There are many different styles of beer. The two major styles are Ales and Lagers. The Ale and Lager categories can be further broken down into subcategories including the numerous different styles of each. Other popular styles of beer include Wheat Beer, Barleywine, Sake, Smoked Beer, and more.
Lager
Lagers are probably the most common type of beer consumed. They are of Central European / German origin, taking their name from the German lagern (“to store”). Bottom-fermented, they were traditionally stored at a low temperature for weeks or months, clearing, acquiring mellowness, and becoming charged with carbon dioxide. These days, with improved fermentation control, most lager breweries use only short periods of cold storage (1 – 3 weeks).
Although many styles of lager exist, most of the lager produced is light in color, high in carbonation with a mild hop flavor, and has an alcohol content of 3-6% by volume.
Ale
Ales are top-fermented beers, particularly popular in Great Britain and Ireland, including mild, bitter, pale ale, porter, and stout. Top-fermented beers tend to be more flavorsome, including a variety of grain flavors and fermentation flavors; they have also lower carbonation and are fermented and ideally served at a higher temperature than lager.
Stylistic differences among top-fermented beers are decidedly more varied than those found among bottom-fermented beers and many beer styles are difficult to categorize. California Common beer, for example, is produced using a lager yeast at ale temperatures. Wheat beers are often produced using an ale yeast and then lagered, sometimes with a lager yeast).
Lambics employ wild yeasts and bacteria, naturally occurring in the Payottenland region of Belgium. Other examples of ale include stock ale and old ale. Real ale is a term for beers produced using traditional methods and without pasteurization.
Wheat Beer
Wheat beer is a beer whose main ingredient is wheat rather than barley, which gives it a lighter flavor and paler color. Wheat beer is customarily top-fermented.
Wheat beers have become very popular in recent years, and are especially popular in warm weather.
The two most important varieties of wheat beer are Belgian “witbier” and German Weizenbier.
Belgian “witbier” (“white beer”), of which Hoegaarden is probably the best-known example, gets its name from the suspended wheat proteins which give it whitish color. Belgian white beers often have spices such as coriander or orange peel added, giving them a slightly fruity flavor.
German wheat beers are a well-known variant throughout the southern part of the country, the name changing from Weizen in the western (Swabian) regions to Weissbier in Bavaria. Hefeweizen (German for “yeast wheat”) is a variety in which the yeast is not filtered out, though Kristallweizen (clear) and Dunkelweizen (dark) varieties are also available. The filtration which takes the yeast out of Kristallweizen also strips the wheat proteins which make Hefeweizen cloudy. Bavarian weizen beers are fermented with a special strain of top-fermenting yeast, which is largely responsible for the distinctive flavour, with its hint of cloves, bubblegum and banana.
A minor variety of wheat beer is represented by Berliner Weisse, which is low in alcohol and quite tart.
Barley Wine
Barley wine is an English style of ale characterized by a high original gravity, resulting in a high alcohol content, more typical of a wine than a beer (10% by volume is typical). This requires special yeast with a higher tolerance for alcohol. Barley wines are often full-bodied, highly hopped, with a residual malty sweet character. They can vary in color from a light copper to a deep brown. Barley wines can often improve in bottle for years.
Sake
Sake is a Japanese alcoholic drink, brewed from rice. The word (?) is pronounced as SA-KEH (the E sound like the A in CARE.) Its history can be traced back to the 3rd century. The first sake was called kuchikami no sake, or chewing-in-the-mouth sake, and was made by an entire village chewing rice, chestnuts, and millet and spitting the mixture into a tub to ferment.
Centuries later, the use of yeast was discovered, which greatly increased the sake’s alcohol content. World War II also altered the recipe, when rice shortages forced brewers to develop new ways to increase their yields. By government decree, pure alcohol and glucose were added to small quantities of rice mash, increasing the yield by as much as four times. 95% of today’s sake is made using this technique, left over from the war years, though connoisseurs say that the best sake is still made with just rice, koji (Aspergillus oryzae, a fungus whose enzymes convert the starch in the rice to sugar), and water.
There are four basic types of sake, created by slightly varying the brewing method.
- junmai-shu, (pure rice wine) made from rice only; no alcohol added
- honjozo-shu, with a slight amount of distilled alcohol added
- ginjo-shu, from highly milled rice; alcohol may or may not be added
- daiginjo-shu, from even more highly milled rice; again alcohol may or may not be added
Sake that has not been pasteurized is referred to as namazake or kizake, and may be made with any of the above methods.
The most common way to serve sake in the United States is to heat it to body temperature (100°F/40°C), but professional sake tasters prefer room temperature, and chilled sake (50°F/10°C) is growing in popularity.
In Japan sake is generally served cold, warm or hot, depending on the preference of the drinker, the quality of the sake and the season in which it is served. Typically hot sake is consumed in winter and cold sake is consumed in summer. It is said that the alcohol in warm or hot sake is absorbed by the body more quickly, so this habit was popular during and after WWII to mask the roughness of the flavor due to dificulty of obtaining ingredients. Sake is one of the few alcohols that is regularly consumed hot.
Sake is often drunk as part of Shinto rituals. It is used as a part of the purification ritual somewhat like the red wine used in the Chirstian one. During World War II, Kamikaze pilots drank sake prior to carrying out their missions. Today barrels of sake are broken open during Shinto festivals and ceremonies or following sports victories. These sakes are served freely to all to spread good fortunes and called “iwai-zake”, lit. “celebration sake”.
Another traditional Japanese alcohol is shochu. Shochu can be made from rice, although it is more commonly made from barley, potato or sugar cane. In Southern Kyusyu, “sake” means potato shochu, “imo-jyochu”. while in Okinawa, it means sugar cane shochu, “awamori”, lit. “bubble top” and “kuusuu”, lit. old sake. In contrast to sake, which is made exclusively from rice and is brewed, shochu is distilled. Shouchu made from mixed ingredients are often used to make mixed drinks called chuhai.
Smoked Beer
Smoked Beer is a particular kind of beer which has a smokey flavor. An urban legend holds that a fire in a brewery, during which the beer happened to get smoked, caused the exceptional flavor. The brewer, a poor fellow, had to sell its brew nonetheless, and unexpectedly his customers enjoyed the smokey taste. Hence a new style of beer was born.
This and similar explanations are all but legends. The truth lies in the history of brewing, or to be exact, that of malting. Ever since the early Babylonians started brewing beer, the basic principles remained the same – only the implemented technology changed considerably over the centuries. The malt was and still is being dried on the kiln during the malting process. Historically there were only two ways to achieve this: Leaving the grain in the sun or heating air through an open fire.
In the latter case it was unavoidable that the smoke from the fire penetrated the malt and left a smokey aroma in it. Obviously, the resulting beer was smokey, too. Later on, during industrialization in the 18th and 19th century, new technologies were invented that permitted drying malt with indirectly heated air, hence allowing for the use of fossil fuels. Those processes where cheaper and more efficient than the old smoke kilns and therefore eventually replaced them.
The old tradition today lives on in Bamberg, Franconia in North East Bavaria at the brewery-taverns Schlenkerla and Spezial. The malt is being dried over the fire of beechwood logs, which gives the Schlenkerla Smokebeer a very aromatic smokey taste.
Mead
Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made of honey, water, and yeast. It is sometimes known as ‘honey wine’.
The word mead refers to the sugary fluid excreted by flowers. In symbology, mead is the tipple of the gods.
A mead that also contains spices (like cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg) or herbs (such as oregano or even lavender or chamomile) is called metheglin. This word is one possible origin for the modern word medicine as healing herbs were often stored as metheglin so they would be available over the winter (as well as making them much easier to swallow).
A mead that contains fruit (such as strawberry, blackcurrant or even rose-hips) is called melomel and was also used as a delicious way to “store” summer produce for the winter.
Mulled mead is a popular winter holiday drink, where mead is warmed (traditionally by having a hot poker plunged into it) and flavoured with spices.
A grape-based wine with added honey is called a pyment. Hippocras is spiced grape wine sweetened with honey.
Mead was very popular in Northern Europe where grapes could not be grown, but it faded in popularity once wine importation became economical. Mead was especially popular with the Slavs and was called in Polish miod (pronounced myoot), meaning honey. During the Crusades Polish prince Leszek the White of Poland explained to the pope that Polish knights couldn’t participate in the crusades because there is no mead in Palestine.
In Finland, a sweet mead called Sima (cognate with zymurgy), is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish Vappu festival. It is usually spiced by adding both the flesh and rind of a lemon. During secondary fermentation, raisins are added to control the amount of sugars and to act as an indicator of readiness for consumption. (They will rise to the top of the bottle when the process is concluded.)
Mead is also the origin for the word honeymoon as the father of the bride was said to give as a dowry a month’s supply of liquor. Mead shows up in many old north Anglo-Saxon stories, including Beowulf.
Cider
Cider has different meanings in the United Kingdom and the United States. Both meanings refer to a product containing the juice of apples.
In the US, cider was traditionally fermented, but that is now referred to as hard cider. Today, cider is a non-alcoholic beverage; a sub-category of apple juice, sometimes made from early-harvest apples which have a lower sugar content and are more acidic, thus cider has a more tart, tangy taste than apple juice. It is generally (though not always) unfiltered (giving it an opaque appearance from suspended solids), and is traditionally unpasteurized (It is occasionally still sold unpasteurized which is considered to have a better flavor, but the possibility of salmonella and E. coli infection means that most apple cider is pasteurized).
Apple ciders are often made from blends of several different apples to give a balanced taste. Some businesses may try to pass off standard apple juice as cider. There is some local competitiveness among cider mills in apple country for the highest quality blends, and makers keep their formulas secret. One trick used to add interest to a cider blend is the addition of a percentage of crabapples. Cider doughnuts are often sold at cider mills and contain cider in the batter.
“Hot cider” or “mulled cider” is a popular fall (autumn) and winter beverage, consisting of (nonalcoholic) cider, heated to a temperature just below boiling, with cinnamon, orange peel, nutmeg, cloves and other spices added. Another cider available in the US is “sparkling cider”, a carbonated non-alcoholic beverage made from filtered apple cider or apple juice. The alcoholic apple drink (see below) is referred to as “hard cider” in North America.
In the UK, cider is an alcoholic drink brewed from apple juice. It is predominantly (but by no means exclusively) brewed in the south-west and west of England. Cider is often stronger than beer, and will frequently be over 6% alcohol by volume. The common eating apples are unsuitable for cider brewing, being low in tannins: specific apple varieties bred specially for cider brewing are preferred.
Ciders come in a variety of tastes, from sweet to dry. Sweet cider tends to be popular with young people, and is often the drink of choice for teenagers in the UK (along with alcopops). This is aided by preferentially low duty (= tax) rates for cider compared to beer, which reduces its cost.
Modern, mass-produced ciders are generally heavily processed and resemble sparkling wine in appearance. These are called hard cider in the U.S. More traditional brands, often known as scrumpy, tend to be darker and more cloudy, as less of the apple is filtered out. They are often stronger than processed varieties. In very large quantities (in excess of 2 gallons per day) scrumpy can cause temporary blindness due to trace amounts of arsenic found in apple seeds. Such consumption is extremely rare. Abdominal pains known as “Devon colic” have been attributed to mild lead poisoning: the acidic juice dissolving lead from the traditional cider presses used in that region.
