Let's Face It, You Probably Know Nothing About The Beer You're Drinking
You’d better know what you’re looking for before walking into the beer section of a liquor store or sidle up to a bar. The options are dizzying, and if you don’t know the difference between a pale ale and a lager there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to walk out with something you don’t really want to drink (or pull a Scott Walker and settle for a commercial beer when there are far superior options).
While you may think “a beer is a beer,” that’s not at all true. There are tons of characteristics that distinguish one type of beer from another, so before you waste another dollar on a beer you don’t like, it’s a good idea to understand the qualities you like and don’t like in each style.
India Pale Ale, More Popularly Known As IPA
Color: Usually amber and cloudy, but IPAs come in a range of darker and lighter colors now.
Strength: Typically 4.5-6 percent ABV, but some brewers have tried to recreate the original IPAs with an ABV closer to 8 or 9 percent.
Fun Fact: During the 1700s, when English troops lived in India, the typical pale ale brew most Englishmen drank would spoil before the ship reached the Indian shores. In order to prolong the beer's shelf life, brewers added more hops, which is a natural preservative. And that's how the hoppiest beer style was born.
Pale Ale
Color: Pale gold to amber.
Strength: 4-7 percent ABV
Fun Fact: They've been brewed since 1642, when coke was first used as a form of fuel to roast malt. Coke (not to be confused with the brand of soda) is a fuel with few impurities, made from coal.
Pilsner
Color: Light golden color and a notable clarity.
Strength: Usually 5 percent ABV.
Fun Fact: Pilsner is one of the youngest beer styles in the world, first brewed in 1842.
Wheat Beer
Color: Just like the flavor, the colors range in wheat beers but they're typically hazy because of the protein in the wheat used to brew them.
Strength: 3-7 percent ABV
Fun fact: There are so many beer styles that fit under the wheat beer umbrella -- Hefeweizen, Berliner Weisse, Belgian Witbier to name a few -- but one thing that unifies all these styles is that they're made with wheat malt as well as barley malt.
Brown Ale
Color: Dark, dark amber.
Strength: 4-8 percent ABV
Fun Fact: It's a very old style beer, dating back to the early 1700s.
Porter
Color: Very dark, almost opaque.
Strength: 4-7.5 percent ABV
Fun Fact: Porters had almost gone out of style, being taken over by stouts, until Anchor Brewing Company brought it back in the '70s when it began to brew it again. It was the first American brewery to brew a porter post prohibition.
Stouts
Color: Very, very dark with a head that is usually tan to brown.
Strength: 4-7 percent ABV
Fun Fact: Porters and stouts were interchangeable throughout history, but as porters started become weaker as a result of the World Wars, people began referring to strong porters as stouts. And so this beer style was born.
Sour Beers
Color: Color varies greatly depending on the style of sour and what fruit it might be brewed with.
Strength: 4-10 percent ABV, check those labels!
Fun Fact: Wild bacteria and yeast is how they get their sour flavor.
Related...
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
