but a lot of times that color is going to be the result of some caramel coloring oftentimes just like a like a colored version of an international pay logger then the last member of this sort of american lager family is a beer called cremail which as the name implies is not actually a lager kind of snuck it in here in part just because the flavor profile is so similar to what you see in american lagers cream ales are often formulated a lot like a normal strength american lager they're just going to be fermented with ale yeast and typically it's going to be done in a way where you still don't get very much in the way of fermentation flavor the next group that we're going to cover is a group of multi-european lagers that are all kind of normal-ish alcohol strength like the four and a half to five and a half percent alcohol range and well the last group was a little bit tighter in terms of the flavors that we saw from the different styles this one is going to cover a broader range of different malt flavors and characteristics first up we've got muna kellis a pale lager style from germany and with german styles knowing just a little bit of german can honestly help you understand a fair amount of the basics of any style you look at the name of this beard munich means a beer from munich helles means light or pale in color so any beer you see from germany that has like hell or hellas in the name is going to be a pale beer muna kelas today is the most popular everyday drinking beer that you find across bavaria you see people hoisting huge signs of pale golden beer it's usually going to be a liter of helles it's just an awesome drinking beer next up is keller beer keller means cellar and it's it's a reference to the fact that these beers are oftentimes just finished fermenting uh so you get a beer that's a little bit younger and is typically unfiltered when it's served there are different variations of the style but one of the more common is just a pale color beer which is basically an unfiltered version of munich ellis the next two styles merits and fest beer are very closely tied together and they're related to kind of the the traditional oktoberfest celebration so back in the early 1800s crown prince ludwig was getting married they brought a lot of people together prior to this wedding and through just a huge rager of a beer fest people had such a good time doing it that they're like you know what we should do this every year forever and that became oktoberfest originally the beer that was served at oktoberfest was this style of beer called merzin merton means march like the month of march and this was a stronger somewhat dark beer that was brewed in march typically would have been cellared throughout the warmer months of the year and then enjoyed in october or late september so it naturally sort of synced up with this oktoberfest celebration however over time consumer tastes have sort of shifted to favor beers that are a bit paler in color so today when you see oktoberfest's beer being served at the oktoberfest celebration they're usually pretty pale in color that style is usually referred to as fest beer the vienna lager style was developed in a similar time frame as merits and was kind of like the early to mid 1800s and is honestly a pretty similar beer in terms of its makeup it's maybe a little bit lighter in color and a little bit less malty and balanced slightly more towards bitterness but otherwise it's a pretty similar beer style the vienna lager style was developed around the same time as the merits in style just in vienna instead of bavaria ironically enough vienna lager doesn't really exist in vienna to an appreciable extent these days you're far more likely to find it in the u.s or even in mexico next up is munich duncal and going back to sort of our translation of german words dukel is the german word for dark any beer that you see that's labeled as a dukel or has dungle somewhere on the label has kind of darker toastier pretzel-like breadcrust kind of malt flavors to go along with it the easiest way to think of munich dukel is kind of as a dark version of a munich helix historically dougal actually came long before munich ellis did when you look at beer history the grand scheme of things really like pale golden beer is a relatively recent invention the first widely available pale beards didn't come into being until early to mid 1800's prior to the 20th century munich duncan would have been that everyday drinking beer for the citizens of bavaria continuing with our lesson on german color words schwartz is the german word for black so schwartz beer literally translates to black beer it's basically just a darker version of a munich dukel usually not going to see like tons of overt heavily roasted character like you would in a stout things like coffee and espresso but it'll have kind of additional light chocolate flavors in addition to the toasty notes that you find in a typical munich vehicle the final pair of this group are a couple of multi-loggers from the czech republic we have check amber lager and check dark logger both of these styles are honestly pretty difficult to come by outside of the czech republic and even can be a bit hard to find if you're in the czech republic but if you are able to get your hands on them they're delightful beers both of these czech loggers combine sort of a rich malt profile with the pronounced level of bitterness and a bit of spicy hop aroma the last subgroup of this multi-lager family is the bach beers which itself is a group of four higher strength german lager styles now our german language skills do fail us a little bit here the direct translation of bach is goat and that's not really where the name comes from the name is thought to be a basically a linguistic corruption of beer from the city of einbeck however bach does carry a legal connotation in germany beers that are labeled as box are usually going to be a bit stronger than your average beer you know at the very least usually going to be about six percent alcohol but some of the members of the bach family can range all the way up to 14 alcohol the first member of the family we're going to talk about is douglas bach as we already talked about dunkel means dark so this is basically a strong dark lager uh today it's one of the least seen members of the family next up is helispock which is a pale strong lager hellisbach also is sometimes referred to as mybach my translating to the month of may and hella spock or mybach is a is a common spring seasonal beer in germany helsbach looks a lot like a stronger version of a munich though it does usually feature a little bit of hot flavor and aroma but given its rather high strength it's it's actually a pretty refreshing beer doppelbock today is essentially a higher strength version of a regular dunkel's bach and of all of these box sub styles it's the most widely available style the original doppelbach beer was a beer from the polynomial in germany known as salvatore they still make that beer today to this day a lot of breweries name their doppelbox with the suffix ator to sort of imply a connection to that solvator style so you'll usually see that as part of their name final style of the bach family is icebach and conveniently enough ice eis in german translates to ice in english basically ice bach is a doppelbach that has been frozen to concentrate its flavors water freezes at a higher temperature than alcohol does so as you cool beer down you'll be able to remove some of that frozen water leaving you with like a more highly flavored more intense high alcohol product following this freezing process you're left with an incredibly potent beer ice box can range all the way up to 14 alcohol and they oftentimes will feature kind of like dark fruit or dried fruit notes things like raisin prune or or fig even this group of hoppy lagers isn't broken up into multiple sub families all of these styles are sort of derivatives of the original pilsner style and that pilsner style is unquestionably one of the most influential beer styles in the history of beer so the first style that we're going to talk about is czech premium pale lager the style name for this beard used to be bohemian pilsner but was actually changed recently for a few reasons one pilsner is a german word so it doesn't really make sense for the czech style to carry a german name but two in the czech republic pilsner is not a style of beer pilsner is a brand you may have heard of the beer pilsner or kel that is this original pilsner style but in the czech republic that's the only beer that carries the name of pilsner now pilsner raquel was first brewed in late 1842 and upon appearing on the scene it totally transformed beer across all of continental europe the beer combined several kind of unique or novel characteristics it was brewed with very soft water from the town of pilsen which allowed for a beer that had a higher than normal level of bitterness but kind of like a soft pleasant quality of bitterness that people really enjoyed it also was one of the first truly pale golden beers produced leveraging you know new advances in malting technology that for the first time allowed pale malts to be produced affordably on a large scale when you look at the majority of the beer produced around the world today you know a lot of it falls into the categories of things like american lager american light lager international pale lager all of those styles are descended from this one beer continuing on a similar theme we have czech pale lager which is kind of like a lighter version of the czech premium pale lager you know it's a little bit lower in malt flavor a little bit lower in body a little bit lower in alcohol content the german pill style is probably the closest direct descendant of the czech premium pale lager style this was basically german brewers copying the czech pilsner style to try to produce a similar beer using the ingredients that they had available to them at this point today you're far more likely to find brands of german pills than you will of brands of czech premium pale outside of pilsner or cow on the whole uh german pills is a really refreshing and crushable style for those of you not acquainted with the term crushable is like drinkable but better the first iterations of the american lager style which is so prevalent today were made by german immigrants to the us in the mid 1800s so like czech premium pale lager very directly gave rise to the german pill style german pills very directly sort of birth the american locker style next up is german-like beer which is basically german light beer though you know compared to our american light beer it's a significantly more assertive beer german hellas export beer falls somewhere between uh german pills and immunities typically has a little bit more bitterness than a helles would but a little bit more body than you'd expect to see in the pills many of the classic examples of this style come from the city of dortmund and the style actually used to be called dortmunder export kolsch is another example of an ale that i snuck into a lager category but because of the way that the fermentation is handled kolsch usually doesn't have tons and tons of fermentation character a lot of times it's described as sort of like the ale version of a german pills the coal style comes from the german city of cologne the german name for that city is cold and kolsch literally means of coal the service tradition of the style in the city of cologne is incredibly unique and a lot of fun if you've ever been or you ever get the chance to go it's just an awesome experience kolsch is served in these little rod shaped glasses they're 200 milliliters so just over six ounces which obviously does not take very long for you to drink through but the way that it's served is that servers run around with trays full of kolsch and as soon as you finish one glass they replace you with a fresh glass and just make a tick on your coaster and they just keep going and going and going until you put your coaster over the top of your glass telling them that it's time to stop even though kolsch is only moderate and alcohol content like four and a half percent and it's served in small glasses given the ease of consuming them and the rate at which they're replaced it's very easy to you know be conversing with friends and look down and see like 10 or 15 tick marks on your coaster so very fun somewhat dangerous but always a good time last in the group is pre-prohibition lager which is a historical style that you don't see a lot of commercial examples today but it's kind of a an interesting style because it represents the the link between german pills and american lager pre-prohibition lager approximates the beer that german immigrants would have been brewing when they first came to the us in the mid-1800s and were trying to recreate the german pill style using the ingredients that they had available to them here now prohibition through the prohibition of alcohol consumption obviously put a lot of breweries out of business which in and of itself would have been pretty bad for the beer industry but it came at a pretty bad time you know around the same time of prohibition we had a couple world wars we had the great depression so all of those sort of events together conspired to really decimate the brewing industry we went from a place where there were thousands of breweries in the country to having less than 100 by the time you got to like the 60s and 70s as a result of all of these events what we saw happen was beer before prohibition was a lot more varied there were a lot more different styles a lot more flavorful beers beer beyond like world war ii we were kind of in american lager territory where most beer tasted exactly the same there wasn't a lot of variety it wasn't a very exciting thing to drink it was just a commodity product in addition to prohibition that really shaped that was just kind of like the general trends in consumer products that occurred in the 50s you had a lot of people moving from urban centers to suburban areas a lot of people spending less time in bars and more time at home it's kind of like the tv dinner era and so at that same time across consumer products not just with alcohol you had a move from like smaller batch more kind of like mom and pop products to like mass-produced homogenized products and happen in every industry you look at like toothpaste like there's how many toothpaste brands can you name how many laundry detergent brands can you name like there are just a few and they're all relatively similar what really impressed people in the 50s was not like this is a really flavorful thing they're like it's really cool that i can go anywhere in the country and i can get something that's exactly the same so it was kind of that mentality that shaped all consumer products in that era and it was more kind of a move in food and beverage and eventually other things towards artisanal products like you can point to like starbucks as sort of the rise of people going from like coffee is just a thing i drink for caffeine to like coffee is the thing i drink for certain flavors that sort of lined up with people getting into craft beer or craft spirits or like all of those things beer developing when it did was a broader dynamic of people wanting variety in all of the products that they were looking at due to the way that ales are fermented they typically will show some amount of flavor derived from their fermentation usually a little bit of fruity character all of the beers in this group lead with malt flavor though some of the beers also have significant levels of either hot flavor or fermentation derived flavor to structure this group we went with beers that range from kind of pale to brown in color first style here is dark mild which is sort of like your classic multi-british pub beer very highly sessionable beer which is a term that's used to describe beers that are lower in alcohol that you can drink several of over the course of a session it goes great alongside a lot of pub fair like i love drinking dark mild with classic bangers and mash british brown ale is balanced a lot like a dark mild though it's a bit stronger in strength maybe up around four to five percent alcohol content think something like a newcastle brown ale also in the family of brown british ales we have the london brown ale style it's at this point considered a historical style there are very few examples of it available english barley wines are often considered to be a mulch showcase you know with really robust notes of caramel toffee but also like molasses treacle maybe some dark fruit character like plum prune or fig they're really robust and interesting beers in most cases barley wines are going to be the strongest products produced by a given brewery and they're usually also going to be vintage dated in part because due to their high alcohol content they can age pretty well next up in this category we have the sort of generic british strong ale style which serves as sort of a catch-all for a lot of higher alcohol english malty beers compared to barley wine it's usually going to be a little bit lower in alcohol in sort of like the six to eight percent range rather than eight to twelve percent like barley wine last among the british malty ales we have the old ale style which is similar in strength to british strong ale typically features some amount of aged character which can go in a lot of different directions however like british strong ale this is a style that allows for a pretty wide range of interpretations it's not the most popular of styles so you don't see tons of examples of the style in the market these days we've got five different styles that fit in the subgroup of scottish and irish multi-ales and the first three of them scottish light scottish heavy and scottish export are all very very closely related these three styles are very similar in their flavor profiles and are primarily just separated by different levels of alcohol content and consequently differing levels of intensity the light is usually somewhere between 2.5 and 3 alcohol scottish heavy will be maybe three to four percent and scottish export might be four to six percent alcohol scottish light and heavy are rather challenging to find outside of scotland and honestly are even somewhat difficult to find in scotland the most commonly available beer of this style that you'll see out on the market is belhaven scottish ale which is a classic example of the scottish export style then we have we heavy which is kind of like an amped up version of the other scottish ales we heavy has similar flavors but can range from like 6 to 10 alcohol so the flavor is a lot more intense one thing that is notable about these four scottish styles some people sometimes think that they should be made with peated malt you know pete is kind of that like really intense smoky character that you get in certain types of scotch whiskey however peated malt is used exclusively in whiskey production it's not typically used by scottish beer brewers so those sorts of flavors are not appropriate in these styles heading over to ireland we have irish red ale which is sort of a light refreshing irish ale a lot of beers that feature sort of a reddish hue are often going to be produced with a specific type of malt known as caramel malt irish red ale sometimes will use caramel malt but more often will get its red color from using a very very small amount of roast barley the ingredient that you know makes beers like irish stout black and heavily roasty in character we have four different american multi-ale styles that cover a pretty wide range of different characteristics and we're starting off with american blonde ale as the name implies american blonde ale is a golden pale colored beer american blonde ale is meant to be a really approachable beer and in a lot of cases serves as sort of a transitional beer for people moving from beers like american lagers into beers that have a bit more flavor from a flavor perspective american wheat beer is pretty similar to american blonde ale though as the name implies it's made with some amount of malted wheat once again this is a relatively straightforward beer it's a popular style with a lot of early american craft breweries as a way to move people beyond american lager beers that they might have been more familiar with in the 90s a lot of pioneers of the american craft beer movement had flagship beers that were of the american wheat style you know you can look at goose island with three one two whitmer with their hefeweizen has two really prominent examples for a pretty dramatic change of pace we jump to american brown ale american brown ale is sort of like the american take on the british brown ale style in a lot of times when american brewers adapt a style from somewhere else they're going to make a beer that is usually more aggressive in some way in my opinion american brownnail is a pretty underappreciated style i have a pretty deep love for the style it makes for a really fantastic companion with a wide range of different foods i wish that there were more of them out there with wheat wine we have a unique specialty beer that's kind of made in the same vein as barley wine though it also includes a pretty significant portion of wheat malt the style is rather high in alcohol and drinks kind of like an amped up version of an american wheat beer next up we've got a pair of malty ales from continental europe one from belgium and one from france most classic belgian beer styles are dominated by yeast derived flavors but uh belgian pale ale is pretty maltrevin it doesn't have as much yeast character as most other belgian styles honestly belgian pale ales are kind of hard to come by these days there are two main producers in belgium dakonic and palm and those are two of the best and potentially only examples of the style that you can find bearded guard is a french specialty it's produced in the northeast of france kind of along the border with belgium and it's an interesting style in that it's produced in three different color bands you have blonde bearded guard amber bearded guard and brown bearded kentucky common is a historical style it's very rarely seen commercially today and the beard drinks a lot like a dark version of a cream ale and then last in the category we have sati sati is a very unusual finish style and i actually had a hard time pinning exactly where i wanted to put this one because it has so much going on in it the driving flavors of the style the most prominent one being juniper sati uses juniper berries as a flavoring and the other place where people might be familiar with the juniper flavor is as sort of the main flavor in gin so sati has kind of a gin like piney herbal floral character to it that really drives the flavor profile of the style next up we've got a slate of 12 roasty dark ales this group covers a number of different porters and stouts all of which are brown or black in color and feature some amount of roast flavor originally stout grew out of porter as a stronger version of porter but today that's not necessarily the case english porter was a tremendously popular style in the uk in the 1700s and had kind of a unique production process at the time it was a beer that was made as a blend of both young and old ales so some of the beer would have been aged in large wooden bats where it would develop acidity and kind of like funky characteristics then that would be blended with younger beer to produce the finished porter style english porter today does not reflect that process it's just kind of like a dark ale style every porter and stout sub style currently in existence can be traced back to this one style of beer the majority of the beer made in the world is made with four specific ingredients malt hops yeast and water and through using different varieties of those ingredients and manipulating the way that those ingredients are used brewers are able to achieve a tremendous variety of different flavor profiles in their beers today in a lot of modern styles brewers may augment that list of ingredients perhaps adding things as run-of-the-mill is like chocolate or coffee or certain fruits to like really weird ingredients like lobsters or zebra mussels or other shellfish by and large the majority of beer achieves this wide palette of flavors using just those four ingredients the heyday of porter in the uk was very much the 1700s it sort of declined in popularity over the course of the 1800s and then basically died out in the 20th century however the porter style was sort of resurrected by american craft brewers looking for styles to experiment with baltic porter is another take on the porter style in this case brewed in countries that sort of surround the baltic sea some of the more prominent commercial examples come from like sweden russia and poland baltic porter stands out of this group in that it's actually usually made as a lager rather than an ale in part due to the colder climates of the countries where this beer is typically produced at the time when this beer was originally being made it would have been easier for them to do a logger fermentation than a nail fermentation baltic porters will usually be anywhere from six to ten percent alcohol lastly we have pre-prohibition porter pre-prohibition porter is another historical style not very widely available today honestly hard to find in commercial settings it's a recreation of what porter might have looked like around the time of the revolutionary war in the u.s and at that point it was very much an american brewers take on the english porter style in the mid-1700s when porter was extremely popular brewers didn't have a lot of options available to them when it came to making different styles of beer you know ingredient availability was an issue you would have maybe one or two different malts to choose from as a result the primary way for brewers to expand their offerings was for them to brew beers of different strengths basically to use different amounts of ingredients in the beers that they brewed stout grew out of this tradition as a stronger version of porter and all of these different levels of stouts were basically differing alcoholic strengths of beers that resembled porter today the key differences between each of the stout substyles often comes down to the balance of the beer and the strength of the beer first up in the stout family we have irish stout which is probably the best known stout substyle as a result of the widespread popularity of guinness draft i actually think that irish stout is one of the most misunderstood beer styles out there people look at this beer and they see that it's dark and so there are a lot of assumptions that come with that people think that because it's dark it's going to be full bodied and high in alcohol and assertively flavored and basically none of those things are true and as a result it's actually like a pretty easy drinking beer irish stout gets its dark color and it's heavily roasted flavor from the use of roasted barley which is kind of the signature ingredient in that style another unique aspect of the irish stout style is that it's often served on nitro which means it's served using nitrogen instead of just carbon dioxide the inclusion of nitrogen is what creates that sort of cascading bubbles effect that you see when a beard like guinness is poured and it also has some pretty distinct impacts on the flavor experience of the beer it ends up reducing the perceived bitterness of the beer and also gives it kind of like a smooth creamy texture just because you encounter that really creamy head first when you drink the beer the next two styles irish extra stout and foreign extra stout are rather similar to irish stout in terms of their balance the main differences here come down to the alcohol content and consequently the sort of the overall intensity of the style irish extra style is going to be a little bit stronger than an irish stout maybe five to six percent in alcohol foreign extra is stronger still maybe six to eight percent alcohol the tropical stout sub style is descended from some of those export type stouts that would have been sent to tropical locations such as the caribbean or even like parts of india the style is similar in strength to foreign extra stout but the balance is pretty different it's usually a lot sweeter american stout is the american take on the foreign extra stout style and like most american interpretations of styles it got made a little bit more intense tending more towards kind of that burnt ashy robust espresso flavor imperial stout is the strongest of all of the stout substyles the style guidelines say that it can go up to 12 alcohol but in truth you know you see some variations of the style that go higher i can think of imperial stouts up around 15 or even 18 alcohol in the late 1700s these really really high octane stouts were very popular with the russian imperial court as an export beer and so a lot of brewers in the uk took to naming their strongest stout beers as imperial stouts or russian imperial stouts interestingly enough this is where we get the word imperial from as it is applied to beer styles you'll see you know on beer labels imperial porter or imperial ipa imperial pilsner that just means a stronger version of the style and that's tied back to kind of this the history of imperial stout usually meant to be a sipper definitely a beer you can sit down and enjoy over a period of time imperial stats also are a really common candidate for barrel aging particularly spirit barrel aging some of the first beers aged in barrels were imperial stouts aged in bourbon barrels and that trend is very very popular today our last two stouts sweet stout and oatmeal stout are sort of moderate strength stouts that are distinguished primarily by the addition of unique ingredients sweet stout doesn't necessarily have to have anything unique added to it but oftentimes is going to be brewed with the addition of lactose in which case it's specifically referred to as a milk stout the reason why brewers use lactose in these beers rather than any other number of sugars is that yeast cannot ferment lactose yeast are in essence lactose intolerant by adding lactose that sugar remains in the beer through fermentation and gives you a sweeter fuller-bodied finished beer oatmeal stout as you might imagine is made with the addition of oats and interestingly enough the oats are not necessarily used for their flavor contribution oats will sometimes give these beers a little bit of a nutty characteristic but the bigger impact is that usually oats will give beer sort of a luscious velvety texture which is what brewers are typically after when they use oats to make this style the happy ale category includes 21 different sub styles and covers a wide range of hoppy ales from various regions around the world now depending upon how they're used hops can impart either bitterness or aroma and flavor to beer the hops grown in different parts of the world have different flavor characteristics our first group of hoppy ales are the british hoppy ales and we start things off with english ipa sort of the beer that kicked off a lot of these other styles now the english ipa style is the original ipa style and it comes with a pretty widely known story that unfortunately is not terribly grounded in reality ipa stands for india pale ale and the story goes that when the british were colonizing india you had people working over there soldiers etc they were very thirsty and beer was being shipped over there but it was all going bad in transit so the brewers had to develop this hoppy high alcohol style in order to slake the thirst of all of the people over in india however the real story is a little bit less romantic uh it turns out that at the time brewers were sending all sorts of beer including porter and other pale ales over to india and it was making it there just fine in terms of the high hopping rate brewers at the time knew that beer that was more highly hopped would keep longer so anything that was getting shipped to india would be highly hopped due to the fact that it had to survive this long voyage before it was consumed and lastly with regards to the high alcohol content most india pale ales clock in around six to seven percent alcohol that's maybe high by today's standards but the british ales of the day were often between like five and ten percent alcohol so they really would have been just like moderate strength beers what is true about the story however is that this pale bitter beer did become very popular in india and eventually became popular back in the uk at which point it developed that name india pale ale as has been the case with many of these styles india pale ale's popularity has sort of ebbed and flowed over the years so the indian pale ale of the mid 1800s is not too close to the ipa that we know and enjoy today however the india pale ale style did spawn a number of pale bitter styles and sort of laid the foundation for most of the pale bitter beers that today exist in the uk and the us the next three sub-styles are a group of english pale ales known as bitters they're direct descendants of the ipa style as with the scottish ales these three styles are primarily distinguished just based on their alcohol content going in order from low strength to high strength you have ordinary bitter best bitter and strong bitter of the three sub styles you're most likely to encounter beers in the best bitter sub style one of the more prominent examples being london pride from fuller's brewery lastly we have the british gold nail style which is paler in color than the other members of this family and so consequently features less malt flavor and aroma next we have a group of three average strength american hoppy ales and we kick things off with the american pale ale style american pale ale is sort of the original american craft beer style you know in the early days of the craft beer movements or the late 70s and early 80s brewers were looking for inspiration and oftentimes they turned to classic styles made in the uk a lot of early american craft brewers learned how to brew from english home brewing texts so doing like others before them had done like we saw with german brewers trying to recreate pilsner in america we have american brewers trying to recreate english bitters but using american ingredients classic american hops tend to feature a lot of citrus flavor notes like grapefruit and tangerine as well as some kind of like piney resony sorts of flavors it doesn't get quite as much love as it deserves these days but like it's such an awesome and amazing style and still one i go back to all the time the american amber ale style is basically a slightly darker take on the american parallel style typically brewers would use a little bit of caramel malt in making this beer so you get a little bit of kind of caramel toffee malt flavor and then the hops are usually dialed back just a hair but otherwise it's a very similar beer to american paleo lastly we have the california common style which is a rather unique american innovation exemplified by the anchor steam brand originally this beer was known as steam beer and in california in the mid-1800s through the early 1900s there were a vast number of different breweries making steam beers however they all died out one by one and in the end only the anchor brewing company was left standing at which point they took a trademark out on the name of steam beer the main thing that makes this style unique is that it's actually fermented with lager yeast however it's fermented with lager yeast at higher temperatures so it ends up still giving you some of those fruity fermentation flavors as a result it's more or less just kind of like a unique take on an american amber ale next up we have the giant category of ipa sub styles there are nine different styles that sort of fit under this ipa umbrella and brewers are constantly experimenting and trying new things it's entirely possible that by the time this video comes out there will be another ipa substyle in existence the core style of the ipa group is the american ipa american brewers of kind of the early 90s interpretation of that historic english ipa style more hop aroma and more bitterness more alcohol just like more everything one of the things that keeps the ipa style and really the whole ipa family fresh and exciting is that hop breeders and growers continue to release new varieties of hops that bring sort of an additional pallet of flavors to brewers arsenals at this point the american ipa style has been exported all across the world today american ipas are significantly more popular with brewers in the uk than english ipas are you also can find american ipas throughout asia and central and south america where they call it ipa so very very versatile style extremely popular one that i'm sure many viewers are familiar with then we have double ipa the easiest way to think of double ipas like american ipa but more there was definitely a period of time probably in the 2000s and early 2010s where breweries kind of were pushing to see who could make the the most bitter or most intense beer double ipas are definitely a product of that time and that sort of like hops arms race now the new england ipa style sometimes referred to as hazy or juicy ipa is a style that really only came around in like the last five years or so but came into popularity very very quickly and has come to become like a dominant force in the beer space the calling card for these styles is their hazy appearance a lot of times these beers are so hazy that they're almost kind of like opaque might even look like a glass of orange juice in some cases and really favors kind of what people term like juicy hot flavors so think things like orange juice mango pineapple kind of these really robust tropical flavors and then we have a whole host of different specialty ipa categories the first group that we talk about is sort of color variations on the ipa style most classic ipas are either like pale golden or amber in color we have several different variations that play on different colored versions of ipa the four that exist are white ipa red ipa brown ipa and black ipa so in the case of white ipa we have wheat being used in the case of red ipa oftentimes you're going to see some amount of caramel used to give it that reddish hue a little bit of sweet caramel flavor brown ipas will use some more heavily toasted malts think like a chocolate malt which will give it toasty brown bread or or maybe even light chocolate flavors black ipas are going to use de-bittered black malts belgian ipa involves a variation on the way that the beer is fermented belgian yeast strains tend to be more characterful than american yeast strains producing a lot more like fruity characteristics and giving it an interesting blend of fermentation characteristics and hop flavors the last ipa of the group is rye ipa which unsurprisingly is made with rye one common misconception that people have is that rye brings this sort of spicy caraway flavor and that misconception exists because rye bread is almost always flavored with caraway that's not the case though it's more along the lines of like the difference between bourbon whiskey or a rye based whiskey american barley wine is the american take on the english barley wine style american barley wines are usually like bracingly bitter and have a fair amount of hop flavor and aroma these are seriously intense beers definitely sipping beers american strong ale is a bit of a catch-all category for various imperial versions of hoppy styles think like anything labeled like an imperial red ale or or an imperial amber something in that category one early and well-known example of this style was stone's arrogant bastard ale it was just like a really aggressive high alcohol hoppy beer next up we have a german bitter ale talking about alt beer which is indigenous to the town of dusseldorf and this style at least the production of the style has a lot in common with the way that kolsch is made all beer is typically amber in color with sort of like toasty bready malt flavors the alt-beer style is honestly kind of challenging to find outside of dusseldorf however if you are ever in dusseldorf the four traditional alt beer breweries are all located in and around the ultrastop the old part of the city and are all within about a 15-minute walk of one another last up in the hoppy ale category we have australian sparkling ale australian sparkling ale is a unique style typically only found in australia and it's really typified by the products from the coopers brewery it's a little bit like an english bitter but typically going to be paler in color with less malt flavor and significantly higher carbonation fruity and or spicy ales we've got 12 total styles to cover here and we're now moving into beers that are dominated by their fermentation flavors it's worth noting for the most part the beers in this category are not actually made using fruit or spices these flavors are coming entirely from the fermentation styles in these groups use very expressive yeast strains that tend to produce high levels of a group of flavor compounds known as esters which commonly give beer fruity characteristics think like banana apple pear sometimes peach some of the strains used for beers in this group can also produce a type of flavor compound known as phenols those phenolic flavor compounds usually give beers spicy sorts of characteristics along the lines of like clove nutmeg or white or black peppercorn our first group of styles is the german hephabytes and type styles so there are a few words worth knowing the translation of heffa translates to yeast then the other two words that are commonly used in association with this style are either vaisn which translates to wheat or vice which translates to white so the first member of this family is the vice beer style and vice beer goes by a few different names sometimes you'll see it labeled as half a vitamin sometimes as half of ice beer brewers of this style use a very special yeast strain that gives the beer a lot of banana and clove flavor characteristics these beers are also very very highly carbonated you know when you see them served they're usually served in these tall vase like glasses that allow for two or three inches of foam to form on top next up is dunkel's vice beer it has a lot of similar fermentation flavors to vice beer so still that banana clove profile but also gets the addition of some amount of a darker colored malt lastly in this category we have a beer that's not truly a vitamin beer this is rogan beer it's a beer made with rye rather than wheat it's more or less a rye based take on the dukel's vice beer style the first one of the bunch whip beer is actually made with spices though it does also usually have a character full fermentation as well belgian whip beer is usually spiced with both coriander and orange peel which gives it sort of citrusy floral notes this specific style basically died out in the 1950s and would have been probably totally lost to the world were it not for this one guy pierce ellis who founded the who garten brewery through his production of this style he sort of slowly brought it back to prominence and today it's a popular beer style you know among both small and large breweries it's just a beautiful easy drinking beer cezanne is a really exciting yeast driven style that allows for a really broad range of interpretations and many people think of cezanne as sort of the quintessential farmhouse style when you see a beer that's labeled sort of like farmhouse oftentimes it will fall into this ceson category [Music] so the brand name duval actually translates to devil and some people surmise that the name is a reference to how the beer can kind of sneak up on you you know if you have a couple of these sitting down and aren't paying close attention you might find yourself in a different place than you intended as a result many of the other brands within this style that are produced today bear allusions to the devil you know you get names such as brigand or lucifer beelzebub so you see a lot of devil references when it comes to these books [Music] lastly in the category of sort of these fruity spicy ales we have a series of four different monastic beers that are also all typically made in belgium now these beers feature a numerical naming system the style names are trappist single belgian double belgian triple and then the top one is technically called belgian dark strong but is oftentimes referred to as quadruple now there's no actual doubling or tripling of any of the ingredients or specific characteristics of the beer but the beers do get stronger as you progress from single to quad to this day a lot of these styles are produced by trappist breweries located in belgium and other parts of the world trappist breweries are housed within trappist monasteries and have to follow a number of strict guidelines in order to have their beard labeled as trappist and the beers are generally regarded worldwide for their high quality the trappist single style is probably the least commonly seen of any of these four the single style also sometimes referred to as like a potter's beer is usually reserved for the monks at the monastery where it's brewed this is a beer that they would kind of drink every day alongside their meals and as such it's not usually packaged or distributed very widely belgian double is a traditional belgian style dating back to the early 1900s it was first produced at the trappist brewery west muller in the 1920s belgian doubles are usually amber to brown in color and typically present with a lot of flavors of like brown sugar sometimes molasses maybe even a little bit of chocolate however as is the case with many of these belgian styles belgian double is actually a pretty highly attenuated style which means that most of the sugar has been fermented out it's a dry beer with very little little residual sugar belgian triple dates to a similar time frame as belgian double triple was first brewed also by west mall in the 1930s and is a pale beer belgian dark strong ale also sometimes known as quadruple drinks a lot like a strong version of a belgian double but usually two to three percentage points higher in alcohol tart and or funky beers pretty much any time you encounter high levels of acidity in beer that's going to be the result of a bacterial fermentation usually bacteria that are producing lactic acid maybe also bacteria that produce acetic acid and now bacterial fermentation can sound kind of scary but lactic acid bacteria are the same bacteria that produce yogurt so some of those kind of tart flavors that you might find there are similar to the flavors that you would encounter in these beers these beers also sometimes incorporate so-called wild yeasts one of the most common that gets used is a yeast known as protanomyces sometimes just referred to as brett and the flavors that protandim is produces in beer don't always sound super pleasant on first blush you know things like horse blanket wet wool barnyard there are characteristics that in isolation don't necessarily sound like they'd be good things but at low levels they can offer a really pleasant point of complexity in these beers so first up in this category we've got two different tart german wheat beer styles the first is berliner vice which is traditionally bracingly acidic usually very highly carbonated but still due to its kind of light body and low alcohol content they're usually very refreshing beers historically bars would sometimes serve these beers with flavored syrups one of the stranger ones that was actually pretty prevalent was a syrup known as woodruff syrup it had flavors of kind of like earth and hay but more unusual is like bright green in color these days there honestly aren't a lot of berliner vices being made in germany you're more likely to see smaller craft brewers making the style in places such as the u.s style given its acidity lends itself really well to the addition of fruit so you'll see brewers adding things like peaches or raspberries or any number of different fruits to berliner by style beers goza is honestly a rather strange historic tart wheat beer style that was pretty obscure and virtually unheard of 10 years ago but in the last decade has just exploded in terms of its popularity goza drinks kind of like a mix of a berliner vice and a belgian whip beer so it has kind of the lactic acidity of berliner vice has the coriander that you get from whippier but then it also has kind of its own unique twist in that ghosas are usually made with the addition of salt at low levels adding salt kind of enhances the body and the perception of sweetness of the beer the remainder of the tart and funky beer category is comprised of five distinct styles that come from belgium we'll start with these flanders or flemish red and brown beards belgians often don't make a clean distinction between these two styles in fact belgians generally don't talk about style nearly as much as we do over here flanders red ale is a tart red beer from western flanders and the style is really typified by the products from a brewery named rodenbach in addition to their acidity these beers feature tons of fruit character think like black cherry and currant lots of fruit notes present in these beers sometimes these beers are referred to as like the burgundies of belgium due to their similarities or overlaps with certain red wines and in that vein this is a beer that i very much like to use with somebody who considers themself a wine drinker but not a beer drinker i've definitely won over audiences of wine drinkers with this beer to develop their acidity these beers are typically aged in really large oak bats of the two flanders styles food broon is a little less common than flanders red ale but the style is indigenous to east flanders and is typified by the products from the leafmen's brewery the last group of tartan funky beers that we have to discuss is the lambic family of beers and honestly i think that these are some of the most fascinating beers made anywhere in the world there are a number of things that are very unique about the way that lambic is produced but probably the most unusual facet of their production is the way that they're fermented normally in the process of making beer brewers first produce what is called wort this is the sugary and hopped liquid that then gets fermented by yeast however landmakers take a very different approach instead following the production of the work they transfer that work into a cool ship where they allow it to cool overnight cool basically being a large shallow basin and as the work cools the bacteria and yeast present in the air in the brewery begin to grow in the work essentially spontaneously inoculating the the word the base beer produced in this way is generically referred to as lambic and lambic is a style in and of itself sometimes you will see straight lambics served however that's rather rare you're far more likely to see this lambic beer after it has aged for a couple years being used to produce two other more common styles goose and fruit lambic so goose is typically a blend of several different vintages of lambic beer usually some amount of one year some amount of two year and some amount of three-year-old lambic beer after these different vintages of lambic are blended together the beer is re-fermented in the bottle to achieve a very very high level of carbonation when it's finished it almost drinks kind of like a like a funky champagne lastly we have fruit lambic which once again is taking that sort of tart funky base lambic beer but then the brewer is going to add fruit to it and allow the fruit to go through another fermentation the most common fruits that you see used for these beers are raspberries in which case the beer is known as francoise or cherries in which case the beer is known as creek the final category we're covering is smoked beers and there are only three traditional styles that we're covering in this category but they have such a unique flavor and such unique characteristics that they really just couldn't be put anywhere else now there are a few different ways that brewers can impart smoky flavors to beer but the most common one is going to be through the use of smoked malt basically during the last stage of the melting process when the malt would normally be dried with hot air instead it's dried with air from some sort of fire that imparts those smoky flavors and characteristics furthermore the specific flavors that you get from those smoked malts are very much determined by what fuel is used for the fire the first smoke style that we'll cover is the german style ralph beer rauc is the german word for smoke so rock beer just means smoked beer in german the malts that get used to make classic german rock beer are going to be smoked with beechwood which gives characteristic flavors of ham bacon or sort of like campfire notes but some of these beers particularly the ones that feature high levels of smoked malt can be downright meaty in character the second beer that we're talking about in this family is a beer known as pivo grotzitsky also sometimes referred to as great sir and this is a polish smoked style and it's made with oak smoked malt now oak smoke tends to be a little bit softer than beechwood smoke so while this beer is still typically fairly intense in its smoke character it's definitely a bit softer and more approachable than a classic ralph beer often is the beer is also very highly carbonated and pretty low in alcohol so well you might not think of a beer that tastes kind of meaty as being a refreshing beer it's actually a pretty easy drinking beer and lastly we have lichtenheiner which is a true historical oddity one way to think of it is basically like a smoked bird winter vice but with a little bit softer acidity to it while 100 different beer styles definitely covers a lot of ground there's still a fair amount of beer on the market today that doesn't neatly conform to a specific beer style commonly brewers will take an existing style and modify it either using unique ingredients or perhaps a unique technique to produce an entirely new creation so one common variation is beers that fall into the broad group of american wild ales this would be a brewer taking a style and using either bacteria or wild yeast to ferment it like we saw in some of those tart and sour beers two really common categories of variations involve both fruit beers and spiced beers beers where brewers are going to be adding some sort of fruit or some sort of spices in some cases a mix of the two in order to create something interesting some beers will leverage alternative sources of fermentable sugar most beer is going to be made with malted barley some beers also include things like malted wheat but there's a bunch of other ingredients that can be used things like oats spelt rye millet or even things like molasses or agave smoked beer is another somewhat common variation we talked about three specific styles that use smoked malt in their production brewers today tend to experiment all the time and so you can make any style into a smoked style by adding smoked malt to it wood aging is another technique that brewers can use to create variations on their styles there are a lot of different types of barrels that brewers can use but in a lot of cases you'll see brewers using spirit barrels things like bourbon or other types of whiskey maybe rum barrels sometimes even like tequila barrels and then the last category is just a total catch-all for whatever weird things brewers are cooking up these days this is specialty beers and this kind of includes mixes of some of the above categories if a brewer wanted to make like a smoked beer with fruit or like a barrel-aged beer with spices that's where this would fall [Music] all right well that was each and every beer style i don't know about you guys but all this talking about beer has made me pretty damn thirsty i had a lot of fun talking to you guys and i really hope that all this helps you find new beer style to enjoy cheers you

Channel: WIRED

Views: 545,082

Rating: 4.9183617 out of 5

Keywords: beer, cicerone, master beer, beer master, master cicerone, beer expert, history of beer, every type of beer, every type of beer explained, beers, types of beer, types of beers, hops, beer hops, american lager, pale light lager, pale ale, trappist single, irish stout, types of beer explained, each and every, each and every wired, beer types, beer type, wired beer, beer wired, wired interview, beer experts, pat fahey, pat fahey beer, pat fahey cicerone, wired

Id: P75SvA344QI

Length: 68min 55sec (4135 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/BlackLeader70]

“Every style”, I was skeptical until I saw the one plus hour time stamp. Time to get watching.

Edit: a word

[u/procrastablasta]

Can we give it up for this guy maintaining a relatively svelte physique, given his profession

[u/goodolarchie]

I've always liked this chart because it provides classic and new-world examples of classic styles that you can actually find in your grocery store. Great way to expand your palate and beer knowledge, especially if you taste them alongside the BJCP Guidelines.

[u/Elin_Woods_9iron]

You think you like beer? Oh yeah? Then name every kind of beer.

[u/dignifiedindolence]

I'm just happy to be living in a time when there are so many beers to try. Compared to the selection I had 40 years ago, it's a great time to enjoy beer.

[u/KuriousInu]

Might as well share the channel where this guy does live tasting drinkalongs. I've enjoyed them and they get uploaded afterwards too. Great for those training to know beer.

[u/zweebna]

What's up with the number of dirty glasses featured in this video? So many bubbles clinging to every glass. Clearly this guy wasn't involved in any of the production of this video or he would've objected.

[u/NicolasGuacamole]

Made it through about half of this. It's nice but it kind of sucks how little he says about many of them.

A lot of them are just like... Style X is like style Y but different. Yes but different how...

I'd much rather fewer styles but have their differences clearly marked.

[u/calilazers]

Great video so far, that's a lot packed into one hour!