A few weeks ago, I was taken to the woodshed (or should I say wine cellar) by my friend and fellow blogger, ‘WineBoy’ John Brown. He used his blog to infer I was “smoking something” when I stated that beer offered a wider range of flavor than his beloved wine. I was not at all surprised that he took me to task; after all wine is his passion. Beer is mine. I was also accused of “whining.” I can’t see why stating what I believe to be factual and informative, is labeled as whining.

As a beer writer, part of my role is informing my readers. How many folks know that scientists believe beer can contain upward of over 1000 identifiable flavors? The best tasters can pick-out around 100 (I can only wish). All the while, the other 900 flavors are there waiting to be identified like in one of those police show line-ups.

You see, most Americans still don’t understand the world of beer and many have a real narrow “yellow-fizzy” understanding. If beer were bread (and indeed it is liquid bread), it would be perceived by most Americans as a choice between Wonder Bread and Wonder Bread. In reality, its range is wider than that of Wonder bread, all the way to toasted pumpernickel! I am going make an attempt to bring both believers and skeptics into my virtual brewery so we can take a look “under the hood” at the complex beverage we call beer.

According to the German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot), beer is made from only four ingredients: water, barley, hops and yeast. Many brewing cultures stray away from this narrow German ideal. Germany’s own Bavarians and Berliners use wheat, so they are essentially beer outlaws. Let’s keep it simple and start with the four basic ingredients and how each impacts the flavor of the finished beer.

Water: Beer is wet because water typically makes up more than 90% of the liquid in your mug or bottle. All water is not created equal, though. If you look at water analysis from one brewing region and compare it to another, there can be very large differences in things like mineral content (sulfates, calcium etc.). These minerals are what give water its flavor. Dasani brand water, for instance, has minerals added for flavor; it’s “engineered” water. These flavor differences carry directly to the finished beer, similar to a grape’s “terroir.” These minerals and salts have a huge influence on the hop bitterness and flavor in the finished beer. Brewers will often tweak the water chemistry to deliver a desired effect. Thanks to water chemistry, Budweiser can be brewed in St. Louis or Newark and still taste exactly the same (and believe me, there is no place for off-flavors to hide in those nearly tasteless beers.)

Barley: Although many different cereal grains are used in modern craft brew, Barley remains the most popular grain by far. Most brewing grains go through a process called malting. This process prepares the grain for the mashing step of the brewing process. The brewer can make beer finish sweet or dry just by varying the temperature of the mashing phase. Grains can also be kilned or roasted. This process develops the roasted “dark beer” flavors. (It’s similar to roasting coffee beans.) A brewer can choose from a nearly endless combination of grains with various levels of roast, layering in roasty or toasty complexity to the finished beer. This paragraph cannot begin to explain the sheer amount of flavor complexity attributed by this grain selection process. A brewer can make a beer taste like raisins or dates, chocolate or burnt toast just by tweaking the roasted malts in the recipe.

Hops: Where to start? If you ever want to find evidence of divine intervention in beer, look no further than the “herb of the vine,” Humulus-Lupulus. Hop flowers are a real multi-tasker in brewing. If you boil them, they bitter the beer. If you steep them in hot wort, they add flavor and aroma, if you add them to the aging cask they add aroma. Hops add the bitter dimension to beer. They also add spicy or earth flavors and aromas. There are hundreds of distinct varieties of hops, all having large flavor variance and bittering power. Some hops add citrus notes to beer; others add very herbal or earthy notes. The amount of a particular hop that is used and when it is used will impact beer flavor greatly. Many brewers will use more than one hop variety in a recipe.

Yeast: There is a saying in the art of brewing that: “The brewer makes the wort and the yeast make the beer.” Yeast are single-cell fungi that live to reproduce, eat fermentable sugars, burp carbon dioxide and expel ethanol alcohol as waste. They eventually get drunk, go to sleep and die (similar to Nicholas Cage’s character in “Leaving Las Vegas”). The type of yeast used will determine if the beer will be an ale or lager, which that alone makes a huge flavor difference. When brewing beer, the yeast strain and the whole process of fermentation have a large, predictable impact on flavor. A few degrees of variation in fermentation temperature can change the whole taste profile of a beer. I am not exaggerating when I say the yeast and fermentation can “make or break” a beer. Ferment a particular yeast a few degrees too warm and you may have made “barley cider”.

You may think someone added bananas to your Hefeweizen, but actually the flavor derives from esters left behind by specific hefeweizen yeast and only when fermented at the correct temperature! The fermentable sugars extracted from grains are complex, so the yeast have their work cut out for them. This challenge makes yeast act differently than in simple sugar-water. There are hundreds of yeast strains available to the brewer, each having very different fermentation profiles. Belgian lambic is fermented with wild yeast that leaves a delicious but very tart beer. Some Belgian sour-ales actually contain acetic acid (vinegar) produced during the fermentation. Some have lactic acid (like that of yogurt) which may not sound too good, but don’t knock em till you try em.

Other ingredients and factors: In addition to the “Reinheitsgebot four,” there are numerous other ingredients that can be added to beer. Brewers can add fruits like raspberry, cherries, grapes and even watermelon! Some beers are spiced, some have honey. The permutations are endless.

Alcohol: How about alcohol intensity? Beers range from under 2% ABV all the way to Sam Adam’s Utopias at a whopping 25% ABV! Some beers are served nearly flat to those that are bursting like champagne. Carbonation also adds a dimension of flavor due to the carbonic acid that is present. What about barrel aging? Some beers today are aged in oak barrels to impart oaky flavors like many wines. There are even beers aged in used wine or whiskey barrels. Sake, the Japanese beverage commonly referred to as “rice wine” is actually beer. Sake is made from fermented liquid that has been enzymatically converted and extracted from rice (cereal grain); this is similar to beer wort which is extracted from malted cereal grains. I think the reason for the confusion is that Sake is very high in alcohol (about that of wine) and is normally non-carbonated. It’s still beer! (a pun for the wine enthusiast.)

Nobody is “dissing” wine or wine drinkers in making the claim that beer delivers a wider range of flavor than that of venerable wine. Beer is a beverage that has historically been made by many more cultures than wine. Grapes and fruit were limited to countries with compatible climates; on the other hand you will find that nearly every culture has had a crack at “what makes a beer.” Beer was brewed wherever there was bread and I think that is just about everywhere, even France!

The Fins for instance, thought Juniper tasted pretty good in their beer. The Nigerians like Sorghum. The Franconians use smoked barley in their beer. Those finicky Czechs wanted a beer that was golden, clear and refreshingly bitter so they created pilsner. The Belgians are still pushing the envelope. And don’t forget those crazy Americans with super-hoppy beers or ones aged in bourbon barrels. The good traditions are mimicked and the bad ones never get traction (like English “cock ale” which somehow featured a whole chicken as an ingredient).

Beer can and does deliver a wider range of flavor than wine; it’s simply a matter of heritage, the number of possible ingredients and the tweak-ability in all stages of the brewing process.

Note: No wines or wine drinkers were harmed while writing and posting this article.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 10:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.