Glossary
What on Earth is a plumber? – Queen Elizabeth
This is where you’ll find the answers to all your beer terminology questions.
Ales: The oldest method of brewing. Beer is brewed using top fermenting yeast in warmer temperatures. These beers are usually non-transparent and pretty robust in flavour. You might taste Bitterness, Floral, Citrus, Piney, Chocolate, Toffee, Coffee, Malt, Caramel, Grassy, Bready or even Horse Blanket. Yes, I said Horse Blanket.
This horse needs a blanket.
Adjuncts: Garbage that big brewers put in beer instead of Malted Barley. Corn, Sugar cane and rice are all good examples. They are cheaper than barley and have loads of fermentable sugars the only problem is your beer will taste like crap. Luckily for those brewers clever marketing type people are able to convince most of us that we are less of a man if we don’t drink their bland tasteless pap.
Barley: The grain from which Malt is derived. Barley is steeped (wet) for a certain amount of time and tricked into germination. This process converts the starches in the barley into fermentable sugars. The Malted Barley is the roasted in a Kiln to give varying degrees of colour and flavour to the beer.
Belgian Lace: The beautiful lacey head residue left on the inside of your glass as you drink your beer.
Beer: Invented somewhere between 6000 and 10,000 years ago beer has been with humanity for as long as we have had agriculture. The most complex drink on the planet, beer is made from endless combinations of Barley, Hops, Yeast and Water not to mention whatever else you feel like throwing in there. There are hundreds of styles and infinite variety within those styles. Wine pales into insignificance when compared to beer in this respect!
Blanket party: Not related to beer but certainly related to blankets. A blanket party is where any number of individuals throw a blanket over somebody and then proceed to kick the crap out of them.
Bottle conditioned: This is a beer that has a small amount of yeast added to it when bottled. The fermentation will continue in the bottle and these beers can sometimes be stored for years the beer will get more complex with age, only up to a point though. Eventually the beer will go bad.
Cat’s Piss:
See also “Sandbox-Champagne”. A badly produced lager usually found at Frat houses, football games and Cricket matches.
Cheeky:
Aussie / Britt slang for being naughty in an innocent manner. EG: Girlfriend blames her boyfriend for burping at a crowded restaurant when it was actually her.
Girlfriend crashing boyfriends car while drunk and killing somebody and then blaming boyfriend is NOT cheeky. That’s evil…. Dry Hopping: Adding hops to the beer during the fermenting stage for even more hop flavours and aromas.
Esters: Fruity smells and flavours from yeast.
Fortnight: Two weeks. As in – “I’ll see you down the old rub-a Dub Tub for a couple of Britneys on Friday fortnight.” Translation – “I’ll see you at the bar for a couple of beers on Friday two weeks from now.”
Gill:
Pronounced “Jill” is an old Imperial measurement equal to one quater of a pint. Not often used these days unless you are a fan of old drinking songs. Here’s a few lines from an old Scottish one:
” Here’s jolly good luck to the Barrel, good luck to the barley mow - Oh the Barrel, the Half Barrel, the Bushel, the Half bussel, the Gallon, the half gallon, the quart pot, the half quart pot, the pint pot, the half pint pot, the gill pot, the half gill pot, the quater gill pot, the nipperkin and the brown bowl.”
Let’s all learn this song and make it popular again!
Hefe: German word for yeast.
Head:
Something you’ll get more often in your beer glass than from your partner.
Hops: A cone like flower that is full of resin and oils. Within this resin are different types of acids: Alpha Acids and Beta Acids. Alpha acids give you the bittering effect.
The oils: Myrcene, Humulene, Caryophyllene and Farnesene, give a brewer the floral and citrus flavours.
Hops have only been used in beers for about 500 years. Before that beers were flavoured with all sorts of things like Heather, Tree bark, Cloves, and other spices or flowers.
IBU’s ( International Bitterness Units): This is how bitterness in measured in a beer. It is the measurement of Iso-alpha Acids, as parts per million in the beer. Iso-Alpha acids are the hop resin alpha acids that have been boiled and the bitterness has been set free. The human palate apparently cannot taste anything stronger than about 80 IBU’s. Anything above that will simply taste amazingly bitter but there will not be any differing levels of “amazing” beyond this point. At the other end of the scale small differences of about 5 or less IBU’s also are beyond our ability to taste. I guess as we evolved varying degrees of bitterness wasn’t important. If something was bitter even slightly you’d probably get real sick… It’s a shame, I’d love to know what 200 IBU’s really tastes like!
Isinglass:
Swim Bladders of fish that are mashed up and put into beer as a clearing agent. This process is primarily done by only macro breweries or smaller breweries that are owned by huge multinational companies. The pieces of swim bladder attract the spent yeast which clumps together and falls out of the beer. Breweries that use this process claim there is no animal product left in the beer by the time ot gets to you.
Lager: Beer that is brewed using bottom fermenting yeasts at lower temperatures for longer periods of time. Lagers are usually clear. They can range in flavour from Sweet, Caramel, Smoked or Malty to Crisp, Hoppy, and refreshing. There is a lot more to Lagers than the Macro Brewers would have you believe.
Micro Brew: Beer that has been lovingly made with the best ingredients at whatever expense by a brewmaster who loves their beer like a Dingo loves our babies. Usually smaller independently owned breweries although some are large enough to have international distribution.
Macro Brew: Breweries that are so large all they do is cater to the lowest common denominator and make as much money as possible for the shareholders. The quality of the beer is usually terrible as it is filled with Adjuncts like Rice, Corn, Potato or Sugar cane which are all an inexpensive source of fermentable sugars. They make the beer taste very bad in most cases; actually it would be better to say they make the beer tasteless.
Mash: Malted barley that is crushed up and mixed with water.
Nose: The aroma of the beer.
Original Gravity: Density of the Wort compared to water before fermentation begins. It is a measure of the solid matter in the wort.
Pint Glass:
An Imperial Pint, or the original measure from England is 568 ML or 20 FL OZ.
An American Pint is 473 ML or 16 FL OZ.
Shandy:
Half a glass of lager and half a glass of lemonade. Popular with little old English ladies and nancy boys.
Specific Gravity: A measurement of how dense the beer is compared to water. More sugars in the beer gives it a higher gravity. Less sugars and more alcohol in the beer gives it a reduced gravity.
Toast:
A statement of good will towards drinking partner, football team, conquests, day’s of yor, whichever God you happen to worship and future good times.
Here’s an old Irish one:
“May your coffin be made out of 100 year old oak which I will plant tomorrow”
Yeast: Without yeast beer could not exist. It is the yeast that eats the sugars and turns them into alcohol and Co2. There are endless varieties of yeast however they are broken up into three main categories with a fourth slightly wilder cousin.
The Saccharomyces family includes Ale yeasts, Lager Yeasts and Weizen Yeasts.
The Brettanomyces Family are used in more exotic old Belgian styles such as Lambics and give of earthy, grassy or horse-blanket flavours
Yard: A three foot long tubular beer glass with a bulb at the bottom. These were once handed up to coach drivers seated behind their horses. Ex Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke once held the record for drinking a yard glass (Yardie) full of beer. It has now been beaten by a Britt who can do it in 5 seconds.
Wort: Pronounced “Wirt” this is the liquid that is filtered off from the mash. It is basically food for the yeast.
Wine: Fancy drink made from grapes.
