One of the many interesting things about my BJCP study course is its structure.
We begin class with a technical topic presented by a classmate — this weeks’ was malt. Following that, we begin tastings — this week’s were German Lagers. Les White, our class leader, had told us that he structures things this way so there’s some attention paid to the technical topic. Once we’ve gotten a few beers in us, he posits that things always seem to deteriorate into individual conversations, with less attention paid to the task at hand. If Sunday’s class is a fair indicator, I understand the reasoning for putting the technical topic first. Before we even hit the really hard stuff — the Eisbocks at 9 percent plus — topics other than the beer were definitely at hand. The only real drawback to this would seem to be the worry that you might be a bit too tipsy to comfortably drive home after the tastings — especially considering the fact that the bigger beers are always last.
Regardless, Sunday’s technical topic — malt — has to be regarded as the most important component of all beers. To reference one of my early posts, Jim Koch is most definitely wrong in likening hops to the grapes in wine. Malt usually serves as the basis for most of, if not all of the sugars present in the wort that eventually becomes beer. There are defintiely adjuncts — ingredients other than malted barley or wheat — used in the brewing process, but the classic beers are almost always all-malt products.
We learned about the types of barley used in brewing – two row, and six row, the malting process – including how much a grain of barley needs to be “modified,” i.e. how much the acrospire has grown inside the kernel of grain —for ideal mashing, and also how malt is kilned to produce the various colors used in different beer styles. It’s a wealth of information, and really too much to be absorbed in the hour-and-a-half provided for the lecture, much less in a short post on the class.
As I’m studying these technical topics, you readers will get “How Do I Do That?” posts on just how to go about malting your own beer, formulating your own water, growing your own hops, etc. ad nauseum. For the record, I get to present on the almighty yeast organism on April 5th, so you can expect a highly technical “Release the Yeast” shortly thereafter.
Much as I enjoy the technical topics, the fun part of the class is the tastings. This week’s group of styles happens to be one of my favorites: German Lagers. I posted on the legendary Bock beers a while back, and should be brewing one this weekend concurrent with the Märzen I’ll be brewing with Wootown. We tasted a Vienna Lager, A Märzen/Oktoberfest, some Bocks, Doppelbocks, MaiBocks, some scwarzbiers, and the grandaddy of all of them the Eisbock.
I won’t bore you with the tasting details of each style, as I’ll probably do more writing on them individually in the future, but suffice to say these beers are largely darker than the average American beer. They’re more balanced than ales tend to be, with any imbalance characteristically leaning toward the malt, rather than the hops. Most of them make use of the German Noble Hop varieties for bittering, so they have a much more classic aroma than the ales do. They’re bottom fermented with lager yeasts, so they don’t really exhibit much in the way of floral estery flavors and aromas. These are supposed to be relatively clean, smooth tasting beer, and most of the ones we tried were.
The Bocks and Eisbocks all feature a rather up-front alcoholic character — heat, as a judge would describe it, they’re definitely not smooth, and not most my favorite styles. The Märzen — on the other hand — is actually my favorite style, we just didn’t get the best example of it.
I can definitely tell that I’m still developing the part of my brain that works hard to note different flavors in beers, and I worry that my olfactory sense – my sense of smell – isn’t strong enough, or my palate isn’t developed enough to perform as well as other people’s, which may hurt me on the exam unless I do a lot of practicing. The technical topics I can probably ace — I’ve always had an aptitude for remembering details of topics I’m interested in. It’s the tasting portion of the test I’m most nervous about. Given the nature of the kind of practice I’ll need to engage in to improve that, I suppose I ought not complain.
We tasted the following styles and beers:
American Amber Ales:
- Bell’s Amber
- North Coast Red Seal Ale
Vienna Lager
- Negra Modelo
Oktoberfest/Märzen
- Lancaster Oktoberfest
American Dark Lager
- Beck’s Dark
Munich Dunkel
- Ayinger Albairisch Dunkel
- Weltenberger Barock-Dunkel
Schwarzbier
- Einbecker Schwarzbier
- Kostritzer Black Beer
Helles/Maibock
- Einbecker Mai-Ur-Bock
Traditional Bock
- Einbecker Ur-Bock
Doppelbock
- Spaten Optimator
- Etaler Curator Doppelbock
Eisbock
- Kulmbacher Eisbock
- Schneider Aventinus Weizen Eisbock
Tags: Beer Judge Classes, BJCP, German Lagers, Malt
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[...] wrote about malting a little bit in a post about the first BJCP class. You may notice the slight difference in the title from previous “How do I do that?” [...]