Learning about beer tasting.

[Rukula]

Even tho I'm just 18, i find tasting and analyzing the different beer styles really interesting. The beer you buy in Norway often lack of description about what beer type you really are drinking. So, if I'm buying a canned beer, i often have no idea of what color it may be or anything. I can identify different ingredients in the beer now, like the hop level, malt type etc.

I want to learn about how to recognize the beer type in the taste and feel. I know from the taste, the difference between pilsner and stout for example, but I'm having a hard time finding the difference in the lighter beer types (Pale lager, pilsner and some ales) Whats the major taste and mouth-feel differences between those? What makes a lager taste like lager? what makes a pilsner taste like pilsner? etc..

Does anybody have a really awesome guide about this?

I found this thing on Wikipedia:


I'm talking about most of the colors from Pale Lager - Dark lager. Except for the wheat beer. That one is easy
I feel like this post is really badly written, but to shorten everything down:

If you sit down with 2 pints. One of them is Lager, one of them is Pilsner. You don't know which is which, how do you identify them?

 

[Aleman]

Lager is an action . . . it means to store

Pilsner is a beer style

also lager is a term applied to beers that are lagered (stored) and these can be just as varied as 'Ales' ranging from the ultralight pils and pilsener styles, right through maerzen, octoberfest bocks to the schwarzbiers.

Then you have the marketing term for lager which is basically any pale fizzy ultra cold bland tasteless crap beer produced by mega beer factories (sorry Shane :P ) so if you were to put a Jever Herold Pils in front of me and a Carlsberg . . . I'd identify the two by the fact that the Jever actually tasted of something hops and malt . . . and the Carlsberg :sick: :sick: :sick:

 

[Shayler]

Can’t always tell from colour either, brewery I went to at the weekend does a dark IPA looked like stout

 

[Aleman]

Does a dark IPA looked like stout

:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

Dark India PALE Ale - Does anyone notice the slight inconsistency with that style description?

Why, Oh why, can't our US brewing buddies bastardize their own styles when coming up with a new one? What was f*cking wrong with calling it a Dark APA . . . BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT IT F*CKING IS!!!!!!! It is a beer made with US hops to the bitterness level of an US Pale ale and cold extracted roast malts (or Carafa Special III) . . . it has no resemblance to an IPA as an IPA uses Goldings and Fuggles traditional English hops FFS!!!!

<and breathe/>

 

[Aleman]

And now I have calmed down a bit you might like to have a look at The BJCP Style Guidelines (OK so it's from our US Buddies but at least they have had a go at categorising many of the recognisable world beer styles . . . Even if they get some of the English ones wrong :whistle: )

 

[Swift Pint]

Dark APA . . . BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT IT F*CKING IS!!!!!!!

:nono:

Surely that should be an ADA?
:drink:

I know what you mean though. :lol:

Rukula, check out the BJCP style guidelines, as used in American brewing competitions. Its a reasonable place to start to read about the characteristics of most beer styles. Bear in mind though that you have to generalise in order to put beers into "boxes" like this, there will always beers that fall inbetween these categories etc. As I say, its a good place to start to get a bit of background of the flavours, aromas, colours, ingredients etc.
http://www.bjcp.org/stylecenter.php

 

[Swift Pint]

Haha, just beaten to it!

 

[Swazi]

The BJCP guide will be useful but should only be a stepping stone to finding out about the beers you like. It should be remembered that the BJCP guide is only meant to be applied to competition brewing and shouldn't be taken to seriously as a reference guide for world beer styles. Some of the styles in the BJCP are pretty rare commercially (relatively speaking) but are extremely popular to brew at home, hence the inclusion as a style in the guide. Some are a bit wrong and some styles are so popular that for home brew competitions they are split into ever smaller sets of sub-styles. The AHA also do a style guide that differs from the BJCP somewhat, but again this is for the purpose of splitting entries at the GABF.

Why, Oh why, can't our US brewing buddies bastardize their own styles when coming up with a new one? IPA uses Goldings and Fuggles traditional English hops FFS!!!!

I love this rant Aleman, too right. The americans also swear that an IPA has to be drunk fresh and they bang on about the supposedly absurd hopping rates in their double IPA's (another stupid name), that look pedestrian compared to some of the ales brewed in the 1800's, which..... require AGEING

 

[Wendy1971]

Dont really care about the colour if it tastes good just drink it :thumb: