Help me become a beer geek!

[DonGavlar]

hello all,

So first things first.. I’m a brand new and addicted home brewer. My friends now look to me as the ‘beer geek’ but im far from it.
Tonight me and my pal went to the local craft brew pub. I’m from london so as you probably know, every other building is a pub. This particular pub only sells local brews and other international craft brews.
My friend turns to me and says “right, what are we having first?” So as a safe option, i pick us out a nice pale ale brewed from a small state in america. We both enjoy it and move on to the next.. “so whats next?” I pick us out a local’ish brewed IPA. Now, he turns to me and says this beer is less bitter and less fruity smelling than the last? Which to I have no reply.
I was under the impression that an IPA is classed as a stronger beer with a lot more of a hoppy/bitter flavour.
This IPA we had was less bitter and had less of a fuity/citrus aroma than the pale ale we had. When asked why, I had no answer.
So.. my question is, what actually seperates a pale ale from an IPA? Is there some online source I can read up on that can teach me the actual factors that seperate beer classes? At the moment I have no clue on how to come up with my own recipe as I have no clue on what actually differentiates the different classes of beer.
If im going to become a beer geek, I feel I should atleast understand the lines between each beer category.
Sorry if this post is a bit unclear as im half cut as it is. (To you guys over the pond, half cut is the land between sober and pissed).
Any help would be greatly appriciated!
Thanks all, Gav.

Happy brewing!!

 

[pursuit0fhoppiness]

Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher is great, but for a quicker answer and more brewing-centred check out the BJCP guidelines (free PDF online).

 

[beermanpete]

"Pale Ale" by Terry Foster seems like a good source of information about pale ale and the related styles.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381691/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

You are correct in your assumptions on pale ale vs IPA. Unfortunately that doesn't mean the breweries you had the beers from labeled their beers in the correct styles. I've had many pale ales that tasted hoppier than a similar IPA. So you either had a dumbed down IPA, or a pale ale that should've been labeled as one.

 

[dmtaylor]

There are many different kinds of IPA. If you want to learn all the latest styles...

https://www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Beer.pdf

 

[trav77]

So.. my question is, what actually seperates a pale ale from an IPA?

Lately there has been a lot of hop creep in American pale ales in that they're creeping into IPA territory... both in terms of bitterness as well as large amounts of late hopping with new hop varieties that are extremely aromatic. English IPAs (as far as I've had here) tend to be more subdued. Certainly traditional English hops are not as intense as modern US hops. Hard to say without knowing what you were tasting...

Is there some online source I can read up on that can teach me the actual factors that seperate beer classes? At the moment I have no clue on how to come up with my own recipe as I have no clue on what actually differentiates the different classes of beer.
If im going to become a beer geek, I feel I should atleast understand the lines between each beer category.

Try this:
https://www.bjcp.org/stylecenter.php

It's the standard by which homebrew competitions are judged. Caveat is that not all commercial beers calling themselves a particular style actually conform to the definition presented here.

Sorry if this post is a bit unclear as im half cut as it is. (To you guys over the pond, half cut is the land between sober and pissed).

Translated to 'murcan = buzzed

Welcome to the obsession.

 

[ancientmariner52]

Welcome, Gav. If you have an Android device you can download a free app that lays beer styles out pretty thoroughly. Look for BJCP. Beer Judge Certification Program, I think. Might be available for Apple as well, I've never looked.

Keep in mind, beer styles are artificial constructs, meant to facilitate fair competition and rational conversation about beer. Some folks act like they are holy writ, but it's just for convenience. Like pretending a grubby piece of paper is worth a dollar or a pound.

 

[biochemedic]

If you were comparing an IPA from the states with a British IPA, they're likely to be only marginally related taste wise! This is a function not only of the multiplicity of IPA substyles found in the US (East Coast, West Coast, New England IPA, White IPA, Black IPA, Brown IPA.......and a multitude of related hoppy versions of "X" style of beer that also occasionally get lumped into the moniker IPA), but also of the predominant hop strains that tend to be used in American IPA's vs British. Traditional British IPA's tend to be maltier and less bitter (or at least certainly a less harsh bitterness) than their American counterparts. Start to factor in water chemistry, different kinds of base malts, different yeasts, and timing of hop additions, and you can easily start to see why two beers both labeled "IPA" can be *vastly* different from each other.

 

[DonGavlar]

Thanks all for the info! I’ll have a read through the judging criteria, think that’ll be a good start.

Yeah now i think about it, the US beers i drink do tend to have a much harsher bitterness than our versions here.

I guess i’ll just have to drink even more beer than I already do... for educational purposes of course

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I pick us out a local’ish brewed IPA. Now, he turns to me and says this beer is less bitter and less fruity smelling than the last?...I was under the impression that an IPA is classed as a stronger beer with a lot more of a hoppy/bitter flavour.
This IPA we had was less bitter and had less of a fuity/citrus aroma than the pale ale we had. When asked why, I had no answer.
So.. my question is, what actually seperates a pale ale from an IPA? Is there some online source I can read up on that can teach me the actual factors that seperate beer classes? At the moment I have no clue on how to come up with my own recipe as I have no clue on what actually differentiates the different classes of beer.

The short answer to the first question is that it was a British IPA, and just in the same way that the US and UK use one word "pants" to mean very different things, so it is with IPA, even if it's clearly ours in the first place. In the 19th century it was a pale ale of mid-strength by the standards of the time, typically 5.5-6%, heavily hopped with Goldings (and Fuggles once they'd been invented). Then in the course of the 20th century they experienced the same decline in strength due to wartime and beancounters that all other British beers experienced (mild used to be 7-9%). Thus beer historians will protest vehemently that the likes of Greene King are perfectly entitled to call a 3.6% beer IPA, even if they're in a pretty small minority.

The US imported British IPAs and there had always been the odd North American brewery that had brewed clones using the name, but it was only in about 1994 that a consensus emerged as to what IPA meant in the US - which went back to that 5.5-6% kind of ABV (without recognising the historical context of where it had ended up) - and using US hops like Cascade which had never been to India in their lives. Then "IPA" became nearly synonymous with "beer" or at least "hoppy beer" and so got applied to all sorts of liquid regardless of how appropriate it was, which is how you end up with Black IPAs. (think about it...)

Then to confuse things further, many modern British brewers have adopted the US idea of IPA. It's a complete mess - but it's the kind of thing that happens when two cultures collide in the middle of two centuries of history.

So to answer your question - you have to be aware of that history, and assume that if the clip says <5% and it's from an "old" brewery then it's probably the traditional style, if it's from an international brewery or new British one, then it probably is in the US style of IPA.

More generally, don't get too hung up on the idea of fixed, defined "styles". As the IPA and mild example demonstrate, these things vary through time and between cultures, with experience you just "know" whether a beer is described by a style or not. The BJCP guidelines have their uses but they tend to be over-prescriptive and view the world through very USian eyes - the 2008 ones at least were really not very good about British styles, the 2015 ones are better but still not perfect. So don't be too slavish to the BJCP guidelines.

You may find Melissa Cole's The Little Book of Craft Beer helpful, it's very much pitched at the "Beer for Dummies" level. Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels gets much more into the nitty-gritty of homebrew recipes, it's far more technical and getting on a bit now but is still useful.

But yeah, keep drinking!!

[not sure what happened there, I fell asleep over the computer last night, obviously managed to press a Send button when halfway through....]