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