Among the winos on this board, I figure there ought to be a few alers, so...
I tried Arrogant Bastard ale yesterday, a dark brew. The only thing I noticed was a strong burnt taste, like french roast coffee. I can't say it was pleasant, though at least it got a rise out of my taste buds, unlike Coors dish washing liquid.
Does this character indicate malty or hoppy?
I'm not much of an ale drinker, but it sounds to me like they gave the malt a dark roast, as they do with Porter and Stout.
HTH Mark Lipton
Perhaps.
But those normally have a sweet taste, where this had none. How do they impart that sweetness, anyhow?
The roasting process breaks down the starch in the grain to give glucose and other small sugars, all of which taste sweet to us (and which the yeast converts into alcohol). Whether the ale tastes sweet or not will depend on how efficiently the sugars to alcohol. It occurs to me that some of the higher sugars like maltodextrin probably can't be metabolized by yeast, so maybe they account for the sweetness of Porter (stout doesn't taste very sweet to me but YMMV). Maybe the roasting that produces this ale doesn't produce much maltodextrin, or maybe they add an enzyme that converts maltodextrin to glucose.
Mark Lipton
Sometimes brewers will even add dextrin malts for body and sweetness.
Also, the temperature at which they mash the grains, as well as the water-to-grain ratio of the mash will affect the sweetness in the beer. Without getting into details of various types of amylase, a higher mash temperature will favor the production of more brached carbohydrate chains, which are generally less fermentable, favoring a sweeter, more malty beer. A stiffer (more concentrated) mash will also contribute towards this style of beer.
The burnt taste likely comes from the use of specialty grains like black patent malt or roasted barley.
I looked at the Arrogant Bastard website. While many brewers are happy to disclose the malts and hops they use in their beers, this one (arrogantly!) refuses to.
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