On Becoming A Beer Geek: Malt 101

Focusing on those amazing beers not brewed by the giant beer conglomerates of the world: we find them, write about them, review them, and most importantly, make you curious enough to taste them for yourself!

Water.

Yeast.

Malt.

Hops.

These are the four primary ingredients that are used in brewing beer. Purists will tell you that these are the only ingredients one should use in brewing beer, but that is a conversation for another time.

Malt.

Malt is a term that is most often associated with roasted barley, which is soaked until it sprouts and then thrown onto a sloped floor called a malting floor. Hot air is used to stop the germination of the sprouts and dry them out, in a process where the entire floor is shaken to keep things stirred up…think a tumble dryer on high, but on a floor in a big room with, on average, twenty tons of barley. The dried barley is then roasted in a kiln until it reaches the desired cook-point, which will produce malts of various toastiness, leaving brewers with the categories of Pale, Crystal, Amber, Chocolate, and Black malts, in ascending order of darkness.

Malt is a term that is most often associated with roasted barley…

What the entire above malting process does is to bring out the inherent sugars in the malted grain through germinating them, where the drying serves to bind them to the malt and, finally, the roasting carmelizes them. Ever notice how Guinness is very black and fairly sweet? That right there is the finely roasted, carmelized malt sugars in action.

Pale and Crystal malts are more suited to the lighter beers, Pale Ales and Pilsners and Lagers, with Ambers going to produce a category of beer called ESB, or, English Special Bitter, and Irish Red Ales. Chocolate and Black malts go on to provide the backbone of the dark, syrupy beers: Stouts, Porters, and Black IPAs.

One of the reasons that Industrially produced conglomerate beer comes off as weak and watery is that it is very, very cheap to substitute up to (and sometimes beyond) thirty percent of what should be malted barley with sweet corn, rice, or straight-up sugar. This leaves one with a beer of little backbone or flavor character, and is what gives massive production beer a bad name. At the same time, it is one of the elements in the industry that enables them to price a six-pack that retails at five bucks, and trains the customer base to understand beer as being mildly flavored water with alcohol in it.

A fine thing on the one hand for the beer industry versions of Wal-Mart, but a very, very bad thing to a Beer Geek, or anyone looking to become one. It*s like handing someone a glass of grape juice and calling it wine.

This in no way keeps them from being delicious.

Finely roasted malts, even the more lightly roasted ones, add to the body of the beer on the texture side of things, and affect the sweet-detecting portion of the palate on the flavor aspect of consuming them. Extra Special Bitters – ESBs – usually a toffee-colored amber, are the lowest on the spectrum of what are considered malty beers. This in no way keeps them from being delicious. Lacking the heaviness of the hugely malted stouts and porters, the ESBs are characterized by a complex flavor of caramel and toffee, just slightly sweet with an extremely smooth mouth-feel undercut by a pleasant hop bite on the finish.

Porters confused me for a long time, until I finally bothered to read more on the history of beer and talk to a lot of brewers. Most brewers, when I asked them what the difference was between Stouts and Porters (both are malty as hell, both are black as night), told me that the primary difference is that Porters are slightly lighter bodied and sharper-flavored, rather than smoother and sweeter. While that is functionally true, the difference between stouts and porters is that they were originally the same beer: a dark beer popular with London river porters. In true commercially competitive fashion, different brewers started calling their beers brand-specific names, like Extra-Porter, Superior-Porter, Double-Porter, and lastly, Stout-Porter. The Stout-Porter was wildly popular because it had higher alcohol content than the other recipes, and eventually the name Porter dropped off and Stout Beer became its own thing. And all of this name-changing and brand-refining took place way back in the 1700s! Obviously, distinctions between beer have been important to people for a long, long time. While fundamentally siblings, or at the least, first cousins, the American craft brew world has turned them into two distinct beers classes, and as has been said before: those minor differences are a very, very good thing.

The Stout-Porter was wildly popular because it had higher alcohol content than the other recipes…

More heavily roasted malts contribute to Stouts, which, while a vast category of beer, are most recognizable to folks on this side of the Pond because everyone knows what Guinness is (thank you, Ireland!). Stouts are most often characterized as creamy, silky smooth, with a heavy, sometimes bready mouthfeel. The flavor is generally sweeter than that of ESBs, with deep notes of dark chocolate, dark coffee, and chicory. Stouts that are aged in new oak barrels adopt many of the qualities of red wine that is aged in new oak, namely, an undercurrent and flavor-backbone of vanilla. Becoming more common amongst the fringe beer-brewers in this great nation of beer geeks is taking that a step further, and aging stouts in Bourbon barrels. The results are amazing.

Which are the beers you need to know, and why?

Extra Special Bitters:

ESBs are often a dark amber or even mildly ruby-hued brew, with light to no head, that smell immediately boozy upon opening. Do not allow this to fool you: Smelling boozy and tasting boozy are different things, and with ESBs, the aroma actually contains more punch to the nose than the flavor does to the tongue. The great thing about ESBs is that the malt body, built with combinations of the paler malts, brings out a carmelized sugar flavor while avoiding the heaviness that you get with beers brewed with chocolate and black malts. The result is a beer of shocking smoothness, medium body, and a deliciously conflicting flavor of both the sweet and the bitter from the final hop addition. ESBs are not a commonly produced beer stateside, but are a staple in the U.K. Here are some of the finest.

Fullers ESB from Fullers Ales, London, United Kingdom

This Extra Special Bitter is recognized both largely and often as the quintessential ESB. It has won countless awards (probably not…they are probably countable, it is just a thing that I have not done) the world over, and is widely available throughout the entire US and UK. Golden in color, with a rich malt sweetness, tangy citrus notes, and a finish of black pepper, this beer is certainly one by which to measure others of this category. At 5.9% ABV, a six-pack of bottles runs about $9. In some few places, you can find it in the strange UK sized singles that are 24 .oz, and run about $4 each.

Boont ESB from Anderson Valley Brewing Company, California

As far as domestic ESBs go, this one from Anderson Valley is nearly addictive! Caramel sweet malt notes, with a balanced hint of toasted rye bread and pipe tobacco (and no, I am not kidding), finished with a delicately citrus hop blend that ends with notes of orange peel and fresh-mown hay. Obviously, from the tasting notes, this is one complex beer, but so smoothly drinkable that you can down four or five of them just getting to the nuanced textures. It hits 6.8% ABV, and retails around $11 a six-pack. It is available up and down both coasts, the upper Midwest, and parts of the South.

Stouts

For me personally, Stouts are big, heavy, oftentimes sweet beers that I associate with cold weather: I like there to be snow on the ground, or at the very least a deeply overcast sky and low temperatures before I consider it to be good Stout weather. At the same time, I know many Beer Geeks who are solely dark beer fans, and all weather is Stout weather for them. Wherever you fall on the spectrum of when it is a good time for Stouts, here are two fantastic domestic Stouts that should not be missed the next time you are in the mood for a great dark beer.

Kalamazoo Stout from Bell’s Brewery, Michigan

Pour Stouts into a glass. Period. No drinking from the bottle, no drinking from the can. They need to open up, to breathe, to develop in a glass for about five minutes before you even take your first sip, and Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout is a great example of this. Straight from the neck of the bottle and into your mouth, you lose a whole lot of flavor that just five short minutes of patience would have gotten you: This beer pours out black, with a short tan head that dissipates quickly, and an aroma of coffee and dark chocolate that really gets noticeable after it has sat for a minute or so. Not the heaviest of the stouts, when you take a sip the medium body on this beer accentuates its smoothness and its low carbonation point makes it leave a creamy mouthfeel on the swallow. Bell’s is widely available, although mostly in wine stores and craft beer markets, and not so much in your average supermarket. This beer sits at a comfortable, drink-more-than-one ABV of 6.0%, and a six-pack runs about $12.

Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout from North Coast Brewing Company, California

This is one of the first really powerful stouts that I tried, and now, fifteen years later, I find that it still holds up to that initial BLOWS-YOUR-MIND moment. This brew pours thick and syrupy, with a crisp, inch-high head that fades quickly and gives off an aroma of burnt dark chocolate and the whiff of strong booze. This beer’s genius is in its balance, as all of the coffee, chocolate, and sweet malt flavors hit you right up front, but the boozy alcohol on the nose is nowhere in the taste, and instead the beer swallows on a nice sharp finish. North Coast Brewing Company beers are available in nearly all fifty states (their interactive map on their website is pretty funny, as I found when I hunted for states where it was not available: It just tells you to check neighboring states, except for Alaska, where it just says Sorry.), and not just retail but in many of the better bars that have craft beer on tap. Be careful with this un-killable Russian mystic, though, as its ABV is 9%. In most retail environments a four-pack of bottles is $8.

This beer’s genius is in its balance…

Porters

There are a number of very good domestically produced Porters out on the market, but most of the ones that I drink and recommend are, sadly, local to the DC Metro area and therefore would be kind of unfair to write about (but not unfair to mention: Port City Porter and D.C. Brau Porter are two of the most outstanding examples of this type of beer that I have had in years, and they are both new as of 2011, but, sadly, are only really available in a radius of about thirty miles) for a web-based audience. That having been said, there are two Porters that deserve mention and praise, and everyone should be able to get to at least one of them regardless of where in the U.S. you are.

Founders Porter from Founders Brewing Company, Michigan

This Porter is the darkest, silkiest, most threatening Porter that I have ever had…and I say all of that in a good sense! This beer is like a cool fall day suddenly filling up with slate-grey thunderheads that you just know contain sheet-lightning and lashing rain. It pours jet-black with almost no head, chocolate and wet, just-turned earth on the nose, a mouthfeel like iced espresso with just a drop of cream in it, and a kick at the end from flavor blend of some of the most delicately roasted malts that are out there. The logo on the six-pack reads Dark. Rich. Sexy. I cannot possibly put it better myself. This delicious beer is available in the Upper Midwest, the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and sits at a smooth-buzz ABV of 6.5%. A six-pack runs $10-$12.

Smoked Porter from Stone Brewing Co., California

What is better than a smooth beer redolent of dark chocolate? According to Stone, smoking the roasted barley malt in the final malt processing, and creating a beer that tastes like dark chocolate and bacon! Smoke-beers, or Rauchbier, are an old German brewing tradition that is slowly becoming more common amongst fringe Beer-Geek brewers in the U.S., and Stone, always at the top of the quality game, has stayed true to form with this quirky yet delicious addition to their lineup. Like all Porters, this pours black, has an aroma of chocolate-chip pancakes and sizzling bacon, and drinks sharper than many Porters in its mouthfeel, but still swallows very, very smooth. Stone beers are available up and down both coasts, and through the Midwest east of the Mississippi. This beer is available on-tap (but this is rare) and in 22 .oz Bombers, and has an ABV of 5.9%. A Bomber runs around $5-$8.

What is better than a smooth beer redolent of dark chocolate?

…and that wraps up lush, sweet, malty beers, both amber and dark! I hope at least one of these calls out to your sense of taste and adventure, and that maybe somewhere in this great beer hunt that is adult life, you are constantly finding new favorites!

Until next time…Cheers!