It’s no secret that beer is taking off in the Queen City. Breweries are popping up all over the place, draft selections are increasing at local bars, and bearded brew dudes are touting their fermented concoctions everywhere from National Public Radio to the Charlotte Observer. What, five years ago, was a city without a single craft brewery, now is a booming beertropolis of six, with several more on the horizon and the bar culture, as it relates to craft beer, continues to improve all the time.
Like so many subcultural groups, the craft beer crowd has a particular vernacular that accompanies its lifestyle. Hackers and other computer enthusiasts understand terms like “finger” and “worm” much differently than your average person. In similar fashion, craft beer culture and the accompanying language might seem quite foreign and even a bit ridiculous to those unfamiliar with it, so I’d like to use this space to decode some basic craft beer terminology, in order to help our kind seem a bit less alien.
Hoppy/Malty
These are sister terms that many will come across at beer-centric bars in town when bartenders are trying to figure out what styles you may enjoy. “Do you like hoppy or malty beers?” That question is going to sound intimidating to someone who has no idea what the hell hops or malts have to do with beer. In the simplest terms, hoppy beers are bitter, like IPAs (India Pale Ales) such as Bells Two Hearted Ale and Birdsong’s Higher Ground, or pale ales like Triple C’s Light Rail and NoDa Brewing Company’s Jam Session. On the other hand, malty beers are sweeter; look for Belgian ales such as Chimay or Rochefort, and barley wines like Brooklyn Monster Ale.
Imperial/Double
These are interchangeable terms used to describe beers with higher alcohol contents and more intense flavors like IPAs, porters and stouts. It may seem counterintuitive, but a lot of people who are just getting into craft beer gravitate toward these higher alcohol brews because they are often sweeter due to the higher alcohol content, and have more intense, easily identifiable flavor profiles. The term “imperial” is used pretty liberally across styles, while “double” or “triple” are generally used to describe IPAs. They imply the use of more ingredients (both hops and malts) and an alcohol content ranging from roughly 7.5 percent to 10 percent, according to the Beer Judge Certification Program.
(Acronyms) IBU, ABV, and SRM
IBU is a commonly touted phrase in craft beer spaces. It stands for International Bittering Units and is a measure of how bitter hops make a beer. It may sound pretty scientific, but oftentimes breweries will actually list a beer’s IBUs along with its Alcohol By Volume, or ABV, in the description on menus. IBU doesn’t have any relation to how many ounces of hops are in a batch, but how much bitterness the alpha acids in the hops impart to the beer. ABV is a percentage calculation of the amount of alcohol in your beer. Lower ABV beers, called “session” beers, range from 4-5 percent depending on individual interpretation (There is actually a bitter debate raging between Brits and Americans over what actually qualifies as a “session” beer), whereas higher ABV beers can range between 10-15 percent. Some extreme styles even go over 20 percent. Finally, SRM stands for Standard Reference Method and is a measure of how dark and/or clear a beer is. The measurements begin at 2 with pale lagers and witbiers and go all the way to 40+ with imperial stouts.
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This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2013.
There is no such thing as a “triple IPA”
IBU’s does in fact directly correlate to the amount of hops that are used in the brewing process.
It has much less to do with the actual perception of bitterness in the taste of the beer. Example: Dogfish head 120 minute IPA is rated at 120 IBU’s due to 2hrs of constant hopping, yet it tastes less bitter than many lower IBU beers due to the sweetness of it’s very high malt content. Flying monkey alpha fornication is rated at 2500 IBU, but we really can’t taste anything higher than 100 IBU.
C’mon Cam, if your going to write about beer, know your facts.
To be more succinct, there is no GABF or BJCP subcategory for Triple IPA. BUT there are a lot of commercial IPAs that call themselves “Triple IPA” – http://www.ratebeer.com/tag/triple-ipa/
Also, IBUs are, as Cam said, International Bittering Units and they really don’t correlate to the amount of hops that are used in the brewing process. IBUs indicate the amount of bitterness that is imparted to the beer from the alpha acids in the hops. So you could have a hop variety that has a high percent of alpha acids like Magnum (14% AA) and use LESS of them and still have high IBUs. On the other hand, if you used a hop like Strisselspalt (3% AA) you would have to use pounds of them in order to get the same IBUs you’d get from Magnum.
The calculated IBUs exist regardless of the residual sweetness of the malt bill. So with a high gravity beer like Dogfishhead 120 Minute IPA, the sweetness is higher because there is so much malt and it balances the high bitterness from the hops.
You are correct, humans can’t really detect IBU levels above 100 so for beers like Flying Monkey Alpha Fornication, they’re really calculated at 2500 IBUs, but it’s really silly to hop it up that much because people can’t really perceive the difference above 100-120 IBUs.