Cold (35-45degrees): American Lager, Pilsner, Hefeweizen, Amber Lager

Cool (45-54): Amber Ale, Pale Ale, Stout, Porter

Cellar (54-57): Bock, Brown Ale, IPA

Warm (57-61): Double IPA, Dopplebock, Barleywine

note: warm is not room temp.  typically cask conditioned beers are served between warm and room temp.

i keep my beer all at “cold” then let it warm prior to drinking depending on style. no need for 4 different refrigerators:)

~Sláinte

Again, one of my favorite beers…this is not for the faint of heart.  Whether you like “dark beers” or not, this one will knock your socks off: an impressively rich Imperial Stout aged in oak barrels to give a smooth vanilla and oaky complexity to the already intense roasty notes in this beer.  The intensity of the malt is exceptionally balanced by 75 IBU’s worth of hoppy goodness.  This beer pours like motor oil, and drinks like heaven.  A four time medal winner at foreign beer festivals, this beer boasts a stellar resume as well.  The original Yeti from Great Divide (this beer without oak aging) has six medals, including the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.  Either way, it’s the best ten bucks you will spend on a bomber of this phenomenal treat from this local Denver brewery.  They recommend pairing this beast with a NY strip steak, fudge brownies, or strong salty blue cheese.  Great Divide uses two words on each of their labels to describe the product inside, and they hit the nail on the head: massive…complex.. so if you are in the mood for something that will knock your socks off, drink up sailor!

~Sláinte

Light:  Light is terrible for your beer.  UV rays can affect the flavor of the hops in a negative way giving you a ‘skunky’ taste to your beer.  Ever had a beer out of a clear bottle?  These bottles let the most amount of light in, which gives it that ‘tropical hop note’ (hence why you put a lime into a Corona, to balance the skunky flavor).  Green bottles let less light in than clear, but more than dark brown, which is why european style beers that use those types of bottle get a slight skunkiness.  Dark brown bottles let the least amount of light in of the three, and therefore protect the beer from spoilage better.  But if you really want to get technical, cans are the best way to store a beer…

Temperature:  Temperature change is detrimental to beer in that it will accelerate the aging process.  Moving beer from hot to cold and back again is one of the worst things you can do; your beer will develop a cardboardy/stale taste and will taste more like a 6 month old beer than anything else.  Once your beer is cold, keep it cold.

Time:  As a food product, beer will age.  Quite unlike wine or cheese, beer degrades in flavor over time.  It does contain two natural preservatives (hops and alcohol) so as long as the seal is unbroken, the beer won’t kill you.  It will, however, start tasting worse with age.  Stale taste can come from old beer, but beers with live yeast (bottle conditioned) can develop other putrid flavors over time.  So drink up when you buy your beer, don’t save it.

Oxygen:  Another detrimental element to beer is oxygen.  Like i mentioned in my post about pouring beer, getting too much interaction with oxygen is also detrimental to flavor.  I’m sure many of you have drank from the party keg the next morning (or even later).  The tap you are using is displacing beer with oxygen which will oxidize the beer.

So in shorter terms, keep your beer in a cool, dark place.  Drink it sooner, rather than later.  Oxygen is good for you, bad for beer.

~Sláinte

Flute

Narrow design maintains carbonation and forces aromas upward.

Use with lighter crisp beers with either floral or fruity aromatic character.

ex: Great Divide’s Samurai

Goblet

Wide body opens malty sweetness of the beer, while the narrow opening concentrates aromas and helps maintain head.

Use with intense, malty, full bodied beers

ex: New Belgium’s Abbey Ale

Mug

Traditional drinking glass, holds larger quantities.  Thickness helps insulation so the beer stays colder longer.

Use with lighter bodied, crisp beers with medium to low bitterness and balanced maltiness.

ex: Michelob Marzen

Pilsner

Tall and narrow to maintain carbonation, force hop and malt aromas upward to the nose, and showcase color and clarity.

Use with light bodied beers with low hop bitterness and aroma

ex: Budweiser

Pint

Cylindrical, slight taper, and wide mouth for letting intense aromas spread, opening the complexity of highly aromatic beers.

Use with beers that have a medium body, and are high in hop aroma and bitterness.

ex: Odell’s IPA

Tulip

Wide base for opening malt sweetness, narrow neck to maintain head, flared out opening to showcase aroma.

Use with beers light to medium in body, and mild hop bitterness and aroma.  Good for barrel aged beers.

ex: Goose Island Boubon County Stout

Weiss

Larger volume, narrow at the base to force fruity flavors upward, flare out and wider opening to spread aromas.

Use with beers that are low in hop profile, cloudy and fruity.  Perfect for wheat beers

ex: Widmer Brothers’ Hefeweizen

~Sláinte

For those of you who haven’t tried this beer, or this style, an American Pale Ale traditionally is deep golden in color, nice and malty, and aggressively hopped, in this case with Cascade hops which tend to give grapefruit and other citrus notes in the aroma and a nice clean bitter finish to the beer, balancing the sweetness of the malt.  Sierra Nevada’s flagship beer follows this style to a T, and practically invented the style.  I would encourage anybody who likes to try different styles of beer to give this beer a go..you won’t regret it.

1. you will need: a bottle of light beer (preferably bud light), four glasses
2. to start, open the bottle and pour 1/3 of the beer barely down the side of the glass (release as little carbonation as possible)
3. pour the second third of the bottle down the middle of the second glass (try and get about 1-1 ½ inches of head at the top.
4. pour the last third of the beer in the third glass the same way you poured sample #2.
5. Take the third sample and pour it back and forth between it and the empty glass four times.
6. smell and taste in order 1-3 without swirling the glasses

This will be three different tastes from one single beer.  Beer is meant to be poured in a glass, releasing carbonation (1-1 ½ inches of head).  When CO2 molecules are released, flavor compounds are released in the product giving it the intended full bodied flavor.  This also keeps the beer from being over carbonated (aka less filling).

The first sample is over carbonated, really crisp and clean, but lacking in flavor.  This is like your first few sips out of a bottle.

The second sample has significant more flavor, which comes from releasing CO2 and it will have less of a bubbly bite to it.  This will be like the middle of your bottle of beer because as you tip back a bottle several times to drink, you release CO2 along the way.

The third sample will be oxidized (too much interaction with oxygen aka too much CO2 released).  This will lend a stale, cardboardy flavor and very flat taste.  This is like the bottom of your beer.  Ever wondered why the bottom sucks and nobody wants to drink it?  Too much carbonation released, too much interaction with oxygen, all from tipping back a bottle with an enclosed neck and opening several times.

Pour your beer in a glass, and every time you tip it back for a drink, you don’t lose too much CO2 and therefore have a great beer all the way to the bottom.  This will work with any beer, however the amateur beer taster will more easily taste the differences in a light beer without being distracted by other, more intense flavors.

~Sláinte

Typically, lagers are aged over longer periods of time (usually a month) with a bottom fermenting yeast at colder temperatures (45-60 degrees).  Lager fermentation produces crisp clean flavors and aromas, the beers tend to be refreshing and easy to drink.

Ales are aged much quicker than lagers, usually taking about 1-2 weeks.  Ales use a top fermenting yeast which functions best around 55-70 degrees.  Ale yeasts produce more intense fruity and floral flavors and aromas.

Take a look at this guide from Here’s to Beer’s website to see many of the styles of ales and lagers…

Style Guide

            There are traditionally four ingredients needed to create a beer.  They are barley malt, hops, water, and yeast.  Beer can essentially use anything as an ingredient depending on the style and desire of the creator, but in order to be called a beer, the four cornerstones are required.  For the purposes of the basic tour through brewing, I’ll stick with the main ones. 

            The first step which is incredibly important is malting the raw barley.  The barley must be malted to activate essential enzymes needed for sugar creation later in the process.  First, the raw barley is harvested, and thrown in a warm room at high humidity levels to allow the seeds to grow.  Once the seeds begin to sprout, the barley is transferred to a kiln, where the growing is stopped by roasting the seeds to the desired level of darkness. 

Once the barley is malted and roasted it is then ready to be used in brewing.  The next step is where we start brewing.  The barley malt is now added to the mash cooker along with water, and depending on batch size cooks for hours at 150-160 degrees Fahrenheit.  The enzyme created in the malting process (maltase) can now break down the starch of the grain into a fermentable sugar (maltose).  This sugar provides the food for the last ingredient yeast to consume and ferment the product.

After mashing, the mash is strained in a process called lautering which involves straining out the spent grain to get all the sugar rich liquid (wort) extracted for the brewkettle.  In the brewkettle, the wort is brought to a boil and hops are added for bittering, flavoring, and aroma.  The longer the hops are in the boil, the more bitterness they tend to give to the beer.  Many people wonder why make beer bitter…hops and malt balance each other out.  Bitterness can many times go undetected in a product, but it is designed to balance the rich malty flavor given by the barley.

After the wort is brewed, it is cooled and sent to fermentation.  This step is where we add the final ingredient, yeast.  Yeast is a living organism which actually eats the fermentable sugars created in the mash cooker and as a by-product, creates ethyl alcohol, CO2 and flavor compounds.  Fun fact: yeast provides roughly 60-80% of the flavor compounds in your beer, which is why sterile maintenance and certain yeast strains are crucial to the vitality of the product.  There are plenty of  styles of yeast strains, some meant for lagers, some for ales, all which but that’s for a different blog…