A-Z Of Beer Styles: Coffee & Chocolate Beer

If you walk into a branch of Starbucks you will see coffee mixed with a whole range of things - chocolate, caramel, bananas - even strawberries & cream. Therefore it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that some people have tried to see what a fusion of coffee and beer would be like. The link between the two can be quite close as dark beers such as stouts and porters often have the flavour of coffee grounds. This is because when you roast malted barley seeds you get similar flavours to roasted coffee beans. So much so that there is a type of roasted barley called coffee malt and some beers made using this malt are called Coffee Stout. That wasn't enough for UK based brewers Dark Star. They took one of their beers and added freshly ground Arabica coffee beans that had blended specially. This created their Espresso Stout which won best specialty beer at the 2009 world beer awards. It lives up to it's name with a strong espresso taste however there is also a hint of chocolate in there.

Much as chocolate and coffee go together well in a mocha, dark beer and chocolate combine well. There is a type of barley called chocolate malt because the flavour it's acquires during the roasting process. This is used in stouts such as Tunnel's superb Shadow-weaver. Trying to mix actual chocolate into the beer can be a risky business. JW Lees Chocoholic was made for a JD Wetherspoon's beer festival and tasted like watery cocoa - I'm not sure the brewery has tried making it again. Better attempts are the Manchester Marble Chocolate Marble and Robinson's Chocolate Tom, both of which get the balance of roasted barley and cocoa flavours right, blending the bitterness of both to give something much finer than a novelty. All three of these breweries are based near Manchester, however this isn't solely a North of England phenomena. The London based Meantime brewery also makes a similar bitter chocolate beer that is very nice.

Over in Belgium the Huyghe brewery are best known for their potent Delerium Tremens beer. However they also make a range of sweet flavoured beers called Floris. The chocolate version avoids the sweetness of the English versions and tastes like Jaffa Cakes. In fact it tastes more like a watery Kahlua and Cointreau cocktail than a beer - but for some people that might be quite appealing.

Five to try:
1. Robinsons Chocolate Tom
2. Meantime Chocolate
3. Manchester Marble Chocolate Marble
4. Dark Star Espresso
5. Tunnel Shadow-weaver

A-Z Of Beer Styles: Biere de Garde

When you think of France you think of chateaus and vineyards. Of stories of 80 year-old estate Burgundy with a price tag bigger than your house being drunk at lunchtime by an investment banker. You don’t think of beers, and if you do you think of cheap supermarket lager or Kronenbourg – difficult to tell the difference really. However in farmhouse breweries there is a secret worth discovering.

In Northern France there are a range of “keeping beers” known as bière de garde. Like märzens these are brewed during the winter or spring and are then traditionally kept in cool conditions over the summer to preserve them. They can be light or dark but will display a prominent hoppy flavour that gives them a rural farmyard feel. Castelain’s Ch’ti range is named after a regional dialect, comes in corked 75cl bottles and covers every colour you could wish for. A sour apricot Blonde, a bitter malty Ambrée and a caramel- edged Brune. The best of the range is the hoppy, spicy Blanche that combines the best of bières de garde and witbiers. Also coming in 75cl bottles is the potent 3 Monts that has spirit like alcoholic intensity combined with a smooth hoppy, yeasty flavour.

One of the most widely available bières de garde is the Jenlain range from Duyck. The Ambrée is made with 3 types of Alsace hops and tastes like a Czech dark lager. The beers from the Thiriez brewery are much harder to find but have a superb rustic hoppiness that typifies the best bière de garde. There are also a few examples in other countries. The Flying Dog Garde Dog adds US IPA-style intense dry hoppiness and bitter porter roasted malts. You won’t see people investing fortunes in classic vintage bottles of bière de garde to lay down for years like they do with French wine – but the beer is better opened up and drunk anyway.

Five to Try -
1. Thiriez Ambrée du Esquelbecq
2. Duyck Jenlain Ambrée
3. Gayant Goudale
4. St Sylvestre 3 Monts
5. Flying Dog Garde Dog

A-Z Of Beer Styles: Amber Ale

Judging food by its colour can be a mistake. Red fruits such as strawberries, raspberries, cherries and apples don’t taste similar just because they have a rosy hue. The same applies to beer. Upon being served an amber coloured beer you can discern that you don’t have a stout or a pale lager on front of you (however much Fosters claims to be the amber nectar). But that still leaves a wide range of options: it could be a märzen lager, a pale coloured bitter or a Belgian ale. There are also beers that define themselves by their reddish colour.

English amber ales are usually a type of bitter that has been made with relatively few hops and which often have a slight sweetness to them. The Irish red ales usually add a caramel note to this mix. The main Irish brands are Murphy’s Red, Kilkenny, Smithwick’s and Caffrey’s (the later now brewed at 4% as it was found to produce a disproportionate number of hangovers at 5% abv). The style is also popular in places with large immigrant Irish communities such as America and New Zealand. Some of these have surprising flavours. The Monteith’s Celtic Red ale has the feel of a sherry cask whisky, Porter’s Rye Ale tastes like a Manhattan cocktail whilst the Prickly Moses Red Ale has leather, cherries and smoke amongst its flavours.

The continental European amber beers are called ambrées. Like the Irish reds the defining feature is usually a caramel flavour. This can be married to a spicy, bitter, strong beer like the Ellezelloise Quintine Ambrée, have a robust hoppy flavour like the Pelforth Ambrée or have a sweet, toffee apple flavour like the Chevreuse Volcelest Ambrée. There are also a number of Australian amber ales that are darker, sweeter siblings of the pale ales available down under. The James Squire Amber Ale is a mix of carrot cake and caramel whilst Pepperjack is a beer mixed with Shiraz wine.

Five to Try -
1. Monteith’s Celtic Red Beer
2. Pelforth Ambrée
3. Chevreuse Volcelest Ambrée
4. Mountain Goat Hightail Ale
5. Ellezelloise Quintine Ambrée

A-Z Of Beer Styles

If you go into a Chinese restaurant and end up being served a curry then you’ll be a bit disappointed, even if you like curry. The same goes for getting served a cup of tea if you are expecting coffee. Our expectations for food and drink usually define our initial reaction. Most beers will tell you what style they are somewhere on the label to avoid any unfortunate surprises. Therefore to understand beer you need to understand what these styles mean.

Trying to categorize beer by type is a thankless task, though. Distinguishing the grey areas between porter and stout or mild and bitter is a fool’s errand. A similar task on wines would use the type of grape whilst Scotch whisky is also classed by the geographical location of the distillery. Beers with similar ingredients from the same brewery can be widely different. This is why the world of beer usual refers to names and styles that have evolved out of historical precedent rather than any cold considered notions. So a beer that describes itself as an abbey dubbel is notionally something in the traditional of a beer brewed by the Westmalle Trappist abbey. However it could easily be any strong brown ale that a commercial brewery has paid to have their beer associated with an abbey.

More than anything else the style of beer should be taken as part of the brewer’s intentions. These may be to brew a classic pilsner in the style of Czech beers of old or to come up with an IPA unlike any you’ve tasted before. Over time beers styles have splintered into subcategories like sects of particularly troubled religions. To these ends you could list hundreds of styles of beer. This series lists 26 of the main styles