The beer bible

1060 Pages·2015·23.44 MB·English

by  Alworth

JEFF ALWORTH
THE
BEER
BIBLE
WORKMAN PUBLISHING • NEW YORK
For Sally,
to whom I owe the world—
or, at the very least, Italy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
W
HEN YOU LOOK at the cover of a book, there’s usually just one name
there. Often an author will mention some folks who supported him or helped
along the way. In the case of The Beer Bible, it would have been literally
impossible for me to complete the book without the help of dozens of people.
Folks like the English writer Zak Avery, who helped me contact British
breweries to set up visits. Or importers Wendy Littlefield, Matthias Neidhart,
and Michael Opalenski, who did the same for me in France and Belgium,
Germany, and Italy. Wendy and Michael were wonderful in sharing their
impressions of the Belgian and Italian brewing worlds, helping educate me as
well as connecting me with brewers in Europe. I want to give a special děkuji to
Max Bahnson, who spent two days giving me a tour of Prague, and another to
Patrick Emerson, who not only joined me on the trip around Great Britain, but
had the courage to take the wheel of the Vauxhall.
I had personal advisors who used their years of experience to illuminate and
guide me on this long road: the writer Stan Hieronymus, who has done more to
advance our understanding of beer than anyone in the past decade; brewer Alan
Taylor, the hardest-working man in beer at Pints Brewing, Ponderosa Brewing,
and (soon to be) Zoiglhaus Brewing, who helped me overcome my fear of
lagers; and Portland, Oregon–based chef Paul Kasten, who revealed some of his
alchemical secrets. You spent far more time than you needed to answering what
must have seemed like obvious questions.
Another revolution in our understanding of beer has come thanks to a cohort
of exceptional historians. These folks have looked at primary sources in the
brewing record going back centuries, and have help loosen our attachment to
persistent old myths. I’m thinking especially of Martyn Cornell and Ron
Pattinson, both of whom graciously agreed to look over my history sections to
prevent any howlers from getting out in the world. Richard Unger and Ian
Hornsey have also done indispensable work. Closer to home, Maureen Ogle’s
history of American brewing has been essential reading.
If you look at the end of the book, you’ll see the names of more than fifty
brewers who took the time to speak with me about the beer, of which three
dozen took me on tours of their breweries. Some of those names are the most
esteemed in the business, and one of the enormous pleasures of writing this book
was spending time looking inside mash tuns and up at towering conditioning
tanks. In České Budějovice (Budweis), Adam Brož guided me by flashlight
through a brewery darkened by electrical work. Standing with John Bexon under
Crown Street in Bury St Edmunds, England, in a tangle of pipes running to the
bottling line, conspiratorially, he said, “Not many people have been down here.”
Showing up on the wrong day at Belgian brewery Rodenbach and having Rudi
Ghequire give me a tour, anyway. Standing in the mists made by hot wort
pouring into the cool ship at Cantillon, drinking aged Vintage Ale in the cellars
at Fuller’s, dining with the folks at Lambrate, sampling sticke alt from the tanks
at Uerige, smelling the fresh yeast of open fermenters at Schneider, meeting Teo
Musso’s mom, discussing German guilds at Schlenkerla. These memories (and
many more) are treasures I’ll carry a lifetime.
The list goes on. James Emmerson not only manages a large American
brewery (Full Sail), but he checked my technical sections for accuracy. Evan
Rail made sure I didn’t get Czech beer wrong. Jo and Jerry Lane, Gene Alworth,
and Sally Alworth all remember the fitful progress that led to this book—coming
in on two decades now—and were there to hold my chin up along the way.
Finally, I want to thank the folks at Workman Publishing for entrusting me
with The Beer Bible. I worked closely with Kylie Foxx McDonald for a year
before signing the contract to write the book and for the nearly four years it took
to bring it to publication. I thank her especially, but also all those who were
guiding things along behind the scenes.
Whatever richness you find in this book, think of them when you appreciate
it. I do.
Portland, Oregon
May 2013
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
How to Use This Book
PART ONE
KNOWING BEER
Finding Your Bearings
From Gruel-Beer to Black IPA in 10,000 Years
How Beer Is Made
Tasting Beer Like a Brewer
PART TWO
ALES
Bitters
Pale Ales
India Pale Ales
Mild Ales
Brown Ales
Porters and Stouts
American Ales
Barley Wines and Old Ales
American Strong Ales: Double or Triple IPAs
Scottish Ales
Ales of the Rhine: Kölsch and Altbier
Belgian Ales
Saisons and Rustic Belgian Ales
French Ales
Abbey and Trappist Ales
The Beers of Italy
Fresh-Hop Ales
Lesser-Known and Emerging Styles
Traditional Regional Ales
PART THREE
WHEAT BEERS
German Weizen
Belgian Witbier
Tart German Wheat Ales: Berliner Weisse and Gose
PART FOUR
LAGERS
Dark Lagers: Dunkel, Schwarzbier, and Czech Tmavé
Czech Lagers
Pale Lagers: Pilsner, Helles, and Dortmund Export
Amber Lagers: Märzen and Vienna Lager
Bocks
Mass-Market Lagers
Lesser-Known Lagers
PART FIVE
TART AND WILD ALES
The Lambic Family
The Tart Ales of Flanders
Wild Ales
PART SIX
ENJOYING BEER
Serving and Storing Beer
Pairing Beer with Food
At the Pub
Beer Tourism
APPENDIXES
Glossary
Style Origin Maps
Hop Varieties at a Glance
Bibliography
Tours and Interviews
Index
Credits
About the Author
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
I
N 2001, the wine educator Karen MacNeil published a book called The Wine
Bible. A conceptual triumph, it manages to take more than nine hundred pages of
information and put it into a form that is instantly understandable by even the
layest of laypeople. MacNeil’s steady voice, lyrical and accessible yet
authoritative, guides you through the rolling hills of Italy’s Piedmont and the
Maipo Valley of Chile. Wine is a drink of place, the grapes that make it defined
by the heat of the sun and elements in the earth. MacNeil acts as an expert guide
on a world tour.
Beer is a little different. It is also a drink of place, but not in the same way.
Culture and history exert at least as great an influence as where the barley and
hops are grown. Beer types or styles are manifestations of these influences, and
act as the organizing principle of The Beer Bible. Mostly. It turns out movement
is also the nature of beer styles. Porters jump seas and become stouts; pilsners
cross borders and become hellesbiers. Places like the United States, Italy, and
France pick up brewing almost from nothing and rebuild it like immigrants do,
borrowing this, dumping that, scrambling x and y. Styles mutate and change.
Remember that as you read about these styles, and recall that even though we
wouldn’t dare to question the legitimacy of Munich’s famous helles beer now,
once a pale lager was so radical that the city’s brewers nearly had a civil war
over it. Today’s abomination is tomorrow’s treasured tradition.
WHERE TO BEGIN
Some people who come to this book will be new to beer, perhaps enticed by the
burgeoning world of craft beers; others will be old hands who want a little more
information about their favorite styles. Whoever you are and whatever your
reasons, you’ll thumb around and drop into sections that interest you. The book
is designed to be read in pieces; Karen MacNeil had the insight to structure The
Wine Bible that way, and I happily followed her lead (though this book is
segmented by style, not region). The first part of the book will give you some of
the important background to understanding beer, but you might prefer to dip into
it elliptically, to backfill as necessary. You may not be compelled to read
through descriptions of the strange flavors of beer, for example, until you
encounter something unexpected. Or perhaps the history of beer won’t be
interesting to you until one afternoon, as you’re sitting behind a pint of abbey
ale, you wonder what in the world monks have to do with brewing. If you
prioritize any sections of Part One, I recommend “Tasting Beer Like a Brewer,”
starting on page 58—that’s where you’ll find the concepts and terms important
to the sensory experience of beer that are repeated in nearly every chapter.
WORLD BREWING TRADITIONS
I’m an American, but this is not a book solely or even centrally about American