The great thing about beer tasting, as opposed to wine tasting, is that you have to actually drink the beer not spit it out! Apparently this is because the tastebuds for bitterness (a key component of any beer) are located at the very back of the tongue. However, I heard Stephen Fry say on QI recently that is was just a myth…. and you’ve got to believe the Fry haven’t you?

Anyway, wherever the tastebuds are, they are useful after too many pints so, it’s always a good idea to limit your tasting session to 10 to 20 beers, so your judgement doesn’t get too impaired.

There are the major things to look out for when assessing a beer’s taste: flavour, mouthfeel and finish. As your first two sips of any beer are the most sensitive, use the first to assess the beer’s flavour, and the second to rate its mouthfeel (the feel and texture of the liquid within your mouth and throat).

Flavour

On your first sip, don’t swallow straight away. Let the beer linger in your mouth for a couple of seconds so that it comes into contact with all of your tastebuds, and breathe through your nose while you’re doing this. This process is known as “retro-olfaction”, and it allows the beer’s scent to reach your olfactory nerves, which, due to the connection between the senses of taste and smell, intensifies the beer’s flavour.

Mouthfeel

On your second sip, concentrate on the beer’s mouthfeel. You may detect a metallic or astringent quality, or perhaps a powdery feel. Note also whether the beer is lightly or heavily carbonated, and whether it warms your mouth and throat as you swallow it. Other points to consider are the beer’s density, and whether it has an oily or sticky quality to it.

Finish

Another important aspect to consider when tasting beer is the aftertaste. The aftertaste is critical to the overall impression of the beer and should confirm taste and appeal. The flavour and length of the aftertaste will differ significantly depending on the style of beer being tasted: American lagers, for example, often have virtually no aftertaste, whereas a stout will likely have a heavy and somewhat bitter aftertaste. Take note of the aftertaste’s character (sweet, bitter, malty) as well as its length.

Have you ever found a beer recipe that you really like the look of, but have found that you don’t have the correct variety of hops and can’t get hold of it?

Or have you ever been making up a recipe and wondering what would be the right variety of hops to achieve the taste profile you are looking for?

Well check out our Hop Varieties and Subsitutions page for help. We give a brief profile of each variety of hops and suggest possible alternatives to use if you don’t have what you need. I hope you find this resource as invaluable as we do!!

Do drop us a line if you want to suggest any changes or updates!

While silent I may have been over the past couple of months, inactive I have not.  More about Basil and the Senator’s wedding, and my alleged poisoning of the guests, another time.

A sparge arm, or something to help with sparging has been on my mind for a long time.  I’ve been disappointed thus far with the efficiency of my mashes, and had contemplated a rotating sparge arm with the help of Q.  Anyway, I decided that without a pump to force the water out, it wasn’t worth the hassle of setting up a sparge arm that rotates, so I found  more simple, rigid one to copy here.

Using some of the leftover 10mm copper coil, and borrowing Q’s 1mm drill bits (which I managed to break both of just before I’d finished!), and some 15mm copper pipe to feed the coil (which Q had left over from building his new mash tun manifold).  I used a bit of wood with a grove cut in it to drill the holes in the coil (see piture 1), which happened to fit around my parents’ bread bin nicely (picture 2), before soldering the joints, and leaving the (almost) finished product (picture 3).  I made a bracket out of a scrap bit of wood to hold it to the top of the mash tun.  Will post picture of the whole thing after my next brew day.

More on the other Summer brew projects soon.

Smell is critical to tasting anything. Since the senses of taste and olfaction are linked, smelling the beer gives the palate a sense of what to expect. If you don’t believe it, try holding you nose as you eat something, and you will find your appreciation of the taste is significantly diminished. In fact our sense of smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than out tastebuds. Therefore, smelling the beer is arguably the most important step in a beer tasting.

Agitating helps to release the odours so the best way to sniff your beer is with a glass that is half empty. This allows you to give if a swirl with your hand over the top of the glass to keep in all the lovely aromas fighting to escape. Then stick your nose in and take a deep breath. The sense of smell is quickly saturated so make sure you concentrate and take particular note of the aromas you detect upon the first sniff.

The “dominant scent” is the initial aroma released during the pour, and (depending on the beer style) it can be a mixture of: malt, butterscotch, roasted barley, hops or other strong scents. You should also look out for any “off” odours such as the skunky odour of a light-struck beer, or the boiled caggabe smell of a beer suffering from a bacterial infection.

The more mellow “secondary scent” will come through as the beer settles in the glass. As you practice, you will learn to recognise and look out for floral, fruity and spicy scents. The final aromas that come through once the secondary scent fades, is the “residual scent”, sometimes referred to as the beer’s “signature smell”. This is whene the more unusual aromas, such as earthiness or nuttiness, are released which give a beer its unique character.

Happy sniffing.

It was a delight to see Fendog alive and well today and all fears of mass-poisonings have be alleviated. I’d like to think he came all the way back to hear me preach at church this morning but no, he’s taken a midharvest break to pop over to Oxford to get his hat blocked in time for the next wedding.

It was timely from my point of view – I’d ordered a batch of ingredients before remembering that all the brewing equipment was stashed at the Lab and with Fendog and all his housemates away for the summer, there was no way to get at it. But I now have what I need to get a brew or two done after Fendog popped round with some essential kit including a couple of things he’d rigged up in Q’s workshop whilst back on the farm.

Firstly, he’s fitted a tap and a hop-strainer to the big brew pan we got from the Guru which will be very helpful. Previously we have had to pour or siphon through a seive into the primary fermenter.

Secondly, he’s made a counter-flow chiller! This is used after the boil to bring the temperature of the wort down to be able to pitch the yeast. The treasure trove we got from the Guru included an immersion chiller which is the alternative design. There are several disadvantages with immersion chillers which I will outine in a separate post, and I’m sure Fendog will discuss the design and construction elsewhre, so I’ll just show you the finished product:

The Bulge is due to make an appearance in three weeks, and I’m hoping I can get a couple of brews in before then without the Queen noticing.

When it comes to Christian brewers, or any brewing for that matter, nobody does it better than the Trappists. These dudes know how to party.

There are seven Trappist breweries, all brewing some of the best beer in the world, but the most acclaimed of them all (despite also having the smallest output) is the St Sixtus abbey in Westvleteren, Belgium. Its brews just three beers and produces only 60,000 cases a year. But the stuff is so highly rated by enthusiasts that there is a black market for it. Its harder to get hold of than weapons grade plutonium.

The most popular beer brewed at St Sixtus is the Westvleteren 12 – a strong dark ale with a 10.2% abv. At Ratebeer.com it is currently ranked as the number 1 best beer in the world and has consistently ranked in the top five since the site started. The two other beers brewed at St Sixtus are the Westvleteren Extra 8 – a dark red ale with an 8% abv (this currently ranks as the 12th best beer in the world at Ratebeer.com) and a Blond with a 6% abv.

Yet despite the popularity of its beer, the monks of St Sixtus refuse to become any more commercial in their production. As with all monastic brewers, the beer-making started as a way for the monks to become self-sufficient and fund their other ativities. First and foremost St Sixtus is a spiritual community. The brewing just pays the bills. The head brewer Brother Joris explains how the brewing and the other stuff fit together:

“As monks, the rule is pray and work. These are the pillars of the Trappist life. If you prayed 24 hours a day you’d go nuts. So there has to be a balance between work and monastic life. So the balance is there. We earn our living. There’s no reason to change that, or make more money.”

The monks at St Sixtus have been brewing since 1836 and whilst the equipment is fairly modern, the techniques are ancient, having been passed from monk to novice down the ages. Unlike the chaotic affairs that Fendog and I are used to, the monks’ 72 brewdays a year are calm and tranquil, performed in hooded black habits (traditional for Trappist monks), grey socks and sandals (traditional for all middle-aged Christian men), and in total silence as per the Trappist commitment. (In honour of our Belgian brothers, Fendog and I intend to adopt this dresscode for our next brew day).

The beer goes on sale 36 times a year for as long as stocks last and (I love this) the abbey has a special “Beer Phone”. I like to think that it is red and lights up when someone calls, after which one monk turns to another and says “To the Beer Mobile, Joris!” and they jump down a special chute emerging fully costumed inside a custom-built vehicle ready to distribute their special ale to thirsty customers…. But I suspect there is just a recorded message informing people when the beer will next be available. Shame.

When that day comes round, cars start queuing up outside the abbey at 5:15am! The gates don’t open until 10am, and then you are limited to just 2 cases per car. A case (24 bottles) of the Westvleteren 12 costs €36, with the cheapest, the Blond, costing €25 per case. The crates are clearly marked “Not for Resale” but the monks’ wishes are often disregarded and one can find illegally imported Westvleteren 12 on sale at specialist bars and stockists and on the internet for up to £15 a bottle. The monks hate this – such underhand practices go against the Benedictine values under which they work. They urge people to support the Trappist way by only drinking the legit stuff. And you don’t want to mess with these dudes.

The first consideration when evaluatign a beer is the appearance. Three things are usually taken into consideration:

• head retention
• colour
• clarity

The correctly poured beer should start off with a 2-4cm head. This should not dissipate too quickly, and should leave a coating of “Belgian lace” on the glass as the beer is drunk. Sometimes an impressive looking head can turn out to be pretty short lived. I remember my first batch of Otter’s Pocket Stout – the head was so think and creamy it made me want to stick a flake in it. But by time I got back from the kitchen it was all but gone.

The colour and clarity of a beer are best judged by holding the glass up to a white background in a well-lit place. Assess the clarity by looking through the liquid, and the colour by looking at the top and sides of the glass. You must bear in mind the variety of beer when assessing its colour and clarity. For example, you would expect a lager to be clear and bright, whereas a wheat beer may have a more cloudy appearance.

Unusual appearance should also be noted. Are there notably large bubbles? Is there sediment present, and if so, how fast does it settle? etc…

On the subject of dodgy looking pints… Lunchtime cheekies at the Retreat have been a regular occurance lately. Especially with the Ashes on. Get there for 12 and see the last hour of play before lunch. Nice. But I have learned not to go for a pint of London Pride! :-S  At lunchtime, its always the first out of the barrel and is a cloudy soup of dubious solids which settle into a inch of brown muck at the bottom. Not pleasant.

Still no word from Fendog about how the wedding brews went. Its not like him to stay silent. He hasn’t returned my texts and I fear the worst!

I can see the headlines now…

When tasting beer, its imporant you serve it correctly to all the proper appreciation of the look, smell and taste of the beer. The first rule is simple : NEVER taste beer directly from the bottle or can it came in.

Whilst this will seem ridiculously obvious to any true beer fan or experienced homebrewer, it is a schoolboy that is far to often made. Apart from the obvious problems with sediment in a bottle-conditioned beer, it needs to be in a glass for you to fully appreciate the finer points of the beer’s appearance, aroma and taste.

The type of glass is not too umportant, as long as its clear, clean and free from detergent residue (this is important as it inhibits head formation and retention).

Head retention is one aspect to be considered when judging a beer, therefore the best way to pour your beer is tilting the glass and moving it progressiviely away from the bottle whilst pouring. This will ensure a decent head of foam which allows the beer’s aroma and other perfumes to escape, and protects the beer from possible oxidation which can deteriorate the taste. Although head size will depend on the type of beer, you should aim for somehere between 2 and 4 cm of foam.

You should also serve your beer at the correct temperature to bring out the best flavours. It is a common mistake to drink beer too cold. Indeed a common trend is towards “extra cold” versions of draught beers being available in pubs. I have known Aussies who, when in this country in winter, choose to leave beers out in the snow so they can “enjoy” them ice cold. Though possibly refreshing, this will ensure you taste nothing. But then, he was drinking Castlemaine XXXX, so perhaps this was the idea.

Michael Jackson (no, the other one) proposes a five-level scale for optimal serving temperatures:

Well, this weekend is the B&Q wedding! The big day has finally come round and I must say, Fendog is probably more nervous than the bride or groom!

He’s taken this all very seriously. Since being asked to provide beer for the sibloids’ weddings, Fendog as been brewing like a man possessed. And he’s really stepped up his game – new equipment, in depth research, new techniques…

As always, I have to admire Fendog’s balls. If it was me, I’d stick to tried and tested recipes and methods for such important occasions. But not Fendog – he went full mash with a vengeance, tried new recipes, cultivated his own yeast, tried three brews in a day, etc… And much to my disappointment, Fendog has taken it on as a solo venture. Genius or wreckless? We just don’t know that this stage.

This weekend will be the moment of truth. None of the beers he’ll be serving has been properly tried…. This could make or break us here at What Would Jesus Brew?