Common Beer Myths, Debunked

Welcome to “Ask a Beer Pro,” a monthly feature where we ask Greg Engert—the craft-brew maven behind D.C.’s Birch & Barley and ChurchKey, as well as the forthcoming Bluejacket brewery—to help us discover new suds to try. Got a question? Tweet it @churchkeydc and @firstwefeast. Craft beer has enjoyed a meteroric rise in popularity over the last decade or so. That's a great thing, but that rapid ascent in the popular conscience has also meant that consumers have had to learn quickly about things—and sometimes, some shoddy information gets downloaded into the popular consciousness and perpetuated at bars and restaurants around the country. Just as oenophiles are only now beginning to debunk rampant myths—like the idea that you can't drink red wine with fish—thoughtful beer nerds are beginning to question some popular suds wisdom that people have blindly accepted for year. To nip some of these falsehoods in the bud, we asked beer pro Greg Engert to answer the question: What are the most pervasive myths that you see in the beer industry today? And boy, did he go in...prepare to have your world changed.

Over the last few years, craft brewers have exponentially increased the amount of actual beer information included in their promotional materials. Brewery websites, specifically, are increasingly filled with all the minutia of a beer’s production, as well as the best ways to enjoy it. Food pairing suggestions, once sporadically offered, have now become de rigueur, and yet—even as craft beer continues to garner more and more culinary cred—certain questionable pairing pointers abide. Even a cursory glance at food pairing ideas set forth by craft brewers for their IPAs and Pale Ales establishes an overarching notion: hoppy brews are fantastic with spicy foods and spice-heavy cuisines. This match has been around for a long time, and I suppose it made sense in the early days of food and beer pairing; at that time, our zeal to establish craft beer as a viable complement for cuisine and viable alternative to wine may have blinded us to some inconvenient truths. Namely, that hoppy brews—far and away the most wildly popular category in the craft market—are quite often unsuitable for food. As with tannins in wine, the emphatic bitterness derived from heavy hopping rates—and, to be fair, from intensely roasted grain notes as well—tend to overwhelm all but the richest, most protein- and fat-laden of foods. Spicy foods fare no better, as the interaction between the heat of spicy dishes and the bold bitterness of beer (or the aggressive tannins of wine) will cause an increased intensity of both. The hoppy brew and spicy cuisine notion makes some aromatic sense on paper, with the citric, grassy notes of an American IPA certainly dovetailing with the tangy, herbal nuances of Thai or Vietnamese food in the nose, but on the palate, things escalate and get messy, with neither the dish nor the brew maintaining an iota of balance. I think it's high time we stop reaching with IPA pairings. Let’s leave the hoppy ale to dig into the richness of an aged cheese, a slab of pork belly, or that double cheeseburger and come to terms with the irony that the flavor profile most responsible for the boom in craft beer can do little to assist us in our insistence on the marriage of craft beer and food. In the end, there is certainly a cadre of far less sexy styles (the Dunkel lager stands at the forefront) which may be far more prepared for this mission.

The omnipresent pint glass looms large in craft beer culture, a harrowing and steadfast reminder of Big Beer’s past supremacy. Craft beer alternatives to bubbly yellow macrolager may abound these days, yet the pint glass abides, doing no more than narrowly ushering large volumes of grain-based alcohol to one’s mouth. Perfectly suited to the near-flavorless and ice-cold fizz of mass-produced suds, the pint glass strips craft-brewed ales and lagers of so much of their promise; lacking the curvature and stem of a proper goblet or chalice—or of any wine glass for that matter—the pint refuses to propel the alluring aromatic nuances from the glass. The pint glass makes beer easy to drink, but far more difficult to taste. And even as many better bars and restaurants have continued to grow their glassware offerings, encouraging craft beer consideration through tasting, the glasses—particularly those dispensed on draft—are still filled all the way to the top. I am thankful that I can now swirl my craft beer, and nose it more intently, but I still find it puzzling that the beer needs to be delivered as it froths over the rounded edges of a tulip or a snifter. It appears that while we now afford the liquid the proper respect and attention it deserves, we still can’t shake the idea that it is still just beer, and—as such—should deliver some volume…and some value. As we look to really taste craft beer—to examine the nuances of flavor offered by an ever-expanding myriad of styles—we have come to consider cost and alcoholic strength more acutely. The desire to sample rather than guzzle—combined with an understanding of the expense of craft beer production, distribution and service—has led to the rightful ubiquity of shorter pours, smaller glasses by volume, and the availability of tasting sizes. Craft beer drinkers laud the usage of specialized vessels, yet we just can’t seem to get over this need to fill it all the way to the top. Why can’t the airy headspace that allows for the full aromatic enjoyment of beer exist from the start, as it does with wine? Now that we have begun to overcome the need for 16 ounces of beer at a time, delivered through the rudimentary pint glass, surely we can seek out a spacious glass only partially-filled from the first pour? And if not, then why? Are we worried that we will not receive the promised pour by ounces, since a full glass seems to guarantee the reception of an advertised amount? Or is this the last holdout against the presumed wine-ification of beer?

On the one hand, drinking locally brewed beer does make some solid sense. I’ll leave the environmental considerations to another post, or to the comments section below, and attend to the character of the beer, which in many cases can certainly benefit from being consumed closer to its place of origin. Long ago I grew tired of popping oxidized—or even flat-out infected—bottles, and turned to local sixers, whether in D.C. or while traveling about. And this decision went beyond the more obvious flavor flaws I’d encountered; sometimes, the well-traveled brews I sampled were actually quite good, just not as great as they would have been if consumed in their home markets. There was just one problem with this reactionary approach: a lot of local beer is bad. Doing the "right thing" for the relative quality of the brew had led me to eschew beers that might be a shadow of their fresher selves, or worse. But what often times remained was something exceedingly fresh…but just not good. And that is the real danger of the drink local mania that has, and continues to, sweep the nation. Somewhere along the way local became synonymous with high quality and ultimate desirability, engendering an often myopic mission to source and serve only that which is fermented within 30 miles of the bar, restaurant, or beer shop (and that is another topic for another time…what are the real distance parameters for local beer to be local?). But what if that local ale is just not that tasty? Then what? Another issue that stems from drink local mania is the homogeneity of style that pervades. Almost every brewer tends to craft something hoppy, and this Pale Ale or IPA is—more often than not—the biggest seller from that brewery’s arsenal, and often the highest-rated on beer websites. So when a bar or restaurant decides to turn over its taps to locally-brewed beers, a hophead pileup can ensue (this is particularly apparent in bars and restaurants who are flipping their beer programs for a craft-beer angle and feel compelled to stock locals first and foremost; notions of covering various flavor profiles too often become secondary to the all-important local designation). Case in point was a nice Indian restaurant I visited about a year ago. The wine list paid special attention to Rieslings; an obvious nod to that varietal’s pairing prowess with Indian cuisine. The beer list had its own focus as well…you guessed it: local! No determinations based on pairing possibilities, just locally sourced brews—90% of which were at the very least hop-forward and, sadly, worked poorly with the food. Now there are certainly some amazing local brews out there; after all, all beer is local to some place. Seeking out the locally-brewed beers when visiting new locales can yield some mind-blowing experiences, especially when those local brews are not available anywhere else and happen to be world-class (Alpine Beer Company and Lawson’s Finest Liquids are two that come immediately to mind). And I will admit that crisp refreshing brews, like Kolsch and Pilsner, as well as hop-forward brews like IPAs and Pale Ales, require extreme freshness to achieve their full potential. To that end, I no longer stock imported bottles of these styles, knowing that the four to five week travel time—at the very least—from brewery to retailer robs the brews of their flavor essence. Draft versions, on the other hand, can travel quite well, as long as the many hands that touch the kegs throughout the pipeline are committed to its care. I tend to view non-local domestic craft in the same way, and thus the beer lists at my restaurants showcase far more crisp and hoppy brews by percentage on draft than they do in bottle; my bottle lists gravitate much more heavily toward brews that withstand—or even benefit—from some aging: stronger beers, sour ales, etc. Special attention is also paid to bottle-conditioned ales from afar, since those brews are naturally prepared to stave off immediate oxidation. In the end, a beer list of balance is achieved: a myriad of flavor profiles, ABVs, and brewing locales all earning balanced representation. One principle question guides each decision: Am I serving a high quality brew that yield memorable flavor experiences? The local brews that are up to that task are necessarily celebrated, and I often arrive at that conclusion by considering whether or not I would encourage a colleague in another, non-local market to purvey one of my locally-crafted brews. This determination also leaves plenty of room for the other domestic and international craft beers that deserve our attention. And some of those brewers—think Belgians, for instance—may even lack the local market necessary for their survival, let alone growth. By supporting the styles suitable for export from their portfolios, we actually end up keeping local alive in areas where local is far less celebrated.