In This Article
- Introduction to Popular Types of Beer
- What Defines the Different Styles of Beer?
- Lagers and Ales – The Two Main Beer Categories
- Types of Lagers
- Types of Ales
- American Craft Beer
- Global Craft Beer
- Exploring Different Styles of Beer Around the World
- Traditional vs. Modern Beer Styles
- Choosing the Right Beer Style for You
- Conclusion
Introduction to Popular Types of Beer
Part of what draws most craft beer enthusiasts in is the incredible variety of flavors and experiences. Look at any shelf at a bottle shop or tap list at a pub, and you’ll find a whole world of possibilities.
There has never been more options available to drinkers. But sometimes, that can be difficult to navigate or even downright intimidating. Being familiar with the different beer styles can undoubtedly help with that indecision.
Listing every style and subcategory of beer is no small undertaking, but some significant traditional and modern beer styles are worth mentioning. Beer is also evolving every day, but there are more than a few timeless classics you’ll be familiar with, along with newer discoveries you’ll soon fall in love with.
What Defines the Different Styles of Beer?
Many factors can be used to determine a beer style, and it’s not exact science. What is a precise science is distinguishing between ales and lagers. Otherwise, a beer style is a general set of traits that brewers use to guide their recipes and production techniques.
There are institutions like the Brewers Association, Cicerone, and CBJ (Certified Beer Judge) programs that have formal definitions and criteria of beer styles. There is ample room for interpretation for brewers and drinkers, but most styles are easy to define and pick out. Features like ABV, brewing techniques, and specific ingredients are the standard ways of categorizing beers.
Lagers and Ales – The Two Main Beer Categories
We took a deep dive into the differences between ales and lagers, but it really comes down to the fermentation method. Lagers are fermented at cooler temperatures with bottom-fermenting yeast. This takes longer to brew but results in cleaner flavors and an approachable drinking experience. Ales ferment at warmer temperatures with a top-fermenting yeast. Depending on the specific style, lagers and ales can result in similar or wildly different drinking experiences. That sensory adventure is the whole point of craft beer!
Types of Lagers
The world’s most popular alcoholic beverage is lager beer. Everything from the Corona you’re drinking at the beach to the Märzen you’re guzzling out of a stein at Oktoberfest falls under the lager category. There are many types of lager. Some are light and fizzy (i.e., the opposite of “craft” beer), and some are wonderfully artisanal. Here are a few examples of common styles:
Pale Lagers
This is more of an umbrella term to describe lighter and clear lagers that include European styles. German beers like Helles lager are the primary example and model for lagers brewed worldwide. Expect an easy drinking experience with slight malt breadiness and floral hop aromas. This lager type typically contains 4-6% ABV and is a prime candidate for longer drinking sessions (ideally on the patio).
Pilsners
This bright and clear lager hails from the Czech town of Plzen but is widely brewed across Europe and the rest of the world. The focus is on a crisp, dry finish with brighter hop aromas and slight bitterness. In some cases, the Czechs will make darker variations of pilsner.
Bocks
This hearty lager is traditionally brewed in Germany during the spring and focuses more on showcasing malt sweetness than hops. There are a few varieties, like the pale and hoppier Maibock, lighter Heller Bock, and robust Doppelbock.
Dark Lagers
Schwarzbier, known in Germany, is brewed with roasted or chocolate malts to produce a pitch-black beer. It showcases chocolate or even coffee flavors along with ample bitterness. There are strong versions, but dark lagers are generally around 5%, making for a filling but easy-drinking experience.
American Light Lagers
These mass-produced beers use all the same brewing techniques as other lagers, but they’re intentionally brewed with cheap ingredients (including adjuncts). It’s lighter on the alcohol and certainly lighter on the flavor. This style gets a bad rap with craft beer enthusiasts, but there’s a time and a place for a lighter and low ABV lager.
Types of Ales
The top-fermenting kind of beer is where you’ll find the widest variety. Everything from easy-drinking Belgian beers to ludicrously hopped IPAs and even stouts fall into this category. Here are a few of the most common options:
Pale Ales
This drinkable icon dates back centuries to when the English began drying their malts to make their ales more drinkable and lighter in color. There are plenty of different riffs on pale ale across the greater beer landscape, but you can expect a little multi sweetness and a zippy hop character to go along with a moderate alcohol content.
IPA’s (India Pale Ale)
The hopped-up rendition of pale ale features more aggressive flavors and higher alcohol content. Just about everyone familiar with craft beer knows the origin story of the name, where British sailors added hops to their beer, flavorful during long trips to India. Today, you’ll find these beers with slightly clear reddish or amber hues to hazy or even black colors. There’s a lot of variety, but you should expect hoppiness.
Stouts
Inky black colors and loads of sweetness or bitterness from the roasted malts characterize this style. The style has plenty of variety, including dry Irish stouts, smooth oatmeal stouts, sweet milk stouts, and boozy imperial stouts.
Porters
This bitter and black beer predates the stout category when it became popular with dock workers in England. It’s a roasty and warming beverage that packs the perfect mix of bitterness and sweetness and finishes dry.
Wheat Beers
There’s a category of European beers brewed with wheat to complement the malted barley. This gives it a more complex flavor, profile (usually in the form of banana and clove), and softer mouthfeel. German Hefeweizen and Belgian Witbier are the primary examples, but modern craft breweries are starting to produce happier versions of wheat beer.
Sour Beers
These ales produce tart and acidic flavors using Belgian yeast strains and fruit additions. Traditional examples include Belgian lambic or Gose and Berliner Weisse from Germany. Recently, American craft brewers “kettle sour” these tart ales and add fruit for maximum flavor. These have turned into the perfect summer sippers.
Kolsch
This German beer hailing from Cologne provides the best of both worlds. It drinks clean and crisp like a lager but is brewed as an ale.
American Craft Beer
The “craft” brewing movement that came out of the United States has swept the industry with entirely new beer styles and innovation with branding or packaging. The IPA is a pillar of the category, but plenty of other beer styles have become the ubiquitous cornerstones of beer culture.
Global Craft Beer
The “craft” approach is no longer unique to the United States. New breweries have popped up all over the globe that take inspiration from the US market. The UK’s Cloudwater Brewing and Denmark’s Mikkeller are prime examples.
Exploring Different Styles of Beer Around the World
Almost every culture in every corner of the globe has explored at least some form of brewing. Each community has put its own spin on the beverage. With globalization, the never-ending exchange of information (and beers) has even inspired American-style craft beer in every country.
Belgian Beer Styles
While this central European country may be small, its beer culture’s influence and renown are massive. The Belgian beer industry showcases innovation and variety more than any other traditional culture. There are hundreds of family-run breweries and monasteries that have been producing traditional Belgian saisons, lambics, witbier, and other delicious and complex beers for centuries.
German and Czech Beer Styles
Czech and German breweries have produced some of the world’s best lagers (and the honorary Kölsch style of ale). Germany provides a surprising variety of flavors despite lager dominating the market. Beautiful Hefeweizen wheat beers are perfect for patio season, while Bocks and Dunkels are maltier and better for cozy nights at the bierhall. There are even sours!
British and Irish Beer Styles
There’s an incredible variety of beer styles hailing from the British Isles, including a few of the world’s most iconic brands like Guinness. Bitters, Milds, Stouts, and Porters are foundational beer styles for beer cultures worldwide. In fact, many of America’s original craft brewers drew their inspiration from British beer and pub culture. Think it’s a coincidence that IPAs and stouts are the go-to styles for your local brewery in the US?
Beer in Asia
There are breweries in almost every Asian country, but Japan, China, India, Korea, and Thailand have the most robust beer industries. The scene is largely defined by mass-produced rice lagers geared more toward food pairing. These tend to be crisp, refreshing, and ideal for cooling your taste buds down while eating spicy Sichuan cuisine or Korean BBQ.
Latin American and Mexican Lagers
Mexican-style pilsner and other beers from the Caribbean, Central and South America all take inspiration from European styles dating back to the Colonial Era. More recently, macro lagers using corn as an adjunct have become the go-to beer for the Mexican market and the United States. Unsurprisingly, these are typically easy-drinking beers ideal for consumption at the beach.
Traditional vs. Modern Beer Styles
Most European beer styles have been produced in one form or another for centuries. Some of these brands (especially Belgian styles) haven’t changed at all, while others have tweaked recipes or merely updated the brewing equipment and techniques. 21st-century ingenuity and changing tastes have given rise to the craft beer movement we know today. More on that below.
Choosing the Right Beer Style for You
Flavor preferences
For those new to craft beer and unfamiliar with every style, the best way to base your ordering decision might be on foods your palate already agrees with. If you like citrus, fruit, or orange juice, a hazy IPA or sour will be right for you. Stouts are a great way to go if you have a sweet tooth or enjoy coffee. If you enjoy spicy foods, IPA provides plenty of vibrant flavors to tickle your taste buds.
Alcohol content
This might sound obvious, but there are health and safety factors that must be considered before indulging in any alcoholic beverage. Beer is no different, especially considering the wide range of alcohol content that you can choose from.
Time and place
If you’re at a ball game and it’s 85 degrees out, you might not want an IPA. Conversely, cozy winter nights might demand something more robust than a light lager. All of this is subjective, of course!
Locality and brewery ownership
If you’re an admirer of the “craft ethos,” which values independent ownership, you’re more likely to support a local business than a major conglomerate. If you’re curious about a new brewery, but if you want to make sure it’s independently owned, all it takes is a quick Google search. You can’t simply trust the labels, though. The marketers are pretty damn good at their job!
Food pairing
Certain beer styles pair well with different cuisines. Darker and maltier beers pair well with dessert and hearty dishes. Lighter beers are great for seafood as they won’t overpower these delicate flavors. IPAs and pale ales are versatile and great for spicy foods as they can withstand all the flavors. A lot of this is subjective, but finding a beer that matches the cuisine is always best. Belgian beer goes well with French food and mussels, Japanese beer is excellent for sushi or ramen, and an English ale is perfect for fish and chips.
Conclusion
From simple lagers to hoppy IPAs or inky stouts, there are many beautiful beer styles to try. Variety is perhaps beer’s best attribute, which extends to the breweries. There are 500-year-old institutions in Europe that make the same product as a startup microbrewery or even homebrewers. There’s a beer with every color or ingredient imaginable out there, so make sure you’re exploring each style you can get your hands on, and never be afraid to sample something new!
