Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

What distinguishes craft beer from commercial beer? There are a number of possible characteristics, ranging from size and marketing strategy to quality of the product and attitude toward brewing. One variable that regularly arises is the issue of the brewery’s approach to the dreaded “adjuncts”. Quite innocuously, my Oxford English Dictionary defines adjunct as “a subordinate or incidental thing”. An extra, if you will. However, mention it in the context of brewing ingredients and all hell breaks loose. So, let’s take a look at the world of adjuncts.

In brewing an adjunct is any non-malted addition to a recipe intended as a secondary component to replace or supplement a portion of the grain bill. Malted grain, whether it be rye, wheat or barley, does not count in the definition as they are primary additions. The range of possible adjuncts is wide, ranging from grains to sugars to fruits and vegetables. Similarly the purpose for adding the adjunct will differ significantly. Let’s walk through both pieces in turn.

The most common adjuncts are alternative grains, mostly corn or rice, which produce a lighter bodied beer because they ferment more completely (due to fewer residual starches and proteins). You might also see oats used as well. Next are sugar-based additions. This list will include honey, maple syrup and the specialized Candi Sugar for Belgian ales. Sugars also lighten the body and increase alcohol levels. Some, such as honey or tree syrup (I call it tree syrup because Yukon recently released a birch syrup beer), will also provide a unique flavour and aroma.

The final form of adjuncts are fruits and vegetables added in the mash or early in the fermentation process. Pumpkins are a popular trend these days. Crannog Brewing in B.C. uses potatoes for one of their beer. Fruit also will count, but not if it was added post-fermentation for flavouring. Basically any fruit/vegetable that has starches and sugars that can be converted by enzymes can be added as an adjunct. These additions are intended to alter the body and flavour of the beer to give it a unique character.

So, why do brewers use adjuncts? I think there are four possible reasons. The first is cost. Some adjuncts (corn and rice) are cheaper than barley, and can lower the cost of the beer. Second is that most common adjuncts lighten the beer’s flavour and body, making it more palatable (they believe) to the bulk of beer consumers in North America.

The third is historical or stylistic accuracy. Some styles call for adjuncts. This includes some British-style ales and historic American styles like Classic American Pilsner (both calling for corn). In Belgium the use of adjuncts is ubiquitous, as special sugars are used to push their strong ales up in alcohol without adding body.

Fourth, adjuncts might be used for experimental or creative reasons. A brewer might want to offer a beer with a unique flavour or aroma that comes from a non-traditional ingredient. Here is where the pumpkin, honey, tree syrup and vegetable additions would fit.

So why do so many people get twisted in knots at the mention of adjuncts? It is because not all adjuncts are created equal. The core of the issue is that for the past few decades the corporate brewers have used a high proportion of adjuncts in their beer (as high as 40%) to dampen the flavour, colour, aroma and character of the beer (and save some money). Adjuncts have become associated with the agonizingly long trend of dumbing down beer for the masses. The origins of the craft movement in the U.S. and Canada were, in part, a reaction to that. They committed to brewing beer more traditionally, which meant, for the most part, without adjuncts. Over the past twenty years, adjuncts have become something of a divide between the two worlds.

Except it is never that clear is it? Even the best craft brewers resort to adjuncts when appropriate, especially lately with increased experimentation. When brewing at home I use oats frequently and have been known to toss in some flaked maize in a cream ale or English summer ale. Plus, hasn’t North American lager become a legitimate style itself?

So when is using adjuncts okay? Should it define what is craft beer? To the first question, I think the answer is when it is justified by the beer and not by the market. The second question is more difficult. Clearly it can’t be an either/or categorization, however the regular use of corn syrup or rice legitimately demarcates non-craft brewers from the craft side. If you are tossing corn/rice into your lager to make it less flavourful, then we can probably categorize you as not a craft brewer. Beyond that things get murkier.

Myself, I argue that adjuncts need to be judged based upon which reason they are used. Numbers one and two deserve to be met with a degree of suspicion. Three and four naturally fit the craft ethos.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

I planned last month to be the last of the big beer series, ending with the monster trucks of the beer world. However, upon reflection I realized I omitted a distinct form of big beer that deserves its own column. The strong ales of Belgium. Of course, Belgium is regarded as a mecca of quality beer, and not just for their potent versions. From the refreshing Witbier to the tartness of lambic, Belgian brewers are unmatched in their range and creativity. (We will ignore for the moment that the two biggest selling beer in Belgium are Budweiser knock-offs – Maes and Jupiler.)

The originality of Belgian beer of all strengths is noteworthy, but today I want to focus on their panache for producing big boy/girl beer. Belgian strong ales are deceptively and dangerously light and drinkable. Belgian strong ales are big – ranging from 6.5% to 12% alcohol – but you only notice after consuming the bottle and finding your head a little lighter for the task. And so let us take a look at the art of hiding big.

The origins and continued anchor of Belgian strong ales are the drunk monks of the seven Trappist Monasteries (six in Belgium, one across the border in Netherlands). The Trappist monks developed a taste for brewing beer long ago, and for reasons I will explain another day, directed their energies to creating a type of beer not found anywhere else. The Trappist ales are distinguished by their yeast, which produces spicy, peppery, phenolic aromas and flavours. The Trappists – and the laic breweries inspired by them – produce beer of varying strength, all of which display that classic spicy yeast character. Today I want to focus on just the bigger ones. I will resist naming the styles, although common versions are Dubbels, Trippels and Quadrupels, because as soon as one tries to construct a boundary around Belgian beer, the outliers, exceptions and renegades make a mockery of it.

The truth is Belgian strong ales come in all colours, strengths and combinations of flavours. At the risk of oversimplifying I will identify a couple of features common in all and then move on to my main point for the column. All Belgian strong ales possess the Trappist yeast funkiness to greater or lesser degrees. They all are highly carbonated, relatively light in body and finish fairly dry (especially for their strength). Some are slightly sweeter, others accenting musty qualities, while others hike up the pepper, but they all share these broad characteristics.

More importantly they share the tendency to hide the bigness of the beer. When I sip a Russian Imperial Stout or an Eisbock, I can immediately sense the alcohol. The sharp nose, the scotch flavour and the warming linger all give it away. I find little of that in a Belgian strong. If it wasn’t for the yeast, you might swear you were drinking a pilsner or an amber ale.

This is the skill of a Belgian brewer: how to make a big beer and make it taste like a smaller one. A task made all the more difficult because Belgian yeast demands warmer fermentation temperatures, which normally produce more assertive higher alcohols.

What is their trick? I don’t pretend to be an expert, but having brewed a few award-winning versions myself I do know a couple of strategies. First, they keep the malt bill simple: pilsner malt, maybe some wheat or oats for earthiness, and not much else. The opposite of a barley wine recipe. Second, they mash at warmer temperatures, which makes a more fermentable beer (meaning fewer residual sugars). Third they supplement the grain with sugar, which adds alcohol without body. In a regular North American beer sugar is a disparaged practice left to discount brewers. In Belgian beer it is a way to boost alcohol without adding body. Many claim the kind of sugar they use – Candi Sugar, a form of inverted sugar – makes a difference. However that is a contested claim. Some argue regular table sugar produces the same effect. I cannot resolve this debate because I have only used inverted sugar (the last couple of times homemade). Belgian yeasts are also known for high attenuation, meaning they tend to finish drier than many strains.

These tips are helpful, but to be honest I don’t think they are the secret behind a great Belgian strong. The skill is in coaxing subtlety out of the ingredients. And that is a mysterious process that only the monks and their acolytes can understand.

There are no shortage of quality Belgian strong ales available for you to sample. I suggest you try the classic Trappist breweries available in Canada: Orval, Westmalle, Rochefort, Chimay, Achel and the Dutch Koningshoeven (La Trappe). As for the Trappist-inspired breweries, St. Bernardus, Struise and Gouden Carolus are good examples. Plus we should not forget Quebec’s Unibroue, which maintains world-class beer despite its unfortunate ownership situation, owned as it is by Sapporo of Japan. Try one. Try many. You will never find the same taste twice.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

I thought I would devote the last of this series on big beer to the biggest beer in history. Over the past 15 years or so, a handful of breweries have been playing an alcoholic game of leap frog, trying to brew the strongest beer possible.

And how big are we talking? Well the current record holder, Brewdog’s The End of History, is 55% alcohol. There were only a dozen bottles ever made, so don’t bother going to your local Liquor Universe store to find it. That is pretty darned big. My research dug up 24 beer worldwide that exceed 20% alcohol.

One hundred years ago none of those beer were possible. Alcohol is toxic to yeast and no known strain could survive that long. However, thanks to Louis Pasteur we figured out how to isolate strains and select the most hardy so that today some yeast strains can, with careful coaxing, reach 20% or higher. No yeast can yet reach 40 or 50 percent, something I will explain below.

But first I need discuss what would possess someone to brew a beer this big. The cynical answer would be “publicity”. But I think that while notoriety might be part of it, it doesn’t explain the recent fixation on it. More aptly, I believe it is similar to humans’ need to climb Mount Everest, or run a marathon in two hours. We are often driven to achieve new heights (or depths) just because. And that may be the case with extreme beer.

So, how do you make a beer at 30, 40 or 50 percent alcohol? Well, not easily. The highest anyone has ever pushed a beer using fermentation is 27% (Sam Adams Utopias). Above that, brewers use freeze distillation. Freeze distillation has a long history in Germany in the production of Eisbock, where they take a regular bock or doppelbock, drop it to temperatures where the water turns to ice and then siphon off the liquid portion, rich in alcohol (which has a lower freezing point than water). It is the same (albeit it reversed) process as distilling scotch. The resulting beer is more concentrated – more alcohol, flavour and colour. Any minor flaws in the beer will also be magnified. For some of the more extreme beer, they had to repeat the process a couple of times.

I can hear you asking, “but is it beer?” A fair question; one for which I will only offer a speculative answer. It is true the act of freeze distillation complicates the picture, but I tentatively think that it remains beer nonetheless. I say so for two reasons. First, it was born as beer. Mashed and fermented like its brethren. I realize scotch starts life this way as well, but scotch mashes do not contain hops or specialty malts – that is a characteristic exclusive to beer. Second, it is sold as beer. Unique, knock-you-on-your-ass if you drink the whole bottle beer, but beer regardless. This is no small point. The brewers of extreme beer market the product as beer. I think they do this not just for legal reasons, but because they see themselves as makers of beer, and even if that beer is 50% alcohol, to them it is still beer. For me, that is significant.

The next logical question is “is the beer any good?” Well, that is mostly up to individual taste. I have only had one of the 20%+ beer (the only one made available in Alberta – Brewdog Tactical Nuclear Penguin at 32%), and I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it. It was too hot and tasted like cheap rum, to be honest. But it was still rather young. I have a bottle I am keeping in my cellar to see if it improves in the next five years or so.

But theoretically, I understand that the challenges of making an extreme beer become even more prevalent than with other big beer. As we discussed in earlier columns, it takes a skilled hand to figure out the balance and the complexity of a big beer. There are many variables demanding attention and it is easy to go wrong. So, if I think about it, I can see that brewing an extreme beer would be just that much harder. Imagine having the tiniest flaw in your beer – one imperceptible at normal strength - and know that after a couple of distillations that flaw will stick out like Lady Gaga at a Chartered Accountant convention. And realizing that as you concentrate the beer, the alcohol will become more and more narcissistic, demanding top billing. No easy task.

Despite my tactical nuclear disappointment, I would like to try other extreme beer. I am convinced some of them are very special, indeed. I may never get to, but I am happy to keep them on my personal beer bucket list.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

Last month I started a conversation about higher alcohol beer and their peculiar challenges. I started with the moderately big beer – doppelbocks, DIPAs and scotch ales. I didn’t get too technical about it; I simply discussed that, contrary to what one might expect, balance was the most significant challenge in brewing these meaty beer.

This month I want to continue the discussion by looking at the legitimately big beer – the ones that crack the double digits. I often get looks of amazement when I mention a beer that clocks in at 10 or 11 percent alcohol. Many casual beer drinkers have no idea that beer could get that big.

So, to be clear, it is both possible and wonderful. They are some of the most exquisite beer I have ever tasted. However, I also have had my share of poor versions and they can be truly awful. There is rarely an inbetween. It takes a special skill to make a beer that can go toe to toe with wine – both in terms of punch and aging.

The first key is yeast. Most yeast become exhausted far before 10% and so will go to sleep (or die from alcohol poisoning) before ever hitting that magical number. However, there are a few yeast strains that can do it. And so a brewer must start with a hardy yeast. Then they need lots of fermentable sugars and plenty of oxygen. The oxygen is to keep the yeast perky, as we are asking it to perform a daunting task. Just think of asking a sprinter to run a Death Race.

But that is not all. A really big beer needs unfermentables as well. Anyone could toss 20 or 30 kilograms of corn sugar in some water and let the yeast go at it. It would be a high alcohol beverage, but it would be undrinkable. Watery, thin and hot as hell from alcohol. A big beer needs lots of dextrines, starches and longer chain sugars to give it some body and mouthfeel.

This adds up to a fairly complex recipe. Adding more 2-row base malt won’t cut it. You need to carefully pick your specialty malts to make this work. And, as a final complexity, the mashing regime is more challenging as well. I have tried my hand at barley wine a few times, and never beer satisfied with the result – always too thin or one-dimensional. This tells me a lot about the challenges of brewing big.

So what are some of the really big beer? First there is the recently mentioned Barley Wine. Thick and rich, often bitter, a good barley wine can age for years. It is a pale ale magnified. But, as I pointed out, the grain bill and hop additions need to be much more complex to make the beer hold up. This is the quintessential sipping beer – perfect for a cuddly night by the fire. There are many great examples available around, including Alley Kat Old Deuteronomy, Half Pints Burly Wine and the now endangered Thomas Hardy’s Ale.

What I consider to be the biggest beer possible is Russian Imperial Stout. When I say it is the biggest beer, I am referring to its overall impression. Take your favourite stout and magnify it as if it was under the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope and you get a sense of this beer. Simplistically they are a kind of Double Stout, but that doesn’t really express what this beer is. It is thick, rich, roasted and warm. It has notes of sherry, coffee, bourbon, licorice, chocolate, plum, bread, rum and many other flavours. It really is a meal in a glass. You can spend all day sipping it and never run out of new flavours to describe.

I will go out on a limb and suggest Russian Imperials are some of the hardest beer to make. They demand a lot of everything, but not too much or too little of anything. And if you pick your yeast wrong, or hit the wrong mash temperature, it can go south very quickly. Respect anyone who can brew a good one. Say, for example, Old Rasputin, Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout or even Sherbrooke’s KGB (when it is available).

Then there are the Belgians. I won’t say too much about them at the moment because I think they deserve a column all their own. But let’s just say they have figured out how not just to make big beer, but make it taste like a small beer. The key quality in a good tripel, dark strong or quadrupel is how deceptive it is. You shouldn’t be able to notice the alcohol, which can be quite dangerous. But more on them another day.

If the lesson last time was the need for balance, this time it is the necessity of complexity. Normal brewing methods do not apply here. So big beer aren’t just special because they make you feel warm inside. They are to be respected because they are so damned hard to make. Remember that next time you sip on your favourite barley wine.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

Ninety percent of beer produced on planet earth is 6% alcohol and under. Which is fine. It is one of the characteristics that makes beer the biggest selling alcohol product on the planet. It is sociable, consumable in moderately higher quantities and contains a fair bit of water.

But anyone who has been around a beer shelf or two knows there are a handful of beer that breach that 6% barrier. These are the beer that reach eight, nine, eleven and even higher. These beer are in a different league. For one they can be cellared like wine, as I have mentioned before. But there is more to it than that. The nature of the beer changes. It takes on new qualities not found in regular strength beer. The mouthfeel is different. The malt and hops react unexpectedly. Carbonation is more subtle. Lots is going on.

I want to spend the next couple of months discussing the bigger end of beer. Doppelbocks and Double IPAs. Barley Wines and Imperial Stouts. Tripels and Quadrupels. And maybe even the extreme beer like Tactical Nuclear Penguin and End of History. What makes them unique and special, and why any beer aficionado should at least respect them (not that they have to like them).

In part one, let’s discuss the moderate end of the big beer range – doppelbock, double IPA and Scotch Ales. All of these beer run around the 8% range (give or take a point or two). And while they are very different beer they share a common motivation. Let’s take each in turn before discussing their commonality.

Doppelbocks were historically brewed by German monks for lent, thus their nickname “liquid bread”. Their essence is a traditional bock but bigger. That simple. A bock is a rich, medium brown, malt-accented lager. It has a bready quality that prevents it from being cloying. It may be one of the sweeter beer around. So take a bock and double it – doppelbock is translated literally as “double bock”. Double the sweetness and the richness. The bread and caramel should still come through. In many ways it tastes like bread in a bottle. The classic example is Celebrator, available in Alberta, but there are some decent domestic examples, including Captivator by B.C.’s Tree Brewing.

If doubling is the theme, then stand aside for Double (or Imperial) India Pale Ales. If doppelbocks double the maltiness of bocks, DIPAs double the bitterness of IPAs. But they do more than that. They also increase the biscuit, toast malt character, and the alcohol. DIPAs are intense beer, in large part because they demand significant dry hopping, which makes the beer much more puckering. Great examples available in Alberta include Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA, Wild Rose DIPA and even Sherbrooke’s own Bad Hare Day.

And then there is Scotch Ale. The Scottish were not given a climate that allowed for growing hops. Nor were they blessed with a friendly neighbor. As a result 300 years ago using a lot of hops, imported from England at exorbitant rates, was prohibitive. Thus Scottish beer evolved to be malty. They have a number of versions of their brown, sweet ale. But the biggest and most sweet is their Scotch Ale, sometimes called a Wee Heavy. It piles on the caramel malt character and chooses to balance it with a bit of smokiness, rather than hops. This is a full, intense beer that often runs to 8 or 9 percent.

At this point you might expect me to say that the common theme among these beer is “intensification”. They all increase the primary characteristic of the beer from which they were borne. They double the malt or the bitterness to create a more intense experience. While that is an accurate description of the beer, you would be wrong about the theme.

Rather, the theme is containment. The key in making these three beer work is not going too overboard on the dominant quality. An overly sweet doppelbock is undrinkable. A kick-you-in-the-face DIPA can only be handled for a couple of sips. A brewer of these styles needs to know how to crank it up without overwhelming the drinker. This is harder than it sounds.

Anyone can make a mouth-puckering bitter beer. But just try to stick in 100 IBUs and still allow your customer to have a couple of pints without getting burnt out. It is not as easy as it seems. The same rule applies to the malty beer.

This is our first lesson about big beer. A skilled brewer knows that making a good example of a big beer is not about the dominant feature it displays, but finding a way to keep the other characteristics strong enough to hold it in check. The best DIPAs have a solid malt base. Classic doppelbocks stop just short of cloying. The smoke in Scotch ales should balance the caramel. Every great big beer finds a way to create synchronicity between its elements.

It may not be the lesson you were expecting, but it must be the first lesson you learn if you want to create a drinkable big beer.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

Last month I wrote about carbonation’s effects on beer, plus some of the science behind it. This month I want to look at Nitrogen. Now, it is possible many of you have no idea that nitrogen is sometimes used as pseudo-carbonation and a tap delivery gas. However, if you have ever had a pint of Guinness or Kilkenny on tap, you will have experienced nitrogen because both are delivered with it.

This isn’t just some meaningless novelty. Nitrogen has an identifiable and unique effect on beer, which I will get to momentarily. But first allow me to explain how it differs from carbon dioxide.

Atmospheric air is comprised of 16 different gases - most existing only in trace amounts. Oxygen makes up 21% of air. Carbon Dioxide is the fourth most common gas at only .04%. However, nitrogen is the runaway winner with 78% of volume. This is on the exam, so pay attention.

Last month I explained that to carbonate a beer you need to dissolve more CO2 than is present in air. In such circumstances when a beer is released from its sealed vessel, the CO2 escapes, creating the effects of carbonation. With carbon dioxide, this is pretty easy.

However, nitrogen is much more stubborn. Because it makes up the bulk of the earth’s atmosphere, dissolving a concentration of nitrogen higher than the surrounding air is much more difficult. If you tried to carbonate with only nitrogen, you would likely be left with a flat, hard-to-serve beer. Which is why it is so uncommon.

But making some effort has positive outcomes. Nitrogen is less acidic and much softer than carbon dioxide, which, if it is mixed into the gas line, can have profound flavour effects. The biggest thing it does is smooth out the body and rounding rough edges of the beer. Sweet is also accented more, as are malt-based flavours and aromas. A beer seems fuller and more earthy.

Some argue the use of nitrogen harkens back to traditional days of real ale, when hand pumps exchanged beer for air to deliver pints. The introduction of air would, naturally, lead to some portion of nitrogen dissolving into the beer awaiting to be served. A plausible enough explanation, but I don’t fully buy it. While nitrogen was clearly a part of the real ale package, I can’t imagine that it would be in high enough concentrations to noticeably affect the beer.

At any rate, today certain Irish ales are normally served with a nitrogen/carbon dioxide mixture (at the ratio of 70/30), so who am I to argue with what works? These beer are clearly different than their pure CO2 counterparts. They are softer, more blended and silkier. They also have a tighter head and smaller bubbles.

However it should be noted that nitrogen is much more difficult to work with. First, to serve you need a “sparkler” which is the narrow nozzle on the end of Guinness taps. It is designed to produce a violent cascade of tight little bubbles. Without the sparkler, you can’t coax the nitrogen into activity.

Second, you need to push the beer from the keg with much higher pressure, which has its own complications I am not going to expand upon here. Related to that, higher pressure creates more hazards for beer handling and storage. Pure nitrogen is remarkably stupid for beer, but mix it with 30% oxygen – as most do – and you can create a very unique beer experience.

Until recently that unique experience was only available on tap. There was no way to hold nitrogen into a bottled beer – the pressure would be too high for the bottle to withstand. However, the inventive folks at Guinness found a method to make it work. Today we call it the “widget”, and it is a remarkable invention.

The little piece of plastic you can hear rattling in your bottle or can of Guinness (or Kilkenny or whomever has it these days) plays a crucial role in holding the nitrogen. This is how it works. At the end of filling the bottle, a dose of liquid nitrogen is injected into the beer. Under normal circumstances it would instantly evaporate and be lost to the atmosphere. However, if you seal the container immediately, the nitrogen has nowhere to go. The pressure it creates forces a small portion of the beer to enter the widget, which is hollow and has a pinhole.

Upon opening, the pressure is released and the beer rushes back out through the pinhole, creating a violent explosion of gas, beer and bubbles. This mimics the tap sparkler and creates that iconic Guinness cascade.

Nitrogen is a rather lazy gas. It does very little heavy lifting in beer, instead showing off with gorgeous fireworks of bubbles. But its impact is so significant that we simply cannot ignore it. Nitrogen isn’t for every beer, but for some it becomes mandatory.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

Let’s talk about bubbles. No, not bubble baths or bubble gum or even the off-putting kind some guys make in the tub. Not even bubbly itself – champagne. I want to talk about bubbles in beer. Carbonation. It is an oft-neglected topic. Even beer geeks, while they may talk about appropriate volumes of CO2 for a particular style or whether a beer is over- or under-carbonated, usually overlook the key function carbonation plays in a beer’s flavour, aroma and mouthfeel. Most competition score sheets simply indicate carbonation as “appropriate” or “good”. Not much more. I want to correct that. Carbonation plays a crucial role in our impressions of beer. And thus is deserving of a Beer 101 topic.

Starting at the beginning (and without being too scienc-y), carbonation is the act of dissolving carbon dioxide into liquid at volumes higher than found in the atmosphere. This “pressurizes” the beer. This it requires a sealed environment, as the gas will want to create equilibrium between the liquid and the surrounding air. But this is also the magic. Once the seal is broken – you open the bottle or release the tap – carbon dioxide rushes out of the liquid to join its sparser mates in the air. Its escape sets off the cascade of effects that we love about beer, including bubble formation, head creation and a prickly taste (more on that later).

Before we talk in more detail about what happens when CO2 leaves beer, we must first discuss how to get it in there originally. There are two basic ways. The oldest and most “traditional” way is by using the natural byproducts of fermentation. As part of its process, yeast produces carbon dioxide – poops it out if you will. If you seal the container before fermentation is complete, or intentionally re-start a small fermentation at bottling time, the naturally created CO2 will have nowhere to go and will dissolve into the solution. This is called natural fermentation and is the process behind cask ales, real ales and beer complying with the Reinheitsgebot. It is what most homebrewers do as well. This is also sometimes called bottle conditioning, or bottle fermentation. An unavoidable consequence of natural carbonation is a thin layer of sediment in the bottle and an inability to filter the beer.

The other method is to inject CO2 into the beer using pressure. This is the most common practice these days, due to its ease, speed, openness to filtration and versatility. There is nothing wrong with this process, and we should be careful not to judge it unfairly. Yes, I believe there is a difference in flavour and bubble-size between the two, but it is fairly subtle and a minor component of the beer’s impression. So let’s leave it at that.

How does carbonation affect beer? Four primary ways. First it allows for the creation of head. An uncarbonated beer will not build a lovely head of foam. As CO2 rises through the liquid on its way to freedom, it crashes into proteins, long-chain sugars and other compounds which slow its progress. That effect results in a traffic jam, of sorts, causing head – a mixture of beer and gas – to form on the surface of the beer. Head retention dynamics are quite complex and therefore must wait for another day.

Second, it enhances aroma. As carbon dioxide leaves the beer, hitchhiking aromatic esters work their way to your nose, increasing the impression of the beer’s aroma. Beer has aroma without carbonation, but you must work harder to detect it.

The third and fourth reasons are inter-related. Carbonation lightens and sharpens the body. It also dries out and sharpens the flavour and finish. This is because CO2 is acidic. When dissolved in solution it is sometimes referred to as carbonic acid (I remain mute on whether this is chemically accurate – which is uncertain). Consequently it counters the natural sweetness of beer and adds a subtle acidic sharpness. Thus it directly impacts the flavour of the beer.

How much so depends on how highly carbonated the beer is. Some styles want more of that character –weizens, Belgian strongs and pilsners appreciate enhanced sharpness from carbonation. Others, English ales in particular, want less carbonation to allow the delicate fruity esters and malt sweetness to shine through.

How can you learn how to pick up the impact of carbonation? If you homebrew it is easy – just carbonate part of a batch at higher or lower levels than the rest. You will quickly see the difference. If working on commercial product, there is no direct procedure. I suggest buying a low carbonated beer – like Fullers London Pride or Celebrator – and comparing it with a beer of relatively similar recipe but with higher carbonation – I suggest Czechvar and Ayinger Dunkelweizen. The matches are by no means ideal, but they will give you some sense of how carbonation sharpens and tightens. From there, just try to pay attention to how carbonation changes your impression of a beer.

Carbonation is crucial. You probably get that now. So next time I am going to throw in the complication of nitrogen – which has entirely different effects.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

Last month I introduced beer faults. My goal was not to turn you into some kind of beer snob. It is a case of vocabulary expansion. How many times have you tasted a beer, known immediately that something was wrong but couldn’t find the words to explain it? It happens to us all. Many of those indescribable things are common flaws with explainable origins. Last month looked at three of the more obvious errors – check the back links if you missed it. This month I want to look at some of the more perplexing flaws found in beer. Most of these in low levels, or in the right beer, are desirable. But misplaced they can put you off a particular beer.

Acetaldehyde is, like many things, a natural by-product of fermentation. By itself it is a nasty cat – a probable carcinogen and synergistic partner to nicotine. In beer, it comes out as a green apple flavour.

Healthy yeast re-absorbs it and breaks it down to more benign and attractive aldehydes (thank goodness). If, however, the yeast is stressed, or the brewer rushes the fermentation, noticeable levels can be left in the beer. Often they are confused for cider-like character. Ironically, the best way to taste acetaldehyde is to drink Budweiser, which has a higher than normal level of the stuff.

One of the more problematic faults is an acidic/sour edge to a beer. If you are drinking a lambic, flanders red or some oak-aged beer then it is rather expected. However, in most beer it is a no-no. What makes it challenging is that at low levels it is hard to pick up. All it seems to do is sharpen the beer, adding a bit of a tang. Only at higher levels do you realize what is wrong. I recently bought a six-pack of stout made by a Canadian brewer (who will remain unnamed), and that as it got older the acidic character grew. So I kept one bottle for a year or so to see how bad it would get (I haven’t had it yet).

Most of the time growing acidity is due to a bacterial infection. If the sharpness is present in the beer from the start, it might be the malt, the yeast or the mode of handling. The thing you need to know is that if the beer is normally not acidic, finding tartness is likely a bad thing.

One of the most mis-understood flaws is the issue of alcoholic/solvent. This is most common in big beer and is regularly misrepresented as expected. It is common, but it shouldn’t be. I am not talking about that gentle warming that comes from sipping a barley wine. An alcoholic beer is one where you take a sip and it seems more like vodka than beer, where the alcohol seems like it could sterilize your cut rather than satisfy your palate. It is harsh, hot and guttural.

That is a product of fermenting too warm and forcing the yeast to produce. It creates higher chain alcohols which are both harsher and create nasty headaches. Strong beer is supposed to be smooth and warming, without any harshness.

The last two faults are the most confounding. Most people know that sulphur tastes and smells like rotten eggs or burning matches. Not something you would normally expect in your beer. However in some beer such as German Pils, crisp lagers and even English Pale Ales it is perceived at low levels as a good thing. At higher levels, it satisfies nobody.

Sulphur is a fermentation byproduct normally blown off. In mid primary fermentation, I often pick up tons of sulphur aroma, which disappears as I let it sit. However, if the yeast is struggling, or the fermentation cut off too soon, the sulphur can remain, wrecking the beer with its natural gas-like character.

Dimethyl Sulfide (commonly known as DMS) is particularly tricky. In theory it is easy to eliminate. Have a big, open boil and pitch your yeast at a healthy rate and DMS shouldn’t be an issue. Then why do I keep picking it up in light lagers from major brewers? DMS comes across as a cooked vegetable or corn aroma in the beer. I imagine most beer drinkers would miss this particular flaw, as it mostly exists at low levels. However, if you are attuned to it characteristics, you would be surprised at how often it appears. It is acceptable in very low levels in light lagers, like Munich Helles, Pilsner and American Lager. I know for certain that the use of corn or other adjuncts increases the presence of DMS, meaning the anti-craft brewer will struggle more. In small breweries I suspect it is about skimping on the boil not allowing the di- to break down into a mono-.

There are other faults that can be found in beer, but between these two columns the most significant are addressed. And now you know how to avoid beer with clear faults in them. Or at least appreciate them for what they are rather than what you want them to be.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

There is one major difference between the average beer appreciator and a beer judge. The former spends their time talking about what they enjoy about a beer. The latter finds themselves spending too much time breaking down what is WRONG with a particular beer. Not enough this, too much that. Trust me, it is not that we don’t enjoy that beer we are tasting, especially if it is a well-made beer. We just can’t help ourselves. Our palates are trained to detect the subtle mistakes and errors in a beer that prevent it from being perfect.

Just like people, no beer is perfect. The great thing is, just like our kids or our spouse, we get to love their imperfections. Or at least most of the time. If it is a case of too much dry hopping, not enough roasted malts, a fruit addition that doesn’t come through or not enough body, then we can forgive and drink another. There are times, however, beer displays mistakes that are harder to shrug and ignore. Sometimes a beer has identifiable faults that go beyond being off-style (whatever that is worth).

In previous lessons I have talked about a couple of common flaws. Oxidation is a flaw due of age, where oxygen slowly degrades a beer’s flavour and aroma creating cardboard and sherry flavours. Skunking is the photo-chemical reaction between hops and sunlight and fluorescent light that creates the aroma and flavour of, well, skunk.

But there are other faults that come out of the brewing process that you might come across. Some are no big deal at low levels, others destroy a beer. In the next two columns I want to talk about a few that I occasionally come across in commercial beer and why they occur.

Let’s start with what is in my opinion the most destructive fault. If a beer has the aroma and flavour of bandaids, plastic, medicine or inappropriate cloves or smoke it can be labeled “phenolic”. Phenols are organic compounds closely related to alcohol produced by all yeasts and bacteria. However, most beer yeast, when healthy, produce it in such low levels we cannot detect it. However, wild yeast or a stressed out domesticated yeast will produce it at levels noticeable in the flavour. And it isn’t pleasant, even in low levels. Not that long ago a Lebanese beer displayed such phenols I couldn’t even take more than one sip. So, it happens.

Phenols are a terminal illness for beer. They are due to poor sanitation, allowing wild yeasts to invade, or due to inadequate pitching, stressing out the yeast. However, I should note that occasionally we want particular kinds of phenols in our beer. Belgian yeasts are famous for their spicy, peppery outcomes, which are desirable phenols. The same is true for German weizens and some smoked beer.

It is not hard to detect phenols. We all have an instinctive sense of what band-aids, plastic and medicine cabinets are like. If you find that in your beer, and it is not one of the above-mentioned styles, it is beyond hope and put it out of its misery by dumping it down the drain.

Sticking with fermentation by-products, what may be the most common commercial beer flaw is diacetyl. Diacetyl is a vicinal diketone (really, don’t ask me what that is) that is a natural by-product of all fermentation. In healthy fermentations, the yeast re-absorbs it and turns it into desirable compounds. However, when yeast health is in doubt, or fermentation is rushed, the diacetyl remains in the finished beer. Some yeast strains leave a residual amount behind regardless.

In low levels diacetyl comes across as a slickness or softness in the palate. At higher levels it displays butterscotch, buttery flavour. The best descriptor is the artificial butter movie houses put on popcorn. This is one of those sensitive flaws. At low levels it can accent and improve the beer, especially English and Irish Ales, oak-aged beer and even Czech Pilsners. In other beer, especially light ales and crisp lagers, it can be quite destructive. At more persistent levels it gets in the way, distracting from the beer’s overall impression. If you want a good sense of diacetyl, I find Innis & Gunn Original displays a big diacetyl. Proof positive it is a flavour some people like.

The third most common fault I find in commercial beer is astringency. This is not a yeast problem, but a grain problem. I find it most in marginal lagers and pilsners. Astringency shows up as a puckering harshness in the linger. I detect it as a grainy dryness on the roof of my mouth. The beer can taste fantastic right up until the end, then the astringency kicks in and wrecks the overall impression.

Astringency is due to a number of grain-related causes – oversparging, over-attenuation, over-crushing, residual tannins – and water that is too hard. All are common homebrewing mistakes but you would hope a commercial brewer would watch for that. Sadly, that is not always the case.

These are just three of the common faults you can find in a beer. Next month I will look at some of the more confounding flaws.

Jason Foster

Check out more of Jason Foster’s beer news and views at onbeer.org

What do you do when you believe something exists, but can find no hard evidence for it? Do you doubt it, or do you trust that eventually science will catch up? No, I am not talking about UFOs or Elvis still being alive. I am talking about the ever elusive “travel shock”, sometimes called “bottle shock”.

In the wine world it is a generally accepted phenomenon – if a wine is shipped across the country (or world), the agitation and temperature variation will unsettle the balance and create undesirable flavours. It is an effect they say disappears after a few days or couple of weeks of careful storage. Consequently wine geeks handle their wine accordingly, making sure the bumps and jostles of travel are subdued before opening.

In the beer world, a number of people believe the same thing happens to beer. I am one of them. I have spoken with a number of brewers who are convinced that beer is negatively affected by travel. In one respect, this is undeniable. If a beer spends three weeks on a boat from Australia, Africa or wherever, it will not be the same beer as if you tasted it two blocks from the brewery. Beer has a short shelf life and three weeks is a long time. However, does three weeks in a shipping container affect it more than three weeks sitting on a warm liquor store shelf? That is a damned good question (good thing I asked it).

As near as I can tell from my relatively superficial research, there is no science about this. Maybe some esoteric academic science journal or an obscure trade publication says something about it, but my efforts turned up nothing reliable. Which leaves us in a conundrum. Is it real?

Ultimately I don’t know. But I can tell you why I think it is real. It is a combination of personal experience and gut instinct.

The personal experience comes from two sources. First, I often bring beer home from business trips. I carefully stuff them into my suitcase. Early on I made the mistake of opening one a day or two after arriving home. I was usually disappointed. I found the beer to be too astringent, or the hops to be too sharp, or the balance to be off. Once I realized I should let them sit in my cool basement for a few days, my tasting experiences improved.

Second, I found when I entered homebrew competitions farther away, my scores were often lower. Now, this could be due to any number of factors – different judging biases, the quality other entries, the competition’s scoring protocol. But I did find it suspicious that the same beer could be judged within a couple of weeks in different competitions and receive widely divergent scores. When I started shipping beer early, to give it time to settle before judging, the discrepancy went away, or at least narrowed to such an extent that I didn’t notice.

Neither proves a thing, but my gut instinct may be more persuasive. Beer is a volatile substance. It contains a wide array of unstable esters, protein chains and organic compounds. The bio-chemistry of beer is quite complex, and such complexity should suggest a mutability in its profile. Under certain conditions, a beer will exhibit very different qualities, which is why consistency of serving is so important.

So, why should we be so surprised that travel might adversely affect beer’s flavour? Agitation is a common chemical encouragement, as it forces molecules to collide with more frequency. Thus, if beer molecules of various shapes and sizes are banging together in a way they normally do not, it is reasonable to expect some flavour alteration.

I can’t prove travel shock exists, but I truly believe it does. In particular I cannot tell you why the effects are short-lived. But what can you do about it? If you are a beer lover you are going to want to try beer from around the world. What steps can you take to minimize the impact of travel shock?

First, acknowledge that which you cannot control. You do not know how old that beer is. Shipping time, weeks spend in the Connect Logistics’ warehouse, time languishing on a store shelf – all are beyond your control. So relax, and give that far flung beer a bit of a break.

Second, leave travelled beer in your fridge/cellar for a few days before opening. That will help calm the storm within. I believe that within a few days, and no more than a couple of weeks, a beer will restabilize and return to as close to its normal self as possible (age affects beer in a direct and quick-acting manner).

Third, buy local when possible. This is your best way to avoid the complexities of travel shock in the first place. If a beer has travelled a couple of kilometres, you can trust that the travel effects will be minimal and thus shaken off in a few hours, if any time is needed at all.

There may be those out there who say I am full of it and that beer travel shock does not exist. To them I say “prove it”. To the rest of you, I say “have patience and when you open your beer relax and enjoy it, wherever it came from.”