The Naked Pint Read Online Free

you nothing about whether the beer is an ale or a lager. The type of beer has everything to do with the process by which it was fermented. That’s it. You can have a very light colored, light alcohol content, nuanced, bright, and crisp ale (for example, Kölsch); likewise, you can have a very dark, high alcohol content, viscous, sweet, and malty lager (like Eisbock). One of the worst things you can do at a craft beer bar is to go up to the bar and order “an ale” or “a lager.” These general terms won’t get you any closer to a specific beer or to what flavors you crave but will make the bartender sigh.

Flavor Country: Ingredients Translated into Taste
Malt in Translation
    T here are several ways to see, taste, and feel malt in beer. First and foremost, malt is reflected in the color of the beer, but the malt can also give off different flavors. When you look at a very light-colored beer, you might determine that you’ll taste bready and biscuity qualities that exist in the very pale malts that were used during brewing. If you are looking at a very dark beer, you might expect chocolate, coffee, and roasty-toasty notes that are often present in very dark colored malts. (This does not mean you can judge a beer’s entire flavor profile by its color. The type of malt is a hint about the flavor notes you may taste but does not tell you about the yeast or hop aspect, so tasting is still important!)
    Many people will describe certain beers as malty. What does that mean? Usually they are not referring to the qualities that come from the roasted malt. They are talking about the residual sugars and additional alcohol content that can remain in a beer when an especially large amount of malt is used in the brew. This results in a prominent sweetness of flavor and a viscosity and heat in the mouthfeel.
    We’ve found that when people first start drinking beer, they are unexpectedly drawn to much darker, maltier styles than they could ever imagine themselves liking. They favor the sweet familiar flavors of chocolate, hazelnut, coffee, and toffee that these beers often impart on the palate, rather than the bitter styles that come from highly hopped beers, which are often an acquired taste. Which brings us to our next featured ingredient.
True Hoppiness
    Unbeknownst to many, you cannot tell how bitter a beer is by looking at it, as hops are totally invisible in a finished beer (this is part of why you can’t determine a beer’s taste just by looking at it). After the hops’ qualities are extracted through boiling and steaming, the actual hop cones are strained out of the beer. You can detect hops, however, by tasting and smelling the beer. If a beer tastes in any way bitter, if a beer feels in any way dry, or if a beer causes you to feel astringency on your tongue, you are tasting the hops.
    Hops contain a chemical compound called tannin that contributes to the puckery or cottony mouthfeel that we describe as being dry. You’ve probably heard of tannins with regard to wine. In wine, tannins come from the skin of the grape. If someone says, “This wine is very tannic,” he’s saying that he is getting a very dry mouthfeel from the wine. As true dryness in a beverage technically means having a lack of sugar, beer is not actually dry (sugar exists in the malt), but the tannins in hops can contribute a balancing dry feeling that is essential to great beer.
    Hops also provide major aromatics in beer, and sometimes hops are added only to provide aromatics. These amazing aromas can range from pine tree, grass, citrus, herbs de Provence, and yes, its close relation—the pot. Hops also act as a preservative in beer, due to their antimicrobial properties, which help keep the beer stable (for more, see Chapter 6).
    Some brewers like to go further than that balance and create a bold, hop-driven beer, in which the bitterness is dominant. This can often taste like licking a wet pine tree (What, you’ve never licked a wet pine tree?),