The Rise of Craft Beers

01 Dec 2011

Beer drinkers are going local. Shunning commercialised pints from large breweries, they are veering towards obscure labels and vintage styles as they discover new ways to imbibe better, bolder and more flavourful brews. CAMPER ENGLISH takes a swig of the tipple of choice.

OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Forget lager. Rustic, forgotten beer styles are all the rage now. Around the world, beers brewed locally are coming back into fashion. In particular, trappist brews – beers brewed in monasteries under the supervision of monks – such as Chimay and La Trappe are offering drinkers a refreshing experience. Other “abbey ales” are brewed in the same style, and often labelled as Dubbels and Tripels – medium and full-bodied beers with a good level of effervescence – boasting saintly-sounding names like St. Bernardus and Maredsous.

BARLEY WINE

This English-style beer boasts a high alcohol content, anywhere from eight to 14 per cent. The high proof helps these beers last (time in the bottle also mellows them out), and collectors sometimes store such beers to compare vintages. Barley Wine festivals are held in San Francisco, California and Anchorage, Alaska, at individual microbreweries in the colder months when these high-proof beers provide warmth along with refreshment.

BARREL-AGED BEER

These are aged for anywhere from a couple of months to a few years in barrels that used to hold whisky or wine, whose notes are infused into the beer. Scotch, bourbon, cabernet and pinot noir barrels are used for bottling – try Widmer Brothers’ Barrel Aged Brrrbon and Jai Alai White Oak IPA. They are also higher in alcohol (10-12 per cent) to prevent spoilage as they age.

SAISON AND LAMBIC

Saison beers are a near extinct style of seasonal ale from Belgium originally brewed in winter for consumption in summer. Usually described as earthy, grassy, peppery and sometimes sour, they are complex and subtle beers that pair well with food. Other newly popular sour styles are Lambic beers, naturally fermented with wild yeast and gueuze, a blend of young and old Lambics.

BEER ENHANCEMENTS

In retaliation against the light, watered-down, international-style beers, craft brewers are taking beer flavour and strength to extremes.

BITTER BEER

This style, which includes the likes of Double IPAs (India Pale Ales) and American Strong Ales, uses a large amount of bitter hops. Hops are flower clusters of a species of the hop plant that’s been found to be a great preservative for beer, helping it last longer in the days before refrigeration. Today, extremely bitter beers (measured in International Bittering Units or IBU that range from 1 to 100) like Pliny the Elder and Racer 5 have become popular, especially in the US, where you’ll find self-labelled hopheads debating the merits of wet versus dry hops and those grown in different regions in the world.

FLAVOURED BEER

While it may sound like a modern innovation, brewers have been adding fruit and spices to beer for as long as it’s been around. Several brands like Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada from the US now release annual holiday-edition beers flavoured with spices like clove and nutmeg. Smoked beers are made from malt smoked over a flame, imparting the ashy taste found in Islay whiskies. Newer flavoured beers come infused with a wide range of food-inspired ingredients, including anything from candy cap mushrooms to lemongrass and bacon.

HIGH ALCOHOL BEER

A trend across categories, this includes everything from barley wine to IPA, with brewers going all out to outdo each other. America’s Samuel Adams brewery released the 27-per-cent-alcohol Utopias beer, which inspired Scottish brewery BrewDog’s super-boozy bottlings like The End of History with 55 per cent alcohol (vodka and whisky are about 40 per cent), topped only by Dutch brewery Brouwerij ’t Koelschip’s Start the Future at 60 per cent.