Beer is More Complicated Than Wine

You ought to travel more, man...

Okay... if we do know (and if we're on rfdb, we are serious and we do), why are you trying to tell us all this? Why not go tell someone who doesn't know?

We do believe that. And for better reasons.

Saying the two main classes of wine are red and white is like saying the main difference between ale and lager is top- vs. bottom-fermenting. It leaves out all the important stuff in the name of shorthand.

Beer gone sour is alegar. Look it up, dunce. And lambic is so much more than "beer gone sour."

Not originally. And "sometimes" covers your ass rather neatly, doesn't it?

Know why? Ever see a map of the tongue?

Piffle. "big, easy-to-find European power" France may be, Belgium is the freaking headquarters of NATO and the location of Waterloo. People who passed the 8th grade know where it is. And classic beers also come from Germany and the UK, both of which are quite easy to find even when your head's up your arse.

What losers they would be, since "cat pee" is one way of referring to the aromas caused by being light-struck, a regrettably frequent flaw in beer. Not to mention that beer aficionados will also refer to "barnyard" and "horse blanket" when intelligently discussing lambics...note they won't be saying "mmmm, this lambic tastes like beer gone sour."

The difference between the wine and beer is hard to find here. Better work on this one, too, Cicero.

Didn't you say something about all kinds of ingredients in brewing? The fruitiness in some beers comes from ... fruit. I'd tend to doubt that ALL the fruitiness in wines comes from fruit, too.

For one thing, if the canned and draft wine did taste different, that would be yet another example of your ignorance.

But please, spout on. After all, we're all just beer drinkers with opinions around here, why not you, too?

Nobody ever says "alegar", except complete prats. Malt vinegar, yes, but alegar never. Rarely, maybe.

It's not "gone sour" either, as I think it gets sour before it becomes beer.

Beer's more complicated because you don't always know what it is, I think. "Pale ale" might be true to style, or might just be something else that some suit decided to call a pale ale.

Anyway, like most top ten lists, it was sorta funny, a bit, but not generally true.

The point was not to speak to the common vocabulary, the point was to pierce this pricklet. But I've seen it referred to in print as "alegar" more than once. I saw it, I looked it up. Perfectly useful word, and more linguistically precise than "malt vinegar." Just because it's right, we shouldn't use it? Christ, with an attitude like that we'll be down to Basic English in another ten years. It's a rich language: celebrate it, flex it, use it. Do yourself a favor, subscribe to Wordsmith.org's A Word A Day e-letter:

Tricky to pinpoint it, as the 'souring' is part and parcel of its' "becoming beer." The other half of the trick is...define "going sour." If something is meant to be sour/tart, does it "go" sour, or does it "achieve proper sourness?"

I'm not sure about that at all; that would seem to make wine more precise, which I don't believe it is. Beer "styles" are snapshots of a moving band of characteristics. Your second sentence here is unfortunately true, to some extent.

Sorta, and somewhat it was sorta funny in how it was not generally true/accurate.

Good to see you tilting at the trolls again, "Gunther."

I don't believe that. Beer is the most complicated beverage out there? Bah. I'll throw Hirsch 16 y.o. up against any beer for complexity. And more finely nuanced than wine? Wine's all about the nuance in many cases - part of the reason, incidentally, that many beer drinkers don't "get" wine, IMO.

-Steve

Is it beer at conception or at bottling/kegging? Some believe it's beer as soon as grain and water are combined, others not until it's put into its delivery container. And at what point can you terminate the process? Is it unjust to stop the process before the yeast is added? Mid-fermentation? Or no stopping once the mash starts?

I'd say in its nomenclature wine in *some* ways is more precise. You often have the variety of grape used (how many beers are named after the variety of barley or hop?), the precise area where it's made, etc. If you go by the German labels, it's painfully precise.

-Steve

Yeah, me too, in a book on cider. But it's an archaism, like calling everyone "cousin" or saying "prithee".

I think it "sours", or maybe just "ferments".

It does sort of ignore that, say "Chablis" might be a dry sharp Burgundy wine or might be a semidry soft white California (sometimes jug or box) wine.

Yeah, and also I think anything that tries to set beer enthusiasts against wine enthusiasts is doomed, since pretty much everyone I know who appreciates good beer also likes good wine.

It'sa pizza as soona you put-a you fist in the dough!

German is by its nature painful and precise.

Mr TOM KAN PA needs to give credit to the original author for this article.

Mr TOM KAN PA needs to give credit to the original author for this article.

____Reply Separator_____ I did!

"The Case for the Complexity of Beer"

Steve Beaumont's World of Beer

June 2003

It has to have fermented noticeably to be beer. Before that it's wort.

-- Joel Plutchak Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"Resorting to personal harassment is a tactic of desperation."

Jeez, not this again.

Look, "balance" is not a single thing. An American-style IPA is not unbalanced for style just because hop flavor and bitterness dominate other parameters. That's what the beer is supposed to be.

Just yesterday I was at a tasting where we had something like 18 different Belgian and Belgian-style beers. The single most unbalanced beer in the whole thing was a Belgian dubbel, which had too much alcohol in the aroma and flavor. By contrast, a US-brewed tripel was one of the nicest beers there.

-- Joel Plutchak Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"Resorting to personal harassment is a tactic of desperation."

Eh, I've encountered narrow-minded snobs on both sides of that particular fence.

-- Joel Plutchak Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"Resorting to personal harassment is a tactic of desperation."

Lambics existed before they became popular in the US. The US has a few more people in it than does Belgium. Is the per capita consumption of "overly sour" lambics higher in the US or in Belgium? What it looks like is that the data doesn't support your assertion, it's still the fault of those ugly Americans and their unbalanced ways. I don't buy it.

-- Joel Plutchak Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"Resorting to personal harassment is a tactic of desperation."

Pfft. Beaumont. What a pretentious, blinkered, wooden-palated, agenda-driven tool. No wonder that list read like unmitigated bullshit when I read it.

Stotz

-- "Having lived in Rhode Island most of my life, I have never had much of a problem enjoying a diverse sampling of cuisines from around the world." -- []