Short Course in Beer by Lynn Hoffman

Author:Lynn Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

3 For up-to-date information on homebrewing, go to: Beertown.org/homebrewing/index.html To learn more about the brewing industry in America, visit: xsBeerinstitute.org

CHAPTER 6

ENJOYING

BEER

When you have read to the end of this chapter you will:

• have enough knowledge to pass as a beer maven

• enjoy your next glass of beer a little bit more than you did your last one

Between mere guzzling and a mature connoisseurship, there is a small but measurable gap. A bit of knowledge is the difference. Most beer in America is gulped, not tasted. If you would like to join the happy minority and enjoy some of the best imports as well as the new offerings from large and small craft-brewers, here are some considerations:

Freshness

Beer deteriorates after it has been bottled, and freshly bottled beer tastes as good as it ever will. (There are a few bottle-conditioned exceptions: see the entries under barley wine, abbey beers and Trappist ales.) If you've ever been disappointed with an exotic, imported beer, there's a good chance that it had been aged or stored in a way that accelerated its deterioration.

The best way to insure fresh beer in a tavern or restaurant is to order a beer that's brewed on the premises. The next best strategy is to ask your server what beers are fresh or which ones sell a lot. He or she will usually give you a straight answer. Your question implies that you know your beer and a tip could hang in the balance.

It's also helpful to read label marks. Some few enlightened breweries put either the bottling date or the “pull date” explicitly on the bottle. The pull date represents the last day that the beer should be on sale.

Freshness isn’t exactly a hot topic among most beer consumers; market research done by Pittsburgh Brewing Company indicated that consumers are not particularly aware that fresh beer tastes better. Many industry observers thought that Anheuser-Busch was misguided when it introduced the born-on date.

Many breweries notch their labels or imprint their twenty-four-bottle cases with a code that indicates the date of bottling. This enables the distributor to know the bottling or pull date, but conceals it from the public. If you know the code, you know the age of the beer. Beer that's kept cold will have a longer shelf life than beer that's stored at room temperature.

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