The Thirsty Hopster

• Elysian Brewing Company (brewpub) – Friday night
• UW Tailgate – Saturday morning
• Washington Beer Commission Oktoberfest – Saturday afternoon
• Brouwer’s (beer bar) – Saturday evening. 

I think it is safe to say that after the day we had yesterday, there will be no more beer drinking today.

Elysian Brewing Company, Capital Hill, Seattle, WA

This was one of the best brewpubs I have ever sampled. I think it may be rivaled only by Bridgeport in Portland and Magnolia in San Francisco.

The crowd was: me, Allie, Melissa, Julia, & later Michael. I ordered the sampler tray, which came with 5 tastes: 3 of their regular pours, a seasonal, and a ‘bartender’s choice’. Usually when bars serve a sample that doesn’t include all of their beers – they leave off the good ones and sneak in their pilsner, something decent, and something experimental that they push onto sampler trays because no one wants to order a full glass of it. Not at Elysian!

This tray came with:

• The Immortal IPA
• The Wise ESB
• Perseus Porter
• Bartender’s Choice: Bete Blanche Belgian Trippel
• Seasonal: Night Owl Pumpkin Ale

Each beer was better than the last. I wasn’t taking formal notes, but I can tell you that I don’t need notes to remember that every beer was impressive. The Pumpkin Ale managed to be very pumpkin-y and spicy, without losing its beer-ness. It was not one of the most spiced pumpkin beers I’ve had, but the spice flavors weren’t subtle or hidden either, it definitely struck the right balance in the spice department. Julia says it is now her #1 favorite beer; I just hope she can find a replacement for it before the season ends.

Given my biases, it is probably no surprise that I loved the ESB best. I just think a well-made ESB very hard to top. IPAs don’t have the same depth of malt flavor, and ambers and nut browns taste cloying after the crisp hop zing of an ESB.

That said, I would be hard pressed to call a single style my favorite. But I can tell you that this is my favorite beer time of year because 1) There are so many well done pumpkin ales, 2) porters and stouts are finding their ways back onto the taps but the IPAs are still around, and 3) it’s marzen season!

I don’t know why so many breweries seem to have more success in the fruit/vegetable beer department with pumpkin than they do with fruit. I think a lot of the fruit beers end up sickeningly sweet, puckeringly sour, or distressingly more like soda than beer. Maybe it is because the pumpkin pie flavor is more spicy and savory than sweet, but pumpkin ales seem to be the novice brewer’s best shot at getting it right.

UW Tailgate

Not much to report here. Of course, there were the obligatory coolers full of keystone. And of course, we anticipated this and packed a backpack full of: Kona’s Wailua Wheat, Laughing Dog Huckleberry Ale, New Belgium’s 1554, North Coast’s Old #38, and some cider for Melissa.

I was bummed because I was wearing my new North Coast t-shirt and 2 minutes after I got to the tailgate I bit into a sausage that ended up being a lot juicier than I anticipated. I not only burned my face, but got a stain right on the front of my shirt. Luckily, I had anticipated something along these lines, given that this was a tailgate after all, and was wearing the North Coast shirt at the tailgate because I was saving my Magic Hat shirt for later.

Washington Beer Commission Oktoberfest

The BEST beer event I have ever been to. Ok, sure, the SF International Beer Festival has more selection, but it is so crowded and stuffy, and fratty. This was outdoor in Saint Edwards State Park, and it was a BEAUTIFUL day. At their longest, lines for beer were 2–3 people long, but most booths had no line most of the time. There were 30 different breweries, each serving 2 beers, and since all the breweries were from Washington, there were very few that I had tried before, so there were more than enough new beers to try. The best part is that almost every brewery was serving a fall seasonal brew of some kind, be it pumpkin or marzen, but the breweries were serving a wide variety of styles on their second taps.

Plus, we got some tasty brats and beef stroganoff at the Wooly Wooly Good Food Hungarian stand. Though as the Seattleites noted, we were missing the Wallingford Wurst Festival, which was regrettable considering the considerable effort the Wurst committee had put into plastering Fremont with posters for their event, and the effort Allie had expended in reading the posters every time she drove by them for the past month.

We tried 30 beers all together, but I only have notes on 18 beers. I imagine you can understand how it might get hard to be precise from beer 19 onward. When possible, we tried to drink similar beers head to head for comparison.

HARVEST ALES

These are generally faux-Oktoberfest beers. They aim for a marzen (Oktoberfest) taste brewed into an ale rather than a lager. They are closest to amber/red/pale ales with the toasty malt character of marzens and moderate to high hops. We tried:

• Hale’s: Best of the harvest ales, with a nice lacey head, rich red coloring, and grapefruit hop flavor
• Boundary Bay: Dark amber, maltiest of the bunch with good toast flavor, with an after flavor like a brown ale
• Water Street: Light amber, very hoppy, but watery and bland (despite the hops)

MARZENS / OKTOBERFESTS

So, I may have to eat (or drink, as appropriate) my own words about lagers, because I love marzens. But, they are darker and richer than most lagers, with higher alcohol content, and much fuller flavor.

They are malty, with a mildly sweet toasted malt flavor. They best part is that they don’t have the cloying malt sweetness of a Dubbel or a Bock. The German versions have mild to moderate hope flavor, but California versions are often a lot hoppier (perhaps creating the resemblance to ESBs that makes me love these so much).

We tried the following, but sadly, I have no notes. 

• Alpine
• Anacortes
• Baron
• Fish
• Ram
• Skagit

PUMPKIN ALES

• Elliot Bay: Sweet, both very pumpkin-y and very spicy
• Elysian: See above for a full description, very pumpkin-y, moderately spicy

PORTERS

We tried:

• Harmon Vanilla: fantastic! This had delicious strong vanilla flavor, full of spice, almost chai-like, with subtle carbonation
• Snoqualmie: best of the traditional porters, with big body, slight refreshing acidity, and a moderate coffee flavor; this was Julia’s favorite as well
• Flyer’s: very carbonated and dry, but not very flavorful
• Snipes: dry and very nutty with high carbonation and subtle chocolate flavor

OTHER DARK BEERS

• Iron Horse Quilter’s Irish Death (sweet stout): I fully believe this was what it was supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure I’m not a huge fan of what it was supposed to be. It was SO sweet, and thick, it was kind of sickening.
• Northern Lights Chocolate Dunkel: This had a great noticeable chocolate flavor, but it didn’t taste like a dunkel, much more like a porter. I loved a good dunkel and this just didn’t have the characteristics of true German dunkels, it could have been any dark beer.
• Pike Double Brown Ale: This was a solid but not special beer, with good nut flavor
• Port Townsend Black Bart: This was horrendous! It was extremely sour, like something gone rotten. I’ve looked it up online, but it is neither on their website, nor Beer Advocate. It was supposed to be a dark German ale. I guess it was supposed to be a dunkel, but whatever it was, it was bad!

DOUBLE IPAS

• Ram Hop King: Best of the IPAs! Full bodied with balanced hops with carbonation that is lively but not so strong to distract from the tasted of the beer.
• Water Street Balls to the Wahlstrom: This was ok, but it had a few flaws, and there are so many GREAT IPAs that I see no reason to drink it again. It had a bitter/sour aftertaste and a watery taste up front and no fragrant hops smell

AMBERS

• Maritime Nightwatch Dark Amber: My notes are barely intelligible on this one. All I wrote are dark amber color, low carbonation, moderate malt flavor.
• Mac & Jack’s African Amber: Unremarkable. Moderate malt flavor, caramel-y. High carbonation.

OTHER

• Iron Horse Saison Farmhouse Ale: Light and delicious, deceptively high in alcohol content. This was the most drinkable saison I’ve ever had. The server (who was quite attractive, enough to make me go back for my only seconds of the day) explained that they purposely aimed to make a less syrupy and high alcohol beer than a typical saison so that it could be served in more restaurants.

Brouwer’s

I expected to love this place, but it had its ups and downs. The space was nice, not too crowded or loud. The french fries were really good, and the waitress was very attentive.

The beer list was extensive, but uneven. They had about 50+ beers on tap, but they were almost all IPAs and variations thereon. I know this was because it was their Hop Festival weekend, and you know I love IPAs, but I believe that they could have spared 10 or 20 taps for a broad variety of styles and still have done the IPA theme quite well with the remaining 30+ taps. I mean, we spent all afternoon drinking beer and we didn’t manage to taste more than 30 beers during that time, so I fail to see the point in having only 50+ IPAs on tap and only 3 or 4 token non-IPAs.

The bottled list was several pages long in small print, but it was almost entirely Belgians, without descriptions or categorization. Unless the beer’s name described the style, or you were familiar with the beer, there was no way to tell what you might be ordering. This might not have been so bad, but attentive as the waitress was, she knew nothing about beer, so she wasn’t very helpful in navigating the beer list.

A fantastic start, but it’d be a hell of a lot better with more selection beyond IPAs and Belgians, and more information about the beers on their list.

Allie, Melissa, Julia & I met up with Julia’s roommate Andrew and her friend Stephanie. Ziad and his Scottish friend, whose name I feel terrible about not remembering at this moment, joined us after the first round.

I had an IPA whose name I didn’t catch when the waitress recommended it. It was ok, but weak. The hops could have been more fragrant and it lacked any kind of malt backbone whatsoever.

I finished with the Petrus Tripel. It was tasty, but I barely remember as it was the very end of a long beer-filled day.

Anyway, thank you Seattle! I will be back soon!

And now, I am off to see 3:10 to Yuma…mmm…Christian Bale….

Installment IV: 9/02/2007
Eureka, CA, to Fort Bragg, CA

It is time for a month overdue update on the penultimate leg of our brewery tour. I have given up for lost on my Six Rivers notes, though Allie informs me that she hasn’t cleaned out the Volvo in the time since the trip (a feat of procrastination in itself), so they may well still be out there somewhere.  I would just like to make two final notes before moving on from Installment III of the trip:

First, we stopped at She-She’s, a tiny diner outside Hiouchi in the midst of the Redwood State and National Parks. This was the same place I had stopped for milkshakes with Kate and Julia, and we had loved the shakes and the kind, elderly proprietor so much that I “suggested” (read: “forced”) the brew group to return. While my chocolate-banana shake was awesome, and the proprietor was a sweet (and slow) as ever, unfortunately a creepy middle-aged guy at the counter cast a pall over this stop. He had an inordinate amount of questions about who we were and where we were going, that all agreed were not asked in the friendly-small town manner but in the manner of a lecherous pedophile. So we scooted out of She-She’s and on down the road, which brings me to my second point…

This marked the 3rd time of the 3 times I’ve driven the Northern California coast that I have been denied the opportunity to discover the mystery behind the Trees of Mystery in Klamath, California. All I ask is that once in my life I arrive in time to do more than sit on the foot of the 50 foot statue of Paul Bunyan and take photos in front of the enormous balls of the Babe the Blue Ox statue. This tourist trap (which actually contains a highly legit collection of Native American artifacts that practically sent Julia into spasms of joy last time I traversed this route) promises mystery on billboards running for ~50 miles to the north and south, and to this day it tortures me that I’ve no idea what it is about the trees of Klamath that are so compelling.

Eel River Brewing Company (Fortuna, CA)

We began our day of tasting at Eel River, a certified organic brewery. Really it is a brewpub rather than a brewery, but I believe that only the beer, and not the food is organic. In fact, I just went online and checked this and they are America’s first certified organic brewery. In any case, we were delighted to discover that Eel River was immediately adjacent to the lovely Super8 in which we had spent the night. Or rather, we would have been delighted had we realized this immediately, rather than driving the length and breadth Fortuna first.

But a really shouldn’t complain because:
1) Eel River wasn’t open when we woke up and there is only so much time you can spend hanging out in a Super8 room before getting depressed
2) In our driveabout we found a knock-off Super8 called National 9 that used roughly the same coloring and style in its logo as does Super8. Finding the Super9 cheered us up because it looked infinitely more run-down and yet had no vacancies. We felt superior to all the Super9 residents.
3) We found a truly awesome breakfast place called Deb’s Grapevine Bistro. We split omelets full of avocado and chicken-apple sausage, and blintzes covered in “razzleberry” sauce.
4) We killed some time before Eel River opened by lying out in a nice park in downtown Fortuna.

All together, not a bad morning.

Unfortunately, while I can also say with enthusiasm that we enjoyed our time spent at the Eel River brewpub, no part of this enthusiasm is due to the beer. The tasting tray only came with 4 beers and most of what beers they did have were a far cry from the best and the brightest beers of the trip, we’ll give the Porter a pass. In fact, the highlight of the experience was definitely the beer battered artichoke hearts and trying to guess the nationalities of the various flags hanging from the ceiling (a favored pastime among erstwhile geography nerds). We tried:

EPA (organic): A golden beer with high carbonation and pine-y green flavor
IPA (organic): As Nick so aptly put it, this one has “tonsil-choking hops”. I have to agree that although it starts out well with a nice toffee flavor, it soon gets overly aggressive and throttles your tongue with unnecessary hops
Porter (organic): One of our favorite porters of the trip. Nick, Allie, and I all end up ordering a pint. It has high carbonation and a cola-like flavor.
Hazelnut Porter: To predict fans vs. foes of this beer, one need only ask a single question: “How do you feel about Nutella?” The hazelnut flavor was SO strong that I’m certain this is what Nutella would taste like if it were carbonated and less past-like in consistency. I loved the strength of the hazelnut flavor, but it had a bitter aftertaste that stayed on the tongue after drinking that made the whole beer seem off.

And so, after the somewhat lackluster experience at Eel River, it was not so difficult to peel ourselves away and start out journey through the Avenue of Giants. This is a 35 mile stretch of California Redwoods that contains some of the tallest trees on earth. This prompted me to attempt to lead the car in versus of “This Land is Your Land”, sung in a round. Unfortunately, no one else was enthusiastic about this activity.

What we were enthusiastic about was roadside blackberry picking. After stopping at a roadside stand to pick up some sweet corn, and being dismayed to find no blackberries, we were informed by the proprietors that 100 yards up the road were all the free blackberries we could pick. We each spent about 20 minutes going about this and mostly just ate what we picked immediately. I saved some in a bag with the intent of making a pie, but later in the car they soon became so squished that I decided that rather than fighting entropy I’d just squish the rest into a pulp and spend the next half hour trying to pour blackberry juice out of a ziploc and into my mouth without getting it all over the rest of my face. This met with moderate success.

We also stopped at a riverside beach to take a swim since it was a gorgeous day. Nick reminisced about learning to swim here as a child, but we started to doubt the veracity of these stories after he said this about each subsequent river we passed. “No, it was here. This is where I learned to swim.” Sure, Nick, whatever. We were eventually driven back into our vehicle by vicious sandstorms stirred up by gusts of wind along the riverbank.

Finally, we also stopped to walk around and take in some of the trees from outside the windows of our car. This is also where we met some of the oddest tourists I’ve ever encountered in my life. The first was a two middle aged couples walking towards our group, traversing the nature loop in the opposite direction. We wanted a picture with all of us in it, so as they approached, I held out the camera and asked ever-so-sweetly, “Excuse me, but would you mind taking a picture of us?” Not only did they not take our picture, but they refused to even acknowledge that I had asked, marching onward stone-facedly. Now, even if English is not their first language, the extended camera is a universally understood gesture. How else would the Japanese couples that blanket Harvard Yard every fall be able to take home so many pictures of themselves proudly rubbing the oft-urinated upon foot of John Harvard? (Unfortunately the warning “You may not want to touch that as it is quite likely a dozen guys peed on it last night” doesn’t translate as well as “Will you take a photo of us beside this lovely statue?”). Thus, rebuffed by the first group we encountered, we continued walking.

I knew we had found someone who would take our picture when we came upon a sweaty, shirtless, paunchy, middle-aged man asked us to take a photo of him. First oddity about this man: his appearance. Second oddity: his wife was just sitting in the car doing nothing as he frolicked about the redwoods. Third oddity: he had very precise ideas about how I ought to take the picture. He stood exactly where he wanted me to stand, held the camera up to a very particular spot, and adjusted my arm when I took the camera from him because, god forbid, the camera had moved a millimeter or two in the transitioning of holders. Whatever. If this is what I had to put up with to get a picture of us, so be it. We gave him no such instructions when it was our turn, but he insisted on taking 3 pictures from various vantage points, which despite his obsession were no better in lighting than what we could have produced ourselves.

After saying goodbye to our friend the photographer, we continued down the coast. We played the Decemberists’ “California One” as we approached the song’s namesake road from the 101 on what we all agreed was the windiest and most vomit-inducing portion of the trip. And we continued to listen to the Decemberists as we approached Fort Bragg, which resulted in what was for me in some very eye-opening (or rather ear-opening) revelations regarding the lyrics of “On the Bus Mall”. Though I love the Decemberists, listen to them devotedly, and think their lyrics are one of the best (if not the best) reasons to listen to their music, somehow the particulars of this song had eluded me until now. Of course I still love the song, but suffice it to say I won’t play it for my grandma any time soon.

We finally reached our destination for the evening, Fort Bragg, and were dismayed to discover that we had just missed a weekend of Paul Bunyan Days, including the axe throw and the crowning of the Belle of the Redwoods. We were not too late however, to enjoy a dinner at North Coast Brewing Company’s brewpub, one of the most anticipated destinations of the trip in my mind.

North Coast Brewing Company (Fort Bragg, CA)

Our dinner was both excellent and disappointing at the same time. The food was great, but undeniably overpriced. The logo tees in the gift shop were fantastic and promoting beers worthy of wearing on a tee, but the wait was so long that we exhausted the potential entertainment value of the gift shop. The beers were a mix of boring and out-of-this-world fantastic, but were served (I believe deliberately) so warm that it was hard for me to enjoy them. I want to mention here though, that despite our experience in the brewpub, I still believe from experience past and present that this is a world class brewery and one ought to snap up their beers whenever the opportunity presents itself. We tried:

Blue Star Hefeweizen: American in style, light and crisp, not something I’d go out of my way for
Scrimshaw Pilsner: Also light and crisp, with an almost pear-like flavor. Though it may be an excellent example of a Pilsner, I still have a hard time embracing this category. Nick and Allie both loved it though, and Nick loved the logo in particular, so it won some fans among us.
Acme Pale Ale: Flat and watery
Red Seal Ale: Solid, but slightly sour.
Red Seal Ale (cask): Flat and watery, same taste as above but less noticeable. It was at this point that I was not only becoming discouraged, but suffering the type of loss that accompanies the disillusionment of watching an idol stumble.
Pranqster Golden Belgian: The beer that restored my faith! This is delicious. It tasted slightly flat in the taster shot, but when I ordered a full glass later it was higher in carbonation. It was tantalizingly floral with a slight hint of banana.
Acme IPA: This beer has a fantastic smell that anticipates its lively hop character. Unlike many IPAs I’ve tasted, it develops gradually on the tongue, rather than knocking you out with a single punch.
Old #38 Stout: It is hard for me to review this beer, because it is like being asked to describe an old friend. This is my all-time favorite dark beer to date because it brings a full flavor without losing the delicate balance between the rich roastiness, the malt sweetness, the hop bitterness, and the carbonation. Though the sip I took out of the array of tasters that night belied the merits of this beer, subsequent tastings have convinced me that I am not misremembering the Old #38 and that it is in fact an awesome beer.
Old Rasputin Imperial Stout: At this point, I gave up tasting with the intent of reviewing because the shots were all so warm and flat that I knew it would be self-defeating. Allie and Nick loved the Old Rasputin, enough that Allie ordered a full glass (brave girl!) and looks for it up in Seattle. I’ve had it before back at John Harvard’s and am pretty sure that it is a great beer, but I passed on it at the North Coast Brewpub.
Brother Thelonius Abbey Ale: Same story as the Old Rasputin.
Le Merle Saison: We weren’t able to try this one, one of their reserve beers, because they were out. I wish we had.
Old Stock English Style Ale: We bought a single bottle of the Old Stock which we split among Nick, Allie, and myself back at the motel that evening while watching Survivorman. This is a truly unique beer, and quite a feat. The brewpub employee described it as “brandy-like”, and I’m not sure what that means, never having drunk brandy, but, man, this was potent. It knocked us all out despite having shared the bottle 3 ways. Good thing we were back in our room already. It was syrupy strong without being cloying. I have a hard time describing it further because it is so unlike any other beer I’ve ever had, but it is quite the experience and I think any beer lover ought to at least try it once.

And thus, watched Les Stroud eat meat his dog team had dragged through their own feces (for no apparent reason considering that as long as he’s going to eat the dogs’ rations he could have eaten the portions saved for later in the week) and having obliterated our consciousness on brandy-like beer, we fell soundly to sleep.

Coming up next:

Installment V: the last and final installment, in which we take on our biggest beer day yet and confront the bovine aroma of Cal State Sonoma

Installment III: 9/01/2007
Portland, Oregon, to Eureka, CA

As promised, this day’s review begins at breakfast, specifically, Laurelwood’s. Allie and Melissa both tried to re-create their favorite scramble from The Dish, some kind of Hawaiian Pizza-like monstrosity which our half-awake waiter butchered. Nick and I were content to order off the menu considering that it had some of the most delicious items I’ve ever heard of, in particular an omelet of tiny shrimp, green onions, avocado, jack cheese and sour cream. Yum!  Before describing the beers, it is worth noting that everyone at the table appreciated Laurelwood’s branding materials. This sounds bizarre, but you know you have a whole table full of ‘Js’ (in MBTI-speak, sorry non-corporate-types) when everyone oohs and ahhs over the consistently sized and styled logos in complimentary color shades.  We also appreciated that Laurelwood lists Original Gravities, Terminal (Final) Gravities, and IBUs for all of its beers. While these are probably concepts unfamiliar to most novice beer drinkers, they ought to be one of the first things you learn because they make it easy to predict which beers you’ll like. For a review of the concept of gravity, see the cream ale face-off.  For a discussion of how to make taste predictions based on gravity and IBUs, see the end of this review.  But enough of that, I have 9 beers to review:

Laurelwood Public House (Portland, OR)

• Motherlode Golden: Crisp & dry, no special hop or malt flavor, high carb. Not particularly memorable
• Piston Pale Ale: More hoppy than the Golden, but again not very special
• Boss IPA: The much better of the two IPAs! The Centennial, Cascade, and Ahtanum hops taste like tangerine and grapefruit, nestled in a dry, high carbonation brew. Lovely!
• Workhorse IPA: A disappointment after the last IPA. I think this is their “California-style” IPA, since it is 10 IBU units higher than the last one. It just tastes like a more bitter version of the pale ale. Hops for hops sake. Proof, despite what Nick started to say during the trip, that I don’t indiscriminately favor hoppy beers.
• Seasonal Rye: I forgot to take notes and now I can’t remember. Sorry.
• Free Range Red: Sweeter than all of the previous beers, but not showing the complexity and layering that can go with medium and dark beers.
• Hooligan: The best of the bunch! I will definitely seek this out again. Unfortunately, I think it is seasonal, and must be very new since it is neither listed on the Laurelwood website or BeerAdvocate. In any case, I think it is an English Brown Ale. It tastes like a very crisp, clean Porter, with a bright, well-defined coffee character.
• Tree Hugger Porter: Solid, with very strong coffee and chocolate flavors. The hops are noticeable, even through the dark malt. It’s tasty, but not a knockout.
• Space Stout: Probably the weakest of the bunch. It is flat-ish, despite the fact that I definitely made my way around the tasting tray relatively quickly this time. It doesn’t have as strong a flavor as either the Hooligan or the Tree Hugger, in hops or roast.

The best were by far the Hooligan and the Boss IPA.

Six Rivers Brewing Company (McKinleyville, CA)  

Alas! I was going to review Six Rivers Brewing Company next, but I can’t find my notes! I am sure they will turn up somewhere as I unpack, but I don’t want this to hold up the reviewing process since I have 2 days worth of breweries left to review after that. What I will say right now, is that they had a Chili Pepper Ale that was like a carbonated version of what you find in the bottom of an Ortega chilies can. I wouldn’t quite say it was disgusting, but just imagine what that is going to do to your digestive tract. Our waiter said the brewer wants them to do Mexican Car bombs (shots of tequila dropped into beer) with it. Good luck.

Coming up next:

• Installment III.b: Six Rivers
• Installment IV: in which we make like bears at a berry bush and meet the alternately hostile and fastidious touristic denizens of the southern redwoods (and go to Eel River Brewing Company and North Coast Brewing Company).
• Installment V: in which we rise to meet the challenge of our final day, tackling Anderson Valley B.C., Bear Republic B.C., Russian River B.C., and then stumble onto a wacky assemblage of AARP members on acid at the Ace in the Hole Cidery.

Gravities & IBUs

Gravity measures the density of a beer, which is the result of the amount malt sugars dissolved in the water. The higher the final gravity, the more malt sugars in the beer. IBUs are International Bitterness Units, which as you might guess, measure the bitterness of a beer. IBUs actually measure the parts per million of isohumulone in beer, a bitter chemical released by hops. The higher the IBU, the more bitter the beer.  Knowing this, if you’re a bit of a nerd like me, you can think about plotting beers on a two by two grid. Think of the X-axis as the bitterness, measured in IBUs, and the Y-axis as the sweetness, measured by final gravity.

At extreme corner of the low-low quadrant, you’d have watery light American lagers (think Miller, Coors, Bud, etc.), with single digit IBUs, and final gravities that can even dip below 1.000 (less dense than water because there is so little malt sugar left in the beer and alcohol is lighter than water). The overall lack of ingredients other than carbonation pretty much explains why these taste like water, or piss, depending on how bad they are.

At the opposite extreme, in the high-high quadrant, you’d have American barleywines. These have IBUs that can be 120+ (it is generally believed that the human tongue can’t taste the difference over 100 IBUs), and final gravities over 1.035 (most beer falls in the 1.005 - 1.030 range). The high sugar content obscures some of the bitterness, but these are still very syrupy sweet and bitter beers.

In the low gravity-high IBU quadrant, you’d have your IPAs out in the extreme corner, and your pale ales a little closer in. These will have gravities in the 1.010 - 1.020 range, but IBUS usually between 60 and 80. The big trend in America in general, and in the Pacific Northwest and California more specifically is to pack hops into all of their beers, which can push the IBU level above 80. Generally, you don’t want to raise either hops or malt too much without raising the other, or the beer will taste off-balanced and overwhelmed by a single flavor (think about the balance of sugar and lemon juice in lemonade). Of course, different recipes call for a different level of balance, such that IPAs will always have a higher ratio of IBU to gravity than, say an amber or brown ale, but you can see this principle acting within styles. For example, Imperial or Double IPAs, which are generally more hoppy versions of their Standard IPA cousins, usually carry a higher gravity as well, to help balance the extra hops.

The last quadrant, the high gravity-low IBU quadrant is the hardest for me to think of an example. Because of the relationship I just mentioned, many beers with highly ratcheted gravities also have high IBUs relative to run-of-the-mill beers. So, there may not be too many beers that sit in the far corner of this quadrant. But it would include heavier caramel-y sweet bock beers (boppelbocks, weizenbocks, etc.), old ales, and flanders brown ales. Closer in to the center of the grid would be less exotic beers like cream stouts and strong Scotch ales.

Now, lest I forget it, there are 2 caveats to this whole framework:

#1) I’ve left out the whole idea of color. This is largely determined by the type of malt (i.e. 2-row barley, 6-row barley, wheat, rye, etc.) and the treatment of the malt (light roast, dark roast, etc.). This adds a whole other dimension of flavor that overlies the previous system. I’d tell you to think of it as a third axis, but then you might think you need to know multivariable calculus to figure out your favorite type of beer, and who wants that?
#2) I’ve also left out all other kinds of ’specialty’ additions to beer, such as fruit or vegetable flavorings (think about the apricot, pumpkin, and Kona coffee beers you’ve probably tried), and other tricks like oak barrel aging. These are a discussion for another time.