How to get your lady to like beer: Part II The Dark Side

"The darkest path to Mordor is wrought with malts, high IBUs, increased gravity, and orcs."
JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

After crossing over to the dark side you'll be ready for your Thriller music video closeup

In my last world famous (in this case it's an extremely small world after all) post, I outlined the beginning steps to wean your lady friend from weeny-tinis to great beer.  We started with fruit beer and then progressed to hefeweizens and light lagers and ales.  In this post, we will bravely venture to the dangerous and dark path of the malts on our way to beer glory and equality.  I warn you, this won't be easy, but knowing that you're a brave little toaster gives me confidence that we'll make it.  So let's leave our safe confines, drop some bread crumbs, and start the perilous and delicious journey to the DARK SIDE.

Fear is toast!

Generally speaking, beers with heavy malted grain bills are slightly sweeter and definitely higher gravity than lighter grain bills.  Basically more malts means more fermentable sugars for our yeast to snack on, become gassy, and fart out carbon-dioxide and alcohol.  Although higher malt styles are generally associated with a darker color (as in this cheeky post), it's not always the case.  The Belgian tripel is a great example of a high grain bill beer with a light color.  The base grains (e.g. 2-row, pilsener, et al.) which give the most fermentable sugars are mostly light in color, so a lighter color beer can be just as high gravity as a darker one.  Enough boring crap.  Let's start our journey.

 Dunkelweizen, Dunkels (black lagers), Weizenbocks, Dopplebocks
In our first lesson, we featured hefeweizens as a style that flaunts fantastic fruity flavors (that, my friend, is alliteration for your pleasure) using only the four base ingredients of brewing. Some brewers say love is the fifth ingredient, but German styles in this category must adhere to the Reinheitsgebot beer purity law, and thus love is strictly verboten.  Despite these styles being completely void of love, they serve as a great springboard to the dark side, because they are just darker malt versions of hefeweizens, pilseners, and bocks.  A dunkelweizen still contains those fruity esters and clove flavors of hefeweizens, but it introduces a maltier backbone and darker color.  Dunkels are crisp like pilseners but slightly sweeter.  Weizenbocks are darker, higher gravity (6.5%-8%) combinations of hefeweizens and dopplebocks.  Finally, dopplebocks are stronger, slightly sweeter versions of a dunkel. 

Basic Stouts and Porters
Stouts and porters are the poster children of malty beers.  The classic styles feature very approachable lower-in-weight grain bills with darker malts such as roasted barley and chocolate malt (refers to how long the grain is roasted).  Basic stouts and porters finish with normal abvs (4-5%) and higher IBUs to balance the flavor of the darker malts.  Within the basic stout category are sub-styles:

•   Dry stout- roasted malt flavor and aroma.  Finishes dry (duh)
•   Sweet stout- similar to dry, but with more of a sweeter finish
•   Milk stout- uses lactose, which does not ferment out thus adds sweetness to end product
•   Oatmeal stout- creamy earth flavors from oats
•   Foreign Extra- roasted bitterness. Can go up to 8%

Chocolate malts do not contain chocolate.  The name refers to the longer roast that gives the malt its dark brown color.

High Gravities: Russian Imperial Stout, Baltic Porter, Belgian Quad, Belgian Tripel, Barleywine, Strong Ale, Scotch Ale
If your lady has shown promising results with the previous styles, the next logical step is to wrench it up a notch (Like these guys) by introducing the heavy hitters of the dark empire.  All of the styles in this step are brewed with a large amount of malts (not necessarily dark) and finish at high gravities.  For the new beer drinker, the Belgian tripel (8-10% abv) is a great choice to ease into this category as the flavors and aromas are similar to those of wheats.  Start with the tripel and perhaps move on to the Belgian quad, which finishes on the sweeter side due to the candy sugar adjunct common to the style.  For the rest, just trial-and-error it.  All of these are excellent styles, and some commercial examples like Westvleteren 12 Belgian Quad are considered among the best beers in the world. 

Westvleteren 12  is the highest rated beer in the world on Beer Advocate

Now that you and your lady have officially degenerated to the dark side, the only challenge that awaits you is the noble path of the hops.  In my next post, we will begin the hop journey, but for now, take a look in the mirror and see what the dark side has done to you.  Sorry about that.

Crossing over to the dark side sometimes has scary side-effects, my precious

How to get your lady to like beer: PART I

POLITICALLY CORRECT PREFACE:  In Ancient times, women were the brewers of the family while the men threw some spears and scratched their loin cloths.  Women haven't always been beer-averse, but  throughout history, beer has been associated more with masculinity while wine and fruit cocktails have been viewed as more feminine.  Despite major breweries such as Lazy Magnolia now being led my women, this slowly changing perception persists, and I now plan to capitalize on it.

Rosy the Riveter was the original bad ass lady beer drinker

Gentlemen, would you like to go out with your girlfriend, wife, fiancee (hopefully not all three at once) and enjoy some great beers together, but can't because she hates the taste?  Well I'm here today to tell you it is possible to train your lady to like beer.  It worked on my girlfriend, and it will surely work on yours given a little patience and persistence.

The goal of the program is to gently ease your yaya pants sister from more fruity beers to basic beers and eventually into hardcore hoppy, malty, and high grav beers such as imperial IPAs, Russian stouts, and strong Belgians. Without further ado, let's get drinking.

STEP 1 Fruity Beers (e.g. Lambics and other Fruits)

In our PC Preface, we somewhat offensively suggested that women predominantly like wine and fruity cocktails.  In my life experience this assumption holds to be empirically flawless, which is why we must begin with beers that include fruit.  It's very important that you do not include ciders or meads in the beginning as they are technically wines and not beers.

In this step we are going to gently ease into beers that have familiar flavors and tastes of wine or cocktails.  Some great choices for this step are Abita's Purple Haze, Sweetwater Blue, Carolina Strawberry Ale, Well's Banana Bread, Dogfish Head Aprihop, and Lindeman's Kriek (cherry infused lambic).  The goal of the fruit step is to knock down some preconceived notions of what beer must taste like and also to have our subject become more comfortable with ordering and drinking a beer over the usual crap-tini.

Lindeman's Kriek is brewed with cherries.  Good starting point.

Feeling Sassy?- Try adding a sour component, which could lead to a taste for Flemish sours.  A good example is New Belgium's Tart Lychee.

STEP 2 Hefeweizens and Light Wheats

In the first step, we introduce beers that actually contain fruit or fruit extract.  In the second step, we're going to introduce her to a style that yields fruity flavors and aromas without actually containing fruit.  Esters, which hefeweizen yeast produces plenty of in the fermentation process, give the style fruity aromas and flavors such as banana.  To emphasize the fruity characteristics, feel free to add a lemon or orange wedge to the rim.  Hefeweizens are brewed with light grain bills and hop profiles.  It's an extremely approachable style for the nouveau beer drinker.  Now that she likes a classic beer style with no gimmicks added (just the four standard beer ingredients), we can move on to some basic lagers and light ales.

Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen: All the flavor with none of the masculinity

Feeling Sassy?- Try a weizenbock, which is a hybrid of a high-gravity dopplebock and a hefeweizen.  Darker, more alcohol, and slightly sweeter than a hefeweizen.  Schneider Aventinus is a great choice.

STEP 3 Pilseners, Vienna Lagers, Kolschs et other lights

Now that she's used to real beers, we can ease into some core styles that are neither very hoppy nor malty.  By drinking the styles in this step, she will acquire a taste and smell for slightly more hoppy and drier beers than their predecessors.  The hoppiest of these styles will be the pilsener (e.g. Pilsener Urquell), especially if it's an Americanized version.  However, none of them will be as hoppy as pales or IPAs.  The maltiest will be the Vienna lager (e.g. Dos Equis Amber), which is a great, soft balance between hops and malts.  This step will also serve as the divergence point from which you and your lady can pick your path among two epic journey choices: hoppy or malty.

Although an ale, the kolsch style from Cologne is a great, crisp light beer. Reissdorf is my favorite.

Feeling Sassy?- Try a Belgian Golden Strong.  Belgian golden strongs, such as Duvel Single and Leffe Blond, taste just like a light lager or ale, but pack a nice punch at about 7-8% abv.

To be Continued in Part II

  For the sake of brevity, I'll break this post into two parts and give you a chance to try out the techniques at the bar.  In the next post, we'll tackle the hop path leading up to Imperial American IPAs and the malty path leading up to Imperial Stouts/Porters.  Until then, go ahead and start the program.  Tell me how it goes.  Cheers!