Why You Should Never Drink Light Beer

Why You Should Never Drink Light Beer

There's nothing more disturbing in the world of beer than sitting at a reputable pub with a fine selection of international potables and hearing a nearby twangy voice inquiring "Ya'll got Bud Light in hur or what man?"  After a satisfactory  snide "No" from the offended bartender (it's like walking into a fancy French restaurant and asking for boxed wine), our good ole boy invariably slinks out and heads to the nearest Chili's for his watered down "beer" fix.  

 So why does Bubba the Lightie insist on light beer or nothing?  1) Is it the taste?  2) Is it the versatile portability of the can?  3) Are calories the reason?  Or maybe it's 4) "I just want to get drunk and drink a lot of it."  As I hope to demonstrate in this post, none of these arguments hold up.  In fact, there is NO good reason ever to drink light beer.  So with that bold claim, let's attempt to convert Bubba into a respectable beer drinker who can imbibe outside of Hooters with confidence.  Think of lighties as our Eliza Doolittles.

Repeat after me: "The Beer Over There Belongs Mainly in the Rear"

Fallacy 1: Light Beer Tastes Better

  Personally, I know this is completely false.  However, to be fair, I'll post some light beer ratings from Beer Advocate, which is a very reputable website for beer and pub ratings (all scores are out of 100 possible points and have been rated by over 1,000 people each).

Bud Light- 49 (Poor) Bud Light

Coors Light- 51 (Poor) Coors Light

Miller Light-  55 (Poor) Miller Lite

Keystone Light- 51 (Poor) Keystone Light

I could post more, but I think you get the point.  Light beer just does not taste good, and there's good reason for it.  When we describe light beer as tasting watered down it's because, well, it is actually watered down.  In order to lower the calories, and consequentially the alcohol, light beer brewers will dilute the beer with water.  Since the majority of calories in beer comes from alcohol (7 calories/gram), breweries will simply water down the post-fermented product in order to lower the alcohol and caloric content. 

To conclude this point, the taste of light beer simply doesn't stand up to real beers, because the latter isn't diluted with water.  Just like the taste of a Coke that's been sitting in a hot car with melted ice loses its taste, so does beer when it's been watered down.

Fallacy 2: Don't hate on Cans (You can take good beer anywhere!)

"He hates these cans!"

I plan on tackling this issue in a later post, but simply put, cans are no longer strictly associated with crappy beers such as Bud Light.  In recent years sparked by breweries like Oskar Blues, the craft beer industry has begun to shift towards offering their products in cans.  Sierra Nevada Brewing, considered a pioneer in the craft beer movement, has a great explanation on why they're making the transition:  Sierra Nevada Cans. Their reasons include portability, environmental, durability, and taste.  What they don't mention is that cans are much lighter than bottles, which saves the brewery a lot of dough in shipping costs. 

So next time you go fishing, instead of picking up a cheap domestic for your cooler, look for a nice Sierra Nevada Pale, Oskar Blues Mama's Little Pils, or a 21st Amendment Watermelon Wheat.  The fish will appreciate your impeccable taste in beer, and they might even voluntarily jump in for a sip. 

Fallacy 3 and 4: Does this Beer make me look fat? and Let's drink a 12 pack and get Drunk!

I'm going to combine reasons 3 and 4, because in my opinion, they're closely related.

Let me preface this by saying no one will become chiseled by regularly drinking a lot of beer.  A lower gravity beer typically has the same amount of calories as a can of Coke.  However, it just wouldn't be right if the jolly bar regular with the bellowing laugh had a svelte physique.  In fact, the word jolly almost always precedes the word fat.  However, what we frequent beer drinkers lack in abs, we make up for in good humor.  With that said, let's falsify this claim that light beer is somehow better for you.

The calorie and alcohol content of 12oz of the most popular light beers are:

                

Bud Light- 110   4.2%  .5 oz alcohol (26.2 calories/1 alcohol %)

Miller Light- 96  4.2%  .5 oz alcohol (22.9 calories/1 alcohol %)

Coors Light- 105 4.2%  .5 oz alcohol (25 calories/1 alcohol %)

Now let's compare these three, to three good, high gravity (high alcohol) beers:

Great Divide Old Ruffian Barley Wine- 308  12.7% 1.5 oz alcohol (24.3 calories/1 alcohol %)

Victory Golden Monkey Tripel- 285  9.5%  1.4 oz alcohol (28.8 calories/1 alcohol %)

Dogfish Head Immort Ale- 330 11%  1.32 oz alcohol (30 calories/1 alcohol %)

So we could either drink 3 Bud Lights for 1.5oz of alcohol and consume 330 calories, or we could drink one Old Ruffian and get the same amount of alcohol for 308 calories.  Or we could drink about 3 Miller Lights (288 calories) for the same effect as one Golden Monkey (285 calories).  

If our goal is to drink for the sake of getting drunk, you might as well drink real beer with high gravity, and save yourself 10 trips to the bathroom.  On top of consuming a lot less of it, real beer tastes a hell of a lot better than watered down crap.  

If all of this wasn't enough, there's also no economic sense in drinking light beer over real beer. A 6 pack of Golden Monkey, for example, costs about $11 ($1.80/bottle), while an average 6 pack of Bud Light costs about $6 ($1/bottle).  If we've established it takes 3x a Bud Light for the same effect as a Golden Monkey, then we will come to the conclusion that not only is it less logical to drink Bud Light for it's calories, but it also make less economic sense compared to buying a high gravity beer ($3 vs $1.80). 

So next time you see a Lightie upset that your favorite pub rightfully does not carry light beers, volunteer to be his Rex Harrison, and take him on as a beer conversion challenge  armed with these fun facts.  In no time, Bubba Lightie will look like this:

Pat yourself on the back, you've been reformed!

What's in your beer

What's in Your Beer

Before we continue on to the process and science of brewing, let's slow it down (you're smothering me), and talk about the individual components of beer whose outcome is definitely greater than the sum of their parts.  So break it down with me and get funky with it.

You and me learning about beer

Water

Since water comprises about 90% of a beer's content, it can have a substantial impact on how the end product tastes.  For most brewers, the general rule is if your tap water is drinkable and has no distinct off flavors, it's probably good enough to brew with.  However, many home brewers feel very strongly that they would never use tap water in the brewing process due to chlorine and all the other crap it contains.  I live in an area that has pretty good water, so I don't really care.  However, I know people in the same area who would never use the same water even after boiling it in the brewing process, so it really just varies from brewer to brewer.  With that said, even if you live in a place like Florida that has pretty awful drinking water, you can always treat the water you use with a number of additives such as pH stabilizers.

Even though good tap water will result in great beers, for some styles, it's crucial to replicate the water of the beer's geographical origin or else it won't quite taste right.  For example, it's extremely difficult to create the taste of a Czech pilsener without using water with very similar characteristics.  If you want the peaty flavor of a traditional Scotch Ale, you're going to need to get a hold of their distinct smoky water (some breweries get around this by adding smoked or peated malts, but it's not how Scottish breweries do it). 

Grain

Coupled with water, the grains in our beer are going to provide the necessary sugars for our yeast to eat in the fermentation process (more about this soon).  We also use different types of grains to affect the color, flavor, mouthfeel, clarity, and head retention of our beer.  Grains are used in the mashing and sparging processes of brewing (see next post) and are generally separated into two categories: Base grains and specialty grains.

As you can imagine, base grains are going to make up the majority of our grain bill.  Base grains will impart the majority of our beer's fermentable sugars.   Common base grains include 2-row barley, 6-row barley, wheat, and rye.  It's important to note that depending on how the grains are processed (kilned) these categories can manifest itself in numerous different types of base grains such as Maris Otter, Munich, Pale Malt, German Malted Wheat etc.

On the other hand, we use specialty grains in smaller amounts for certain desired effects.  Although they do not provide nearly as much of the fermentable sugars, specialty grains can have an enormous effect on the end product.  If we want to add more mouthfeel and head retention to a beer, we can add some Carapils.  If we want to add a raisin or plum taste to the beer, we can add some Special B grains.  For a a darker head and color of the beer, we can throw in some roasted barley.  The list goes on and on, and each style will have different desired characteristics you will need to impart by using specialty grains.

Generally speaking, base grains will comprise about 2/3 of your beer's grain bill, while specialty grains will make up the rest.  With that said, different from base grains, it's actually not necessary to use specialty grains.  For example, a traditional Polish style called a Gratzer uses only a smoked wheat base with no specialty grains.

Yeast

Yeast is by far the most important component of beer and the brewing process.  Classified as unicellular fungus, yeast will affect your beer in several ways:

Ale or Lager

There are only two types of beer in this world: ales and lagers, and it's entirely up to the yeast you use that will determine which category your beer falls under.  Ale yeast will hang out on the top of the beer during fermentation and will work in higher temperatures than lager yeast.  Conversely, lager yeast chill out, quite literally, at the bottom of your fermentor and work best in cooler temperatures (just above freezing).

Alcohol Content

In addition to the amount of fermentable sugars your grains produce, the quantity and type of yeast will also affect the alcohol content of your beer through the fermentation process.  In fermentation, millions of yeast cells turn simple carbohydrates (maltose) into CO2 (carbonation), alcohol, and sometimes desired or not so desired flavors  such as diacetyls (buttery), esters (fruity), or acetaldehydes (sour apple). Since strains of yeast are highly specialized, not every one can handle higher desired alcohol contents.  It's extremely important to choose the correct amount and type of yeast you will need to achieve your target abv %.

Microscope view of the fermentation process: 10,000x zoom

Clarity

An important trait of yeast is it's flocculation rating.  Yeast with high flocculation will gather together more, thus leaving your beer more clear.  A low flocculation yeast will cause your beer to be cloudy, which although frequently undesired, is a must for some styles (e.g. hefeweizen).

Flavor

In addition to all of the above, the type of yeast you use and the conditions in which it works will create different flavors in your beer.  Depending on the style, these flavors will either be welcomed or they will serve as an indication that something went wrong in the brewing process.  The most common mistakes resulting in off-flavors are brewing outside of the strain's ideal temperature range and contamination within your fermentation receptacle.  We'll get into this later on, but proper sterilization of anything coming into contact with your yeast is an integral consideration in brewing.

Hops

As we discussed in a previous post, hops have not always been a component of beer, but Today it pretty much is.  Hops are actually flowers that contain oily resins, that when boiled, impart bitter, tangy flavors and flowery aromas to beer.  In addition to flavor and aroma, hops also contain antibacterial properties that along with the alcohol content, aid in preserving beer.  Although there are numerous varieties of hops, we classify them into two categories in the brewing process:  Bittering/Flavoring and Aroma.

Bittering/Flavoring Hops

As you can probably deduce by their name, bittering hops provide the bitter flavor most strongly manifested in pales and IPAs.  There are two components of hops that we want to extract in the beer's boil:  Alpha and Beta Acids.  Since alpha acids are integral to the beer's flavor, we'll start with them under bittering.

 Alpha Acids (AA)- In addition to their antibiotic properties, AAs also produce that bitter taste we're all  familiar with.  Bittering hops will generally have a higher amount of AAs than flavoring hops, and thus not every variety is appropriate to use as a bittering hop.  Not only do different hops have different AAs, a crop of one variety from one year could have substantially different AAs than the previous or next year.  Although a Chinook hop, for example, will always fall in a certain AA range, a 2010 Chinook could have a 12% AA but a 2012 could be 14%.  This difference in AA content will have a definite impact on your end product's IBU (see below), so always be aware of the specific AA content of your hops.

 Depending on the desired effect, bittering hops are usually boiled between 60-120 minutes (Dogfish Head's 120 minute IPA refers to how long the hops are boiled: Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA) along with your wort.  The effect the boiling of the hops has on your beer is measured in International Bittering Units or IBUs.  Generally, the more you use and the longer your boil them, the higher your IBUs will be.  It's important to note that a high IBU will not always come through as a more bitter tasting beer.  Very malty, sweet beers such as imperial stouts or porters tend to finish with high IBUs, and not taste nearly as bitter as a similar IBU in lighter grain bills such as those used in a pales or  IPAs.  In big, malty beers, extra hop bitterness is needed to counteract and balance the sweetness of the malts.  Without a generous heaping of hops, your stout or porter could come out tasting far too sweet.

 Real Life Example from North Coast Brewing:

North Coast Old Rasputin Imperial Russian Stout- 75 IBUs

North Coast Acme IPA- 55 IBUs

Aroma Hops

Different from bittering hops, aroma hops can have very little AAs.  Since we use aroma hops at the end of the boil or even after fermentation, their AA content really doesn't matter a whole lot.  However, beta acids play a much more important role in your beer's aroma.

Beta Acids (BA)- Unlike AAs, BAs provide very little flavor to the beer.  Instead, BAs impart that nice flowery or citrusy aroma characteristic of many styles of beers. Although you might not want to use a low AA hop for your bittering, you can really use any hop for your aroma.  Just as each bittering hop has a different AA content, each aroma hop will have a different scent characteristic.  Common aroma types include earthy, piney, citrusy, fruity, floral, etc.

Every brewer has their hop favorites, but with little exception (how much IBUs a certain style should have), there is no right or wrong combination of hop usage.  An IPA, for example, can be a combination of just about any hop out there, and a brewer could use as many varieties as they want in a single beer in order to achieve their desired IBU and aroma profile.

Dry Hopping (not to be confused with dry humping)

If you're a fan of IPAs or pales, you've probably heard the term dry hopped quite a bit, but maybe you've never known exactly what it means.  Dry hopping is the process of infusing hop aroma into your beer after the boiling process.  Since we're incredibly smart now, we know that the only way to pick up hop bitterness (IBUs) is to extract our alpha acids (AAs) through the boiling process.  Therefore, by adding hops after the boil, we won't change the IBUs of our beer, but we will enhance our hop aroma.  As we previously discussed, you can use just about any variety for dry hopping as long as you feel it will impart your desired aroma profile.  You can dry hop by either using hop pellets (compressed hop flowers in the shape of dry hamster turds) or whole hop flowers.  Just like always, two brewers will have completely different opinions on which hop form is better, but more often than not, whole hops are preferred when dry hopping.

Dry hopping in the fermentor using whole hops

 Other (Anything you can think of)

 After utilizing the main ingredients, you can experiment with just about anything your massive mind can imagine.  Some of the more widely used adjuncts include chocolate, orange peel, coriander, grains of paradise, chili peppers, candy sugar, fruit of all kind, honey, maple syrup, ginger, nutmeg, coffee, pumpkin, wood chips/sprigs, and cinnamon to name just a fraction of what brewers have done and will do in the future.  A brewer can use adjuncts and other flavorings at any stage of the brewing process from the mash to the bottling, but adding fruit, for example, to the boil opposed to the secondary fermentor will have slightly different effects on the end product. 

With numerous varieties of yeast, grains, hops, and adjuncts at a brewer's disposal, the combinations of ingredients and their corresponding recipes are infinite.  So next time you go to your local bottle shop and see a hundred different types of IPAs on the shelves (and you will), take solace in knowing all 100 will be completely different from one another.  As you progress in your beer education, you will be able to appreciate a certain brewery's use of so and so hops balanced with such and such grain with that certain adjunct.  With that said, grab a beer (or a hundred), and join me for some more  funky learning very soon.

As always in parting, we wish you love, peace, and soul!

What in the world is beer!?: Part I

Before we dive right into the urine-laced shallow end of the pool, let's slow it down a bit and start in the very beginning by just dipping our little blogger toesies in the water.  You drink it, you surround yourself with it, you've gained 20lbs from it, you've lost family relationships over it, you've sworn it off many sickly mornings, etc. but what exactly is this source of all your joys and shortcomings?

Beer, in it's absolute simplest definition, is a divine concoction of three ingredients: water, grain, yeast.  I can hear you double IPA fanatics screaming from here, but hops were not widely used in the brewing process until the early to mid 2nd millennium AD.  That's right gang, hops were not used in beer until thousands of years after beer was discovered.  Which brings us to the question, when, how, and where did beer come from?

Not surprisingly, beer emerged simultaneously with the advancement of human civilization.  Although the first ancient civilizations (Sumerians, Babylonians, Indus River) most likely were brewing between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago, the first written record of making beer comes from a roughly 6,000 year old Sumerian tablet.  Subsequently, about 5,500 years ago, records show Sumerians invented a clay jar that turned indigo to let them know when their beer was chilled to an icy cold 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

And Ekur did inquire, "What thinkst thou of Enanatuma this eve?"  To which Aanepada didst reply, "Upon imbibing dot-dot-slash amount of beers, I wouldst indeed lay with her for this moon." To which Ekur did declare "I'd tap that too."

So how did those guys come up with beer anyways?  As we discussed before, the three necessary ingredients of beer are grains, water, and yeast.  With that in mind, it's generally believed somehow rain water seeped into a container of bread or grain, and naturally occurring atmospheric spores of yeast took care of the fermentation process.  As you can imagine, early beer most likely was not very palatable, but it definitely got the job done.  So much so, that our ancestors felt that the temporary ability to dance and come up with really cool ideas that are ultimately never realized when sober was a gift from god (s).  Ancient gods and goddesses of beer included Ninkasi (Sumeria), Silenus and Dionysus/Bacchus (Greece/Rome), Osiris (Egypt), Mbaba Mwana Waresa (Zulu) etc.

Shortly after the invention of beer, Ancient men (left) began to voluntarily join the Electric Slide at weddings for the first time in recorded history

Visiting on an earlier idea, in lieu of hops, early beer was often seasoned with herb mixtures called gruits.  These gruits could have included ginger, rosemary, spruce, ginger, juniper, et anything available to the brewer.  It wasn't until almost 1000 AD that hops were substituted for gruits and became associated with the brewing process.  Not only do hops provide flavor and aroma, they, along with the beer's alcohol content, also aid in preserving and disinfecting beer through their antibacterial properties.

Now that hops have been thrown in the equation, eventually in 1514 we get the German Reinheitsgebot, or beer purity law, which states all German beer must only include water, barley, and hops (since microbiology hadn't really been invented yet, they didn't know about the naturally occurring yeast that hung out on their stirring paddles). 

After about 11,500 years of beer history, ales (and they were all ales up until the early 19th Century, more about this in Part II), finally began to resemble what we're used to Today.  Now that we've learned a brief history of beer, join me in Part II to delve a bit into the science and classifications of beer. 

What Ales Thee

This blog will change your life. . . As long as you believe in the butterfly effect.  Just as the gentle flap of a butterfly's wing can eternally change the course of humanity, one blog post from me has and will continue to have an enormous impact on mankind as we know it.  Unless you want your future children to disappear from the polaroid you took 20 years from now that they will take back with them to the current time, I suggest you follow this blog. Butthead.

One of the consequences of not reading What Ales Thee

Because sadly it's really the only thing I'm decent at besides NHL 93 and extreme crocheting, I have chosen to blog about drinking and brewing beer.  I fully intend for this smut to only be read by the slight minority of my friends that can read.  For the majority of you, I have created a separate picture blog, but good luck typing in the URL and sounding out this sentence.

In this blog, I will post about the wonderful world of beer and home brewing.  I aim to be your Virgil escorting you through the many ironic circles of hell.  Your sin is not currently knowing enough about beer, and the only way you will avoid harpies eternally gnawing at your innards is to read this blog.  I repeat: It is the only way.

Canto V, Verse 23

I chose to start writing this blog for two main reasons: 1) My girlfriend started it for me  2) To stop people from drinking bad beer and to end misconceptions about beer.  Not only do I want you to drink good beer, but I think it would just be the bee's knees if you would consider brewing beer too.  In order to get your training wheels, I will also be blogging about how to brew the commercial beers you love to drink.  I myself have been brewing from before I was legally able to buy beer, so I feel somewhat qualified enough to share the sacred art of brewing with you.

In addition to brewing for seven years now, I have also worked for three breweries and currently work for an awesome European one that I will not name to avoid embarrassing them.  

 I feel I have now written a sufficient but not necessary introduction.   In fact, this whole blog is going to be barely sufficient but entirely not necessary. 

So sit back, relax, grab a pint, and let's learn about beer together.  Cheers!