Guide

Cheers! Seven beers you should know

7.9.2021

Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson

The Babylonians already knocked it back, so it can’t be bad. One of the oldest fermented beverages is now more diverse than ever, thanks to craft breweries. Here’s an overview.

«Freedom. What does freedom taste like?» – the narrator asks. The video shows a man, beer in hand, walking over a dune. While our latest commercial (Youtube) appears to be an ad for beer and poses a philosophical question about the definition of freedom, I've been spending lots of time pondering a much more trivial question.

What is beer?

A question I never really asked myself. Because it’s just obvious, right? It’s what I’m served when I order a pint. But what is it exactly? Is it what’s defined in the German purity order, or Reinheitsgebot, from 1516? This decree defined in the former Duchy of Bavaria stipulated the following: only barley malt, hops and water were to be used to make beer. Before this decree came into effect, all sorts of ingredients were added to the beverage. In the absence of a framework agreement in medieval times, the Swiss didn’t adopt this Bavarian purity order, but did brew according to it most of the time.

However, order a pint in England, and you’ll be served a completely different brew. Beers including Corona, Super Bock or Chang don’t give a toss about the purity order and are made with ingredients including rice or corn. Does this make them inferior beers adulterated with cheap ingredients? «By no means,» says brewing scientist Fritz Briem. He even goes so far as wanting to extend the purity order by adding further acceptable starches alongside barley malt, as he told German newspaper FAZ.

So let’s use the term beer to classify everything that was brewed with fermented starch and flavoured with hops, fruit and other ingredients. This sets apart beer from wine or cider, where sugar instead of starch is turned into alcohol. I will now leave the brave, pure world and introduce some beers you should know. But first, a bit of dry theory.

How is beer made?

To keep things simple, let’s say barley is starch. First up, it needs to be turned into malt. Before this can be done, the barley grains must germinate. This creates the right enzymes to later turn the barley’s starch into sugar. And sugar is important. Yeast bacteria convert sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation. At the brewery, the malt is first heated to a specific temperature in water, thereby extracting the sugar from the malt. This «sugar water» is easily fermented by yeast. Adding flavour, usually with hops, and the fermentation method determine the character of the beer. Although it takes a few more steps, this is pretty much what the brewing process entails. If you want to learn more, an Austrian brewery did a really good job of explaining it in simple terms .

IPA, stout, lager, pilsener... what’s the difference?

In essence, each beer is unique. However, there are certain criteria for classifying beer into different types. On the one hand, the raw materials have a huge influence on taste and colour. For one, there’s yeast, which converts the sugar into alcohol. The yeast is either top- or bottom-fermented. Top-fermenting yeast floats on top of the brew during fermentation and prefers warmer temperatures around 20 degrees Celsius. Bottom-fermenting yeast stays at the bottom and prefers a cool 10 degrees or less. Tastewise, top-fermented beer is fruitier and more aromatic than bottom-fermented beer. But it’s also more susceptible to unwanted microorganisms and has a shorter shelf life.

Bottom fermented beers

If you order a pint in a bar or restaurant in Switzerland, you’ll usually be served a bottom-fermented beer. In English, these beers are called lager, as opposed to top-fermented ales. This is where the terminology starts to get tricky. In Germany, the term «lager beer» describes bottom-fermented beers that mature during storage. These beer types include Märzen or Pilsener. In Switzerland, however, a «lager beer» is its own type of beer.

Swiss lager

Smartbeer.ch writes about Swiss lager with a mocking undertone: «Lagers are the most common beers popularised by large industrial breweries, which have turned them into light drinks with little pronounced flavours.» All medium- and large-scale breweries have at least one lager in their range. When we talk about beer in Switzerland, lager is usually what we mean.

Cheers! Seven beers you should know

How is beer made?

IPA, stout, lager, pilsener... what’s the difference?

Bottom fermented beers

Swiss lager

Pilsener

Märzen

Top-fermented beers

Pale ale

India pale ale

Weissbier

Stout

You forgot to mention so many types of beer!

How do I know if I’ll like a specific beer?

I don’t like alcohol. What now?

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