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I’m Catherine Kyle, the general manager of the Blank Tiger here in the West Village of Manhattan where we have been serving craft beer since 1996. I started working with craft beer in 2000. It was a job that I stumbled into but I quickly became a passion.

First of all, I found it absolutely delicious. I really enjoyed learning about all the different styles of beer. And each time I tasted it, even if I didn’t like it, I really liked the process of seeing what it was that I liked, what I didn’t like, learning what those flavors were and how they were brewed. And all of this took place really my whole education and introduction to craft beer by the people in the craft beer bar that I worked in. I quickly found out that it was the people that were just as inspiring as the liquid itself and to me that’s what makes it silver rewarding.

I really enjoyed being around a group of people who are so inspired by what they’re doing. It’s very technical. It’s very difficult to brew a good beer. Just ask any of the home brewers that you might know. And these people, they spend their life, their energies just you know really focusing on that. And they’re very community-minded people in general. I’ve seen you know craft brewers help out other breweries that have been hit by disasters by brewing a beer just as a fund raiser for a whole different brewery. The conference at the breweries go to every year, it’s a chance for them to hang out with old friends, and you know, see what’s going on and what the latest projects that they were working on are.

Yes it’s a competitive marketplace but what people are interested in is just getting together and geeking out on what the new brews are. In these series, I’m gonna introduce you to some of the basic concepts of craft beer. We’re gonna talk about so many different styles. And we’re gonna talk about how you can have fun with craft beer. We’re gonna talk about beer tourism. We’re gonna talk about some awesome breweries. And hopefully this will give you some inspiration to go out and try out some craft beer.

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For most of time, most beers produced have been produced with the intention of drinking them fairly quickly after they are done brewing. There are some beers however that have been aged in their process and they are specifically the Belgian Lambics. Now recently there has been a lot more interest in aging beer.

A lot of serious collectors will age beer, a lot of serious beer bars will and what you are looking for there is looking for more flavor and complexity to develop through the process of aging. Not all beers are good candidates for aging I would venture to say most are not. What makes a good beer for aging is a strong beer, you want a beer with a higher AVB and again these are guidelines and there are always going to be exceptions but in general you want a strong beer . Hobs are okay in a aged beer it is they just has to be a multi focused beer because a lot of that hob flavor is just going to fall away.

But again Hops are a preservative so that might help the beer age better for longer so it can develop all of these complexities before it turns and actually does go bad. Again when you are choosing what beers to age not a whole lot is known about how and why certain things work. We are still figuring things out. So there might be an experiment where you know you have access to an older bottle of beer and say a few years old and you are familiar to how that beer tastes fresh. It is a great experience to taste what the fresh beer is next to the aged beer. I find it most often right now in the style of barley beer and what happens with that it is an extremely high alcohol content. So when you drink it fresh you have the experience of being hot from that alcohol.

But age might mellow the heat from the alcohol so that other dark fruit flavors are brought out and it can become a very smooth fine drinking experience. A lot of time qualities similar to a port. So aging beer is something that yes it is being done and it is absolutely fantastic, there is a lot of experimentation and i encourage you to try it and try some aged beer but don’t let your happy APl’s or pale beers go bad.

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Does beer go bad? In a short answer yes. But the answer is a bit more nuanced. Beer loses it’s freshness, beer loses so many aspects that make it delicious as time goes on in general. And that is going to be true for your Hopi Beers and many very delicate beers, you want to drink those as fresh and as soon as you can. Conversely there are beers that take a long time to make, maybe even years when you get into your sours and your barrel aged and those beers sometimes actually increase there tastiness and value with time.

In that case those beers, they still may go bad but you have a much longer time frame and when beers like that go bad you will say they have turned and you will have an almost vinegary issue. If you have been aging a beer but you have aged just too long. A soy sauce quality comes out in beers that have been aged too long. So yes beer does go bad, but the question is how long does it take beer to go bad ? And that answer really depends on the style of beer you are talking about. So, yes beer does go bad.

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First thing to remember is that beer is a live product, so you wanna think of it more like milk and less like a can of seltzer water. In that, you know, wanna keep, keep it at a constant, cool temperature. You wanna use it when it’s fresh. You don’t wanna, you know, you don’t want a hoppy beer to sit around. You wanna drink it when it’s fresh. You don’t want a hoppy beer to sit around, because what’s gonna happen over time is those flavors are just going to diminish. The beer that, you know, was brewed a month ago is gonna be really different than beer that was brewed that day.

And that’s part of why getting beer right from the brewery is a fantastic experience. But the worst thing that can happen is that beer sits around, let’s say on a shelf, you know, you go in to buy it and it’s six months later; it’s almost not going to be recognizable in terms of the same product. You’re gonna lose what so many people have spent so much time and effort into, you know, really creating. It’s not that it goes bad and will spoil or hurt you or make you sick, it’s just that you’re gonna lose so many of the qualities that make it good. So to that end, you know, you, wanna make sure that when you have your beer you want to make sure that, number one that you, you wanna be drinking from reputable places.

And you also wanna be purchasing your bottles from reputable places that know how to rotate their stock, aren’t afraid to, you know, turn things away or give things back if they’re out of date. And, you know, that’s really important. I’d say freshness is the most important quality. But then also, keeping it, you know, so it doesn’t, it doesn’t experience, you know, high heat. It stays in a very cool, you know, cellar-like temperature. Those are the basics in terms of how to treat beer.

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We are extremely lucky to be living in, what I consider to be, the Golden Age of beer. As a result, there as so many awesome breweries that I want to tell you about. We’re going to start off with some of the stallwoods. Firestone Walker, Green Flash, Lagunitas, Brooklyn, Peekskill. If you get a chance to get a peek at what Jeff O’Neil is doing up there in Peekskill you won’t regret it.

There’s also, of course, Hill Farms, which everyone knows about. The Alchemist, Lawsons, Captain Lawrence, Allagash, Maine Brewing Company, Crooked Stave, The Brewery, Jester King, Victor Ommegang, Sierra Nevada, Smuttynose, Avery, Founders, Belles, Russian Rivers, Great Sours, Great IPAs. And there are many more that I have not mentioned. Dogfish Head, I could really go on, but what you should really do is just find a brewery near where you are, look them up online, and see if it sounds interesting to you. Are they making a style that you love or that you’re interested in finding out about? Chances are you’re going to find a pretty awesome brewery.

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Beer festivals are as varied as are the types of brewers anywhere. you can find ones that are put on by, you know a single brewery, but usually if they’re calling it a beer festival you’re gonna have access to, you know many other brewers to try as well. These can range from you know, a few hours, they’re designed to where you come and you try different beers for a few hours to something where you camp out for a few days. There’s one put on by the Home Again Brewery called Belgian Comes to Coopers Town, BCTC for short. And its a very notorious beer festival in the North East because people camp, sometimes there are fireworks. I think this last year there was a Ferris wheel.

And that’s all in addition to the fantastic beer that is put on draft under the tent for you to try during the day time. And also at night in the camp ground you’ll find that many people bring some of their most special beer that they’ve been holding on to for a very special occasion. For a lot of people you know, a camping beer festival is that special occasion. There are also beer festivals that are put on by distributors and you know, they tend to be a much more tame affair where, you know you walk around in a big convention hall style room and you know, you go from table to table and…

Sometimes you’ll meet the brewers themselves or the owners and sometimes it’ll just be volunteers or you know, sometimes beer reps who are very knowledgeable pouring the beer. But a beer festival is a great way to learn about very many different types of beer usually; although there are also those beer festivals that specialize maybe in Belgian beers or you know, just specific things. I think there’s one up in Maine, where its the Maine beer festival and so all the brewers in Maine would participate. Almost every region you know, is gonna have their beer festivals. I’m not very familiar with the ones in Michigan, although I’ve heard that they are phenomenal, cold weather and all.

So beer festivals again, not unlike, you know beer tourism, its just something you know takes a little searching out, you look at the region, you go online and search beer festivals and you’ll find out there are so many beer festivals being throughout the year. And its something that you can really learn a lot from and have a lot of fun. Some people go from festival to festival to festival, you know, filling up many of their weekends.

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A lot of breweries will offer tours and they are really fun things to do. Most of them will take you through at least part of the facility itself so you can get of, not quite a hands on idea of how to brew, but at least a real good visual idea. You’ll see the different steps and you’ll come to understand more of what’s involved in producing the beer. I suggest, if you want to go on a brewery tour, is to find a brewery near you, or near where you’re going to be, and make sure to contact them. Make sure they are giving a brewery tour.

Not all breweries do give tours, but when you find ones that do, often times they’ll be set up such that you’ll have your tour, then you’ll wind up in some sort of tasting room where then you can try the different beers that are available. It’s something that more and more brewers are doing and they’re seeing the real value in educating the consumers. And there’s nothing like tasting a beer that’s made so fresh and available right there at the brewery. It can be a real game changer in terms of what styles of beer you like and also just your general appreciation for the product itself. So I highly recommend that you go on brewery tours.

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Beer tourism is something that is building and building. For a long time people would make the trek to Belgium to see the traditional Belgian breweries and I really encourage that if you’re able to do so. Also, people will go to Germany to see traditional German breweries and England to see the traditional English breweries. Those are all areas that have had a long history of brewing and have, you know, enough breweries in a concentrated space that you really can make a trip and see, you know, quite a few breweries and experience some local bars and have a great time. But something that’s really taken off over the past few years is American beer tourism, and, you know, I can’t even tell you the difference that it’s made, you know, just in the past, you know, two years to the state of Vermont with brewers such as Hill Farmstead, Alchemist, Lawson, and some of the finest beer bars.

So what happens now is a lot of people even from New York, you know, on their weekends, they’ll drive up to Vermont and they’ll hit two or three of, you know, breweries that they can stop by and, you know, procure, you know, bottles of, to bring home. Also, they’ll stop by the local bars so they can drink some of that beer, you know, right, you know, in the environment. And a lot of businesses are really booming as a result. More traditional places in the United States for beer tourism are places like Colorado, which has, you know, just an amazing concentration of breweries.

Also, San Diego, there’s, you know, just many, many very fine breweries in each of these places, so if you’re looking towards a certain climate or weather that you’d prefer to visit, you know, choose, choosing one of those and you can’t go wrong. But, also, there are so many craft breweries that have opened up over the past 10 years that there’s probably not a region where you won’t find many craft breweries. So if there’s a trip that you want to take, I would just go online and search out, you know, that region and look for craft breweries around and you might discover the next amazing craft brewery that no one knows about, or you might find that your favorite craft brewery is right there. You know, there are just so many right now. We’re really in the golden age of beer and going around to find your, you know, your favorite beers and, you know, see where they’re produced, it’s a really gratifying way to spend some time.

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In general you’re looking for a common experience and flavor and style. I would suggest that you choose your cheese first because there’s a lot more variety, I guess, you know, in terms of the cheeses. So once you have your cheese, your you then want to think about wha-what what might need that? Real common pairings are say an IPA with blue cheese, or a wheat beer with a chevre? But, even though those are common pairings or suggestions, in terms of pairing beer and cheese there really are no rules.

You might find a real, you know, nutty cheese to do really well with a nutty beer and that would be an example of, you know, very complimentary styles. But at the same time you might find that getting styles and flavors in contrast to each other actually can bring about this elusive third flavor that makes both the beer and the cheese elevated to something different, where when you’re tasting it, you you come to appreciate that beer in a way that you never were before because of the way that it balances against that cheese and the same thing for the cheese.

Again, when pairing beer and cheese you want to look for some commonalities, you don’t want anything that’s going to absolutely overwhelm the other, but at the same time you do want to look up contrast because there are a lot of different pairings that just are just going to work some kind of flavor magic that are unexpected and that’s really part of the fun of pairing beer and cheese.

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There is a very versatile beverage for pairing, some think even more so than wine. I, myself think so.

There are different principles that can be used when deciding which beers to pair with which foods, one of them is complimenting, where you want to compliment a certain flavor in the food with a certain flavor in the beer. Something like that might be, you know, some kind of sweet dessert item with a sweet stout and you’re going to have that sweetness that, you know, works together to create a pleasant experience.

But another way to do it is to contrast, you know in that same situation you know you might have, you know, some very sweet dessert item, you know, like the frosting on a carrot cake, something like that, and then you’ll have something like an IPA that is going to cut through that sweetness, and that might be a really pleasant experience for you because of the contrast that it brings out. You can use both of those principles, either complimenting or contrasting when you’re looking at the different flavors involved in both the beer and the food that you want to pair.

One of the principles that I find important is that you don’t want one to overwhelm the other, so in terms of intensity you want to keep it, you know, at that same level. So, if the food is light and delicate, you probably want a really light and delicate beer. The same thing if the food is, you know, rich and heavy, you probably want a really rich and heavy beer. You know the flavor profiles are where the play is in the pairing and even though there are, you know, some guidelines, there are no rules and you might, you know, stumble upon this pairing that to you is just absolutely perfect, and that is the right food pairing.

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Gluten free beer is beer that is brewed with sorghum, buckwheat, or millet. Usually one of those three things, or a mixture, is what would be used in gluten free beer instead of the barely. And brewers do this to accommodate people who have a gluten intolerance. And it’s a real challenge because the malted barely is such in integral part of beers. And if it’s not malted barley it’s probably wheat.

And I believe rye even has gluten in it too, so the brewers hands are really tied in terms of what they can use for that grain. But there have been a lot of advances and right now we’re lucky because more and more gluten free beers are coming into the market all the time. There are quite a few that we serve. We serve the Green’s brand, we serve the New Planet.

Dogfish Head has a great one, called Tweason’ale. And if you are gluten intolerant, it’s not the wasteland of beer that it used to be. More and more beers and many different styles are starting to hit the shelves. So ask your retailer, ask your local craft beer bar, and you might be surprised to find out that there really are some options that can work for you.

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Nitrogen beers are beers that use a larger percentage of nitrogen in the carbonation process. The ratio is usually around 70 percent nitrogen to 30 percent carbon dioxide and those are the gases that actually carbonate the beer when they come out the draft. Nitrogen beer is most closely associated with the dry Irish stout but these days, many beers are being nitrogenated. You’ll find IPAs are that are nitrogenated, ESBs. Really, all kinds. 

What the nitrogenated beer is really known for is it’s very soft and persistent head and it winds up being very creamy because of the very small nitrogen bubbles that are in the nitrogenated beer. This can have the effect of dulling or muting some of the flavors in beer, so there are some people are really opposed to using the nitrogenated beers for many different styles. 

But, at the same time, you can account for that in the brewing process so there’s really no rights or wrongs around should you nitrogenate the beer as a brewer. It really does give the consumer, the drinker, a totally different experience in drinking.

Nitrogen beers, they’re being found more and more often. They’re more than just the dry irish stout, and if you see one on draft at your local bar, I suggest that you try one. You’ll see what that creamy, smooth mouth feel is like.

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Cask ales are unfiltered and unpasteurized ales that are designed to undergo a secondary fermentation in the cask, which will produce some natural carbonation. A lot of people refer to them as real ales because the carbonation comes form inside the beer itself instead of being forced into it from a gas system, which is what you use when you have a draft setup like this.

Cask ales are served, usually from a hand pump, which will force air in and cause the beer to come out, so it’s a very mechanical, natural process. If you order a cask beer, you’re going to have the experience that it is significantly less carbonated than a beer that you would get out of a draft system that uses CO2 and nitrogen. And it’s also going to be a little less cold, usually around 55 degrees.

And this is going to cause a lot of the flavors in the beer to come out. SO the slight warmth from it and the lack of any gas being pushed through it will really allow you to taste what’s in the beer itself. I really encourage you to give it a try, but just have different expectations. You don’t want to be expecting what, to you, might be a normal draft beer, when you order a cask ale. But just open your mind and think, ‘am I getting more flavor from this? Do I enjoy this?’ And if you do then it might be a whole new world of beer that’s been opened up for you.

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Coffee is a flavor that, as you would imagine, would go really well with the roasted or slightly bitter flavors of a porter or stout, but you can really use coffee in a wide variety of beers. There’s been lately a few coffee IPAs on the market that are stunningly delicious. So I found that lately brewers are willing to try almost anything and often times I might be a little dubious. Like I didn’t think the coffee IPA would be good, how could it?

And then I tried it and it was just fantastic. There are a few different ways that you can incorporate coffee into the brewing process. You can use whole beans, or you can use ground coffee, or you can use coffee that’s already brewed. That’s a technique that I’ve heard brewers having a lot of success with, but it’s really in it’s, you know, hay day of experimentation. So you’ll probably have a great conversation with a brewer if you ask them how they incorporated coffee into their coffee beer.

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Brewers can coat? like some chocolate-like flavors out of roasting the malt. There’s even a variety of malt called chocolate malt because of it’s chocolate-like properties that it can lend to the beer. But also a lot of brewers will put actual chocolate, work the cow into the brewing process in order to get a more intense, um, chocolate flavor that is instead of being chocolate-like it is actual chocolate flavor.

There is also a process that you can use which is aging beer onto cow nibs and that’s a really interesting way to import the chocolate flavor into the beer that you have. As you would imagine it’s done a lot with scouts and porters but I wouldn’t be surprised if, you know, you start seeing some chocolate flavors in different kinds of beers because brewers are getting quite experimental these days. But again it’s a very interesting flavor that is pretty compelling to many people in the world. So, I’m not surprised to see a lot of brewers really playing around with how to get the chocolate flavor into their beers.

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As with many things in the craft brewing community, there are many differences of opinion about what exactly a session beer is. But, to my mind, and many people will agree, a session beer is a beer that you can have multiple beers of, and that really encompasses two aspects. Number 1, it needs to be low in ABV or low in alcohol. A lot of people will say that it’s not a true session unless it’s under five percent.

But, you know, if you’re, if you are able to have, you know, two or three of those and, you know, be fine, it can still be considered a session by some people if it’s slightly above that. The other thing though that’s really critical in a session beer, is that it’s delicious, so that you want to have two or three of them. If you have one, and you don’t have any desire to come back to it, it’s not a true session beer.

But don’t be fooled, just because it’s lower in alcohol, doesn’t mean that it’s lower in flavor. Right now there’s a real trend towards what are called session IPAs and a lot of brewers are making these really hop forward, flavorful, low ABV beers and a lot of people are enjoying them. Not just in the summer, where you would think, but also year round. So if session beers are something, you know, have been gaining in popularity and you’ll probably see a lot more of.

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A typical example of a Belgian strong ale is the tripel. A tripel is going to be light golden in color, it’s going to be extremely high in alcohol, but it does not taste like it. Another type of strong ale is the Belgian golden ale. It’s a lot like the tripel, except it’s going to be even crisper and dryer, just as high in alcohol, if not a little bit stronger. Think Duvel. Often times this style of beer, the Belgian golden strong ale, will have a reference to the Duvel in it. Some people think it’s, you know, just a throwback to the Duvel, being one of the prime examples.

But seem people think because it’s so strong that it’s like the Duvel. Also, there’s the Belgian dark strong ale and this is going to be, you know, smooth, rich, and dangerous. There are also a couple of other strong ale styles that we should mention, the old ale and that’s going to be a strong, sweet beer. You might think of some, you might think of it as something you would, you know, want as the weather is turning colder.

But, it’s not as strong as the barley wine. The barley wine, it’s strong, rich body, it’s malt forward, it’s very traditional in the winter. It ages very well, so it’s one of the styles that you’ll be, you know, you’ll find two year old, three year old, I’ve even seen, you know, ten year old barley wine. And what that age does is it takes the heat from the alcohol away, but you’re left with just this, you know, delicious, almost sherry-like liquid that is just delicious to drink. But again, it’s extremely strong, so you want to drink it by the fire in small portions.

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In terms of an actual style of beer, the Bamberger Rauchbier is your truest example. It’s a lager made with malt that has been smoked over well-seasoned beech wood. In terms of what’s happening today in the craft brew world, many different brewers are experimenting with smoke and smoke malt is available, also a lot of brewers smoke their own malt, and they’ll usually use that in conjunction with something like a stout or a porter.

The Alaskan smoked porter is probably the most well-known example of this beer, it’s delicious. Smoke, the smoke flavor can range anywhere from, you know, kind of just slightly smokey to, if it goes in a direction that many people feel is very wrong, to, you know, straight up ashtray. Sometimes you can get flavors of almost bacon or a campsite, and, as with anything, some people are really drawn to this flavoring or this style of beer and some people are absolutely not drawn to it. But, it is, it’s a fun flavor that some brewers really enjoy playing around with.

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Barrel aging and craft beer is usually done for 1 of 2 reasons.

One is to extract some flavour properties from the wood or the liquid that was in the barrel previously. The other is to encourage the growth of microflora which might add a souring aspect to the beer. The most common barrels used for barrel aging are going to be bourbon barrels and wine barrels. And as you can guess those will give very different properties. Some of the characteristics of the liquid it self, you know the bourbon or the wine will find its way into the final product of the beer. They are a lot of people who say, and I agree with them that every barrel is different.

But through a general process of trial and error many brewers have really come to some constiency with there barrel aged beers and are quite well known for it. So craft brewers today, are really enjoying experimenting with this new technique to try and derive a lot of very unique and special flavors by using the process of barrel aging in their beer.

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Fruit beers are beers that have fruit added to them during the brewing process, it’s pretty straightforward, but when you think about what fruit actually adds, if you do it you know during the fermentation process, if that’s when you add the beer, it’s gonna give the, the beer more sugars to ferment, so it can actually create some complex flavors.

And by doing it that way, and also you get rid of the sweetness that you know is naturally with the fruit because that’s what fermentation is, is its turning that sweetness into the alcohol. Probably the best known fruit beers are the, the Lambic beers, the Belgium Lambic beers where they add, fruit., creek for instance is that Belgium word for cherries, and so their tradition creek, beer uses cherries I think about 6 months into the aging process, and that creates a, you know a sour beer, but with a very cheery you know backbone to it.

There are a lot of different ways to approach fruit and beer, you know like that, you can also add it after the fact, and that will you know, you’ll get the fruity qualities, but you’ll get less complexity from that. So fruit beers are something where you know, right now we’re in a age of experimentation you know, and beer, a lot of people call it the golden age, and you know part of what brewers are experimenting with, is the addition of fruit to the beers at you know different times, you know during the brewing process. So if you do look at a draft board and you see a style that includes fruit in it, you know it might be something worth checking out, and again that’s what fruit beers are.

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Belgium as a region held onto a wide range of their ancient brewing techniques. There are many things that set Belgian beers apart from other beers. The first primary reason is their yeast. Over the years their yeast really developed into something very distinct and special. Belgian beers can also be slightly spiced. You might find bits of orange peel, coriander, or even pepper in them.

Also in Belgian beer, they will use sometimes dark caramelized sugar, commonly referred to as candy sugar. And that’s, they can also actually use the light candy sugar in some of their beers too. What happens there is the, when you’re drinking a dark Belgian, instead of the roasty and sort of chocolate flavors that come from roasted malt, those flavors get substituted for more raisin-like, toffee, or creme brûlée type flavors. So that’s an element that you’re going to find that’s usually a little bit different in Belgian or Belgian-style beers. It’s really interesting, in the craft beer movement in the United States there were a few importers, like Vanberg & DeWulf, who famously imported Saison Dupont and it really just turned the beer world on its head.

People were inspired. You know, some people might even say that was the genesis of this latest resurgence of the craft beer movement where, you know, these Belgian beers that were imported showing everybody, you know, some of the wide range of what beers can be. You can see the influence of Belgian beers and Belgian imports just in the fact of how many American craft brewers do Belgian styles, like doubles, triples, saisons, and witbiers. So Belgian beer has had a huge, huge impact on the beer world and the craft beer world specifically here in America.

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Sour beers is another style of beers that are increasing in popularity. Although they tend to be very, very hard to grasp if you don’t have a particular like for it. I remember the first time I tried a sour beer. You know, I took a sip and put it down and my mouth was puckering. And, I thought, What is that? Like I couldn’t even understand that it was beer, but… right after that, I wanted another sip. There was something about it that I found really compelling, and as I drank more and more sours, I started wanting to try different ones.

Sour can be an off-flavoring beer. So, you have a lot of people who really don’t want anything to do with sours because to them it’s off-putting. It means something has gone wrong in the process. Whereas that can be the case, what’s happening now– and has happened traditionally, there are many traditional styles of sour beers like the Berliner Weisse, the Lambics and the Gueuzes. And, just to be clear the Gueuzes are a mix of Lambics. Those are a traditional Belgian style of beer that has been brewed for a very long time. But, what’s happening now is that a lot of American producers are trying to come up with their own sours. 

What they’re using now in order to create it are two pretty specific things.One is barrel aging, and you know a lot of times you’ll find yeast in the barrels. In the wine-making world if you have a barrel that’s infected with brettanomyces — we’re going to call it “Bret” — it can be a huge problem, but in the beer world, when you are looking to make a sour beer, you actually want to find those yeasts. Either the wild yeasts surrounding the air if you’re lucky enough to find a cool ship. A lot of times they’ll try to help the process along by adding lactobacillus or pediococcus. Those can actually – those are the yeasts that tend to add the real sourness or astringency to the beer, and that can be really balanced out by adding some bread.

What that does hopefully, and what they’re really aiming for is to create a really pleasant overall experience in the sour beer. So, with the addition of those yeasts for souring and the aging in the barrels, sour beers can take a very long time to produce – years really. These are an example of beers where you get into the price range of perhaps wines. You know you’ll find some very expensive bottles, and the reason why is that it’s taking up that much skill. It’s not just the ingredients there or the brewing process. It’s also the time and the storage and the artistry really of making a really good sour.

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Wheat beers are beers that substitute wheat for part of the cereal. So you’ll have, you know, your normal ingredients of beer, your water, hops, you know, your barley and your yeast, but you’ll also have, you know, some of that barley taken out and replaced with wheat. They’re going to be pale, fruity, the yeast that’s used sometimes it can lend almost a banana flavor. You can get some clove flavors, I’m talking specifically about the weizen or the hefeweizen. And it’s a very popular traditional style of wheat beer. There’s also the Dunkelweizen, and that’s a darker, maltier version. It, you know, combines the attributes of the Dunkel, which has the roast to it and the weizen, which has the wheat. So, a lot of times people find the wheat to be very smooth drinking beer and that’ll be roasty and smooth and, you know, really delicious and very easy to drink. You also have the Weizenbock, which combines the qualities of the weizen beer and the bock beer, so you’re going to get a much richer body from the bock beer element, and it’s you know, it’s just going to be, you know, dark, roasty, but wheaty at the same time and, you know, a little bit stronger, really substantial. You know, it’s a beer you should watch out for because it goes down really smooth, but carries a punch.

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IPAs came about when the English brewers were beginning to sen their pale ales over to the English people that were colonizing India, and what happened is that they knew that hops was a preservative and they thought maybe the beer would last longer and actually make the voyage all the way to India, if they threw in more hops. So by, you know, English people in India wanted some of you know, beer that was made the way that they’re use to. They came up with this whole new style that wound up being called the India Pale Ale.

So it was specifically made for that purpose but it gradually became more and more popular in England itself, and I guess you could say it really took off in America and the American crowd you have seen, right now you know there are many brewers all over the world that are trying to duplicate, you know what is called the American IPA or more specifically sometimes the West Coast IPA. And again those are styles of pale ales that have been extremely high hot. And you know there are still English IPAs and you know, they just tend to take on the flavor profiles of England hops which tend to be you know less, kind of less overall than the American hops and specifically the West Coast hops.

So there’s also you know then of course the American IPA which is the very popular style of brew right now. And in addition to the American IPA there’s also the imperial IPA which is a much more highly hop version of either the English or the American IPA so you’re gonna get a lot more hops, and sometimes you’ll get malt to come and support it as it’s backbone, so you;re not just, you know, drinking straight hops. You know you’ll always have some balancing malt in there.

Although there is some discussion about you know do we like a balanced IPA or an unbalanced IPA? And again this is one of the fun things about craft beers that you’ll find a lot of people who can follow on many different sides of an issue. So those are some thoughts about how IPAs came into being and thoughts about where they are now. And perhaps even where they’re going with brewers all over the world trying to come up with their own version of the IPA