Beer-Geek Speak
Beer-Geek Speak
By Aubrey Laurence
Alcohol By Weight (ABW) and Alcohol By Volume (ABV): After Prohibition in America, breweries wanted their beers to seem more temperate, so they used the alcohol-content-measurement system that provided the lowest number, which is ABW (alcohol is lighter than water). Today, most macro breweries still use ABW, whereas most craft breweries — and most foreign breweries — use ABV. To make a comparison, 3.2 percent ABW is equal to about 4 percent ABV.
Ale: Beer made with top-fermenting yeast and aged for shorter periods of time at warmer temperatures.
Body: A quality of beer — typically modified with “light,” “medium” or “heavy” — that is determined by the amount of proteins, unfermented sugars and hop oils in the beer. Light-bodied beers feel thin and watery in your mouth, whereas heavy-bodied beers feel thick and chewy.
Craft Brewery (Microbrewery): According to the Brewers Association, a craft brewery is small (producing less than 6 million barrels annually), independent (less than 25 percent of the brewery is owned or controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member who is not themselves a craft brewery) and traditional (where the brewery brews all-malt beers or beers that use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor).
Many people also use the term “craft” to describe artisanal, innovative and creative breweries that put quality and flavor ahead of quantity and appealing to the masses.
Dry Hopping: Adding hops to fermenting beer, which imbues it with additional hop aromas but no additional bitterness.
Finish / Aftertaste: “Finish” typically refers to the flavors and aromas detected right after swallowing, whereas “aftertaste” typically refers to the flavors and aromas that linger during the moments after swallowing. Contrary to what multi-million-dollar ad campaigns want you to believe, aftertaste is not necessarily a bad thing.
Hoppy: A vague term used to describe a beer made with lots of hops. Depending on the types of hops used, how much are used and when they’re introduced into the boiling wort, hops can imbue beer with different levels of flavor, aroma and bitterness, and there is an infinite combination of those variables.
“Hoppy” can sometimes equate to “bitter,” but some beers can be aromatically “hoppy” yet have low bitterness levels. Most “hoppy” beers contain flavor notes that can be described as floral, piney, citrusy and/or grassy.
International Bitterness Units (IBUs): This is the most popular unit of measurement to describe hop bitterness in beer. Rough IBU calculations are made using a complex formula that is based on variables such as amounts of hops used, percentage of alpha acids in the hops used, length of time they’re boiled in the wort and the wort volume.
IBU numbers range from the single digits (which is the level you find in many mainstream light lagers) to more than 100 (which is what you might find in many double/imperial India pale ales). A side note to keep in mind: The maltier and stronger a beer is, the more it will obscure the perceived bitterness in the beer. In other words, a 50-IBU pale ale will seem to have more bitterness than a 50-IBU barley wine.
Lager: Beer made with bottom-fermenting yeast and aged for longer periods of time at cooler temperatures. Lager, as a verb, comes from the German word lagern, which means “to store” or age.
Malty: A vague term used to describe a beer with flavors like toast, grains, nuts, caramel, cereal, toffee, chocolate, bread, etc. that dominate the beer’s flavor profile.
Mouthfeel: How beer feels in your mouth. Texture qualities in beer are mainly produced by its level of carbonation (carbon dioxide) and body (proteins, unfermented sugars, hop oils, etc.). Beers can vary from thin and watery to thick and chewy, and carbonation levels can range from nonexistent to livelier than sparkling wine.
Session Beer: An easy-drinking beer that you can drink a lot of in one “session” without becoming too bloated or drunk. Session beers, also called sessionable beers, typically have low levels of alcohol, sweetness and bitterness.
Wort: Unfermented beer. This is the sugary liquid derived from the mash. After the yeast is pitched, fermentation begins.
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