The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [180]
Bierstube (German): A large pub that specializes in beer. Found throughout Germany.
Bitter/Bitterness: The perception of a bitter flavor imparted to beer by hops or malt husks; determined by a sensation on the back of the tongue; measured in International Bitterness Units (IBUs).
BMC: Budweiser, Miller, Coors (casual phrase for major industrial breweries making light lagers on a mass scale).
Body: The heft of a beer, related to its grain content and dryness, or degree of attenuation.
Brettanomyces: A genus of yeast; called “Brett” for short and viewed as a contaminant by most brewers but sometimes used on purpose to create a sour or “barnyard” taste in beer, especially Belgian and Belgian-style beers. Its taste is also described as leathery, funky, and horse-blanket.
Brewhouse: A brewery; a place that houses the equipment used to make beer. Interchangeable with the core equipment itself, which is often clustered.
Brewpub: A pub that makes its own beer and sells it on site.
Cask: A barrel-shaped container for beer, usually made of metal.
Cask-conditioned: Beer that undergoes a secondary fermentation and maturation in the cask; results in light carbonation.
Cicerone: Like a sommelier for beer—a trained expert in selecting and serving beer. The levels are Certified Cicerone and Master Cicerone; both require certification.
Collaboration beers: Beers made when two or more breweries get together to produce one beer.
Craft brewery: A brewery producing six million barrels per year or less using more or less traditional methods of making beer from malted barley, primarily.
Cream ale: Offshoot from the American light lager style; ale that has corn or rice added to it to lighten the body.
Czech-style: Coppery-hued lager heavily hopped with earthy, spicy noble hops from Europe, especially Southeastern Germany and the Czech Republic.
Diacetyl: A natural by-product of fermentation that can give beer unpleasant, butterscotch-like or artificial butter flavors. A common flaw eliminated through careful brewing and sanitation.
Dry, Dryness: Degree to which fermentable sugars have been consumed, or “dried out” from the beer during fermentation and aging.
Dry-hopped: Beer with an addition of dry hops to fermenters and/or aging tanks to punctuate hop aroma without adding high levels of bitterness.
ESB: Extra Special/Strong Bitter; Originally a British style of bitter beers with more aggressive alcohol and hop character and ample malt body.
Esters/Estery: Fruity-smelling, harmless chemical compounds created as a by-product of high-temperature fermentations.
Extreme beer: Catch-all phrase for aggressively hopped ales fermented to a high alcohol percentage, usually around 7% but sometimes nearly double that (most beer hovers between 4% and 6% alcohol, while craft beers average 6%.) Sometimes interchangeable with “Imperial” and “Double.” May contain herbs, spices, and fermentable starches other than barley or wheat, fruit, coffee, or other natural additions.
Farmhouse ale: Ale made in a farm setting; a tradition originating in Belgium and northern France and now made on a very small scale in the United States. See also: Saison
Fermenter: Tanks for fermenting beer; can be steel cylindro-conical vessels (CCVs), open stone vessels, or wooden vats.
Filter/Unfiltered: To remove harmless sediments from the brewing and fermentation process from beer; generally unfiltered beer is hazy with yeast cells or grain matter.
Flanders-style: Reddish, sour ales with winelike qualities brewed in Belgium and aged a year or longer in oak barrels, often with Lactobacillus yeast.
Gastropub: A bar or pub that also serves high-quality food.
Geuze (Belgian-style): A type of Belgian beer made from blends of young and old wild yeast beers (aged from three months to three years) that is then bottled with additions of yeast and a small amount of sugar for a second fermentation.
Growler: A half-gallon glass jug (64 oz.), often sold at breweries and brewpubs for beer to go.
Hallertau: The original German lager