Is Booze, Beer?

[AaronA]

I read a lot of people saying their beer is "boozy".

To me booze is all alcohol, not the case, beer is not booze?

 

[dkevinb]

Hmm. Where I grew up booze was spirits, separate from beer and wine. Maybe it's regional.

But I think when people refer to beer being "boozy" they mean it has a lot of fusel alcohols for whatever reason, quite commonly from fermenting at too high a temperature.

 

[Beernik]

To me boozy means you can taste, or at least notice, the alcohol.

For instance, I've heard it said that the sign of a good Belgian ale is that you don't notice the alcohol until you stand up from the table. Ergo, even though it has a high ABV, a Belgian ale should not be boozy.

 

[Johnnyhamer]

Hmm. Where I grew up booze was spirits, separate from beer and wine. Maybe it's regional.

But I think when people refer to beer being "boozy" they mean it has a lot of fusel alcohols for whatever reason, quite commonly from fermenting at too high a temperature.

I agree. Booze is distilled.

 

[mysteryshrimp]

You can call a beer "boozy" in the same way that you can talk about banana and clove in a hefe or stone fruit in a dubbel. There is no booze (most of the time), but there are things that bring booze to mind.

 

[FatDragon]

To me, booze is any alcohol, but almost always infers the intention to get rather inebriated, so classier drinks are less likely to be labeled booze, while something like Bacardi 151 is booze all the way.

"Boozy" as an adjective tells me that a beer (or mead, cider, wine, etc) has a noticeable taste of alcohol, like what Beernik said - a 15% ABV aged barleywine may not taste boozy at all, while a 6% ABV IPA fermented a bit hot and drunk fresh may be extremely boozy.

 

[Teromous]

A lot of times when I hear or people say "boozy" in reference to assessing beer flavor or aroma, I think they could be referencing their perception of fusel alcohols.