5 Beer Terms Explained
When you first start tasting beer or when you first find craft beer and join the craft beer community, there are a lot of words and acronyms that people use in their descriptions, and on their posts on Facebook or Instagram that might not make sense to you straight away. Today, I'm going to go through five of those beer terms and explain to you what they mean.
Beer Terms 1: Mouthfeel
Mouthfeel is a tasting beer term, and it is literally about the feel of the beer in your mouth. Beers can be really thin, or they can be really thick and viscous. Think about the comparison between a low ABV beer like a table beer or even a non-alcoholic beer, how that can be quite thin. An imperial stout is really thick, unctuous and viscous. That's the difference in the mouthfeel of those two beers. You're also going to be thinking about the carbonation as carbonation is going to add a bit of fizz on your tongue. So mouthfeel can be different depending on what beers you're drinking.
Beer Terms 2: Juicy
Now some people say that juicy is reserved for the New England IPA. You're also going to see various different spellings of juicy sometimes with lots of O's in there. Juicy generally means that it can taste a bit like fruit juice. So that's great for the style New England IPA as there should be lots of fruit flavours in there. That fruit juicy flavour can come from actual fruit, it could come from the hops or it could come from the yeast. So there are different ways of getting juicy in there. I usually find a beer juicy if it tastes a bit like orange juice or grapefruit juice. Some people also describe it like juicy fruit chewing gum, it's going to make for a really refreshing and fruit-forward beer.
Beer Terms 3: Acronyms like DDH, DIPA or TIPA
When you first start drinking craft beer you might see a lot of different acronyms used. I’m going to explain the top three. DDH, this stands for double dry-hopped and is part of the brewing process. As a quick recap, during the brewing process, you soak malt in water to extract sugars, then the grains are removed from the water which is now called wort. The wort is boiled with hops and other ingredients can be added. That is then cooled down and yeast is added which ferments the beer and adds alcohol. Hops can be added during that boiling process but they also can be added on what's called the cold side after fermentation has finished. And when you add something at this point it is called dry hopping. Double dry hopping is when double the amount of hops are added to the beer. By doing this you're going to get more flavour and aroma from your hops more than bitterness. So brewers like to do this to get those citrusy, resinous and piney flavours or aromas from American hops. Think of it as a really big tea bag with hops in it dunked in your beer before it's finished being made.
DIPA stands for double IPA, also known as an imperial IPA. It is called a double because generally, double the hops are used from your regular IPA. These types of IPA are now colloquially referred to as DIPAs, rather than double or imperial IPAs. They can also be higher in ABV than your usual IPA. And a TIPA is a triple IPA. So that means triple the amount of hops has been used, but doesn't necessarily mean that the ABV is double or triple that of a regular IPA. To balance out these beers that have more hops in generally more malt is used and therefore the ABV does go up.
Beer Terms 4: Dank
What does dank even mean? So dank can refer to quite a vegetal aroma from the hops, something like weed or marijuana aromas. You have to remember that hops are a cousin of marijuana and they are in the same family of plants. When a hop is used extensively in a beer, you can get those really resinous, sticky, piney smells, and it can remind you a bit of marijuana. It's also been described as a bit like cat pee. That doesn’t sound very pleasant to me, but lots of people find that excellent in a beer.
Beer Terms 5: Funky
The last of our beer terms is funky. Funky is generally used on sour beers or wild fermented beers. The yeast that is used in these brews is wild and found in the air, or they are fermented with bacteria. Therefore, these unconventional additions impart some really interesting flavours and aromas. Words used for these types of flavours and aromas are horse blanket or barnyard or even wet wood. Think about wet earth, as if you're walking around the farm or if you've been around a horse. These all sound a bit gross, but actually it can be very pleasant in the right kind of beer. So if you haven't tried a funky beer yet, I recommend that you do because they are some of my favourites.
So there you have it, that's five beer terms that might be confusing to you. Let me know if you would like to find out part two because I'm sure there are lots of other beer terms that we could explain. Head on over to Instagram to let me know any more you are struggling with.
And if you would like to learn more about beer terms, we cover these in my beer tasting course Build Your Beer Vocabulary. We start class in September – find out more about the course here.
