The Naked Pint (25 page)

The Bock, or Bockbier, style was traditionally a seasonal beer, sometimes brewed in the winter and consumed in the spring during Lent and Easter, and other times brewed for the winter holidays. Today, Bock is pretty much available year-round. Bockbiers were beers of celebration, meant to be consumed after toasts of better days to come. Most Bocks are bigger and stronger than most lagers. They range in color from dark copper to auburn to deep chestnut, and have a rich mouthfeel, bold malty characteristics, and a restrained hop presence. They usually come in at 6.6% to 7.5% ABV, although some are much higher. Now, even though these beers have robust flavors and high alcohol content, Bockbiers and most of the substyles of Bock (with the exception of Weizenbock) are lagers! What? Are you still thinking that lagers are light in color, body, and alcohol? Not so, young Padawan. These beers are bottom fermented over a long period of time and lagered for months in cold temperatures, which mellows the flavors and creates a smooth-drinking, well balanced brew.

Some of our favorite beers are Bockbiers, and there are several different substyles of this masterful brew. There is Weizenbock, which as you know by now means “strong wheat”; it breaks from Bock tradition and is an ale rather than a lager. This style is usually a bigger, fuller-bodied Dunkelweizen, with many of the same characteristics of bold bananas and cloves. Dopplebocks, or Double Bocks, are even stronger Bock beers. Not literally double the strength, these lagers are deliciously strong with dark fruit, roasted chocolate qualities, a lush sweetness, and a heat in the finish due to the 6% to 9% ABV range. As an homage to the first beer made in the style, Paulaner Salvator, many Dopplebocks are sometimes named using the suffix “-ator,” like Captivator, Celebrator, Decimator, and Detonator.

On the other end of the Bock spectrum is the style called Maibock, which refers to the month of May and is a style that is traditionally brewed for spring holiday celebrations. Another very similar and sometimes interchangeable style is Helles Bock (or Heller Bock), which means (as you know from Chapter 3) “pale.” Both Maibocks and Helles Bocks tend to be lighter in color and have more assertive hop aromatics and bitterness than other Bock beers. However, the lighter color doesn’t mean that these beers are any lighter in alcohol content. In fact, in addition to the hoppiness, Maibocks and Helles Bocks also have a noticeable maltiness, viscosity, and depth.

The beer world is full of happy accidents, and one of these ended up creating a delicious style of Bock beer called Eisbock. As the story goes, a German barkeep or a Bavarian brewer (depending on who is telling the story) left casks of Bockbier outside in the winter, and they partially froze. Not wanting to throw the beer away, the ice in it was discarded and the beer was tasted. What they discovered was a concentrated, fractionally distilled, strong, and delicious brew that they called an ice beer, or Eisbock. Now, this style of ice beer is not to be confused with the mass-produced American style of ice beer, which is usually light in alcohol, color, and body. Eisbock is dark, malty, and hearty with a significant alcohol content. Get kicked in the head with some of our favorite Bock beers:

S
ome people think darker beers are a black hole into which they don’t want to fall. They say they are too heavy, too strong, or too much for their palate to handle. Okay, well, how do you like the sound of this: chocolate, espresso, cinnamon, tobacco, licorice, tar. Sounds like a perfect deep red wine, a nuanced cigar, an haute chocolate bar from Italy, but in fact, it is the darker side of beer. On the flip side, there are those of you who crave a deep dark mass of ale in a glass. Those who seek it out for the same reasons others avoid it, wanting to look tough, drinking dark brew as a dare to anyone who may question your edge. But you don’t have to have the need to prove anything to drink dark beer. And though you have all heard tales of Porters and Stouts consisting of an entire meal of calories or those with a high alcohol content, know that this is not true of all Porters and Stouts.

You have probably tried at least one Stout, if not a Porter. It is a well-advertised style owing to one well-known brew: Guinness. Yes, this is the star of Stouts, the king of the Irish, the creamy ale. We acknowledge the devout following of this classic beer and are humbled by its history, but we would like to introduce a little variety. If you are one of the thousands who crave the chocolate milkshake flavors in this beer, there is a whole world of dark-malt-based beer to try.

Porters and Stouts are similar, if not the same. Porters were named such in the 18th century due to their popularity among the river porters of London. They emerged as an attempt to copy a common practice of mixing several ales, like Mild Ale and Brown Ale. These combinations were called
entire
and were unique to each pub. Porter became the most popular beer in England, Ireland, and America for a time. This lasted until Prohibition and war made brewing various styles impossible. They are again popular today, especially among American craft brewers, but are still fairly rare in England.

Porter is made from dark roasted malts, though its flavors vary rather widely. The stronger versions were often called Strong Porter, Extra Porter, Double Porter, and Stout Porter. In fact, Guinness started out as Guinness Porter. The name Stout would end up on its own later when the Porter designation would be dropped for some ales, similar to the way that Scotch whisky is generally called just Scotch. This would lead us to believe that a Stout is in fact a stronger version of a Porter. Although arguably true, this is not always the case—especially today, when the terms are pretty much interchangeable. It is actually up to the brewer to pick which name to use for his or her beer within this range of style. This is ripe for debate, of course, and if you are a beer-geek, you will go through many pints of Porter discussing this issue with brewers; if you are newer to the beer world, you’ll think those beer-geeks are losers and will go about your merry drinking way.

Because Porters have a wide range of flavor (like Stouts), they leave room for the brewer to add notes of coffee or chocolate; some brewers even age the beer in whisky barrels. Porters can range from 5% to 9% ABV, depending on the brewer’s desire. Their hop bite is hugely varied as well. Their common trait is the featured flavors of the dark roasted malt, but not much else.

Porters generally fall under three substyles. First is Brown Porter, a fairly mild British style that is low in bitterness, with a chocolate, nutty, toffee flavor. Brown Porters tend to stay away from any burnt ash flavors and will generally be lower in alcohol. Another is Robust Porter. This style can also have some chocolaty toffee notes but will boast a burnt flavor. Robust Porters may or may not be bitter and can vary in ABV, though they’re typically higher than Brown Porters. And finally, there is Baltic Porter, which is a complex Porter originating in the countries from the Baltic Sea region. Baltic Porters tend to be high in alcohol, anywhere from 5% to 9.5%, and thus have a pronounced warmth in the mouth from the alcohol. They are usually brewed with lager yeast. If one is made with ale yeast, the beer is then fermented at cold temperatures, making this a sort of hybrid beer. These Porters can have flavors of dried fruit, licorice, coffee, and spicy hops. They are typically less burnt in the mouth than Robust Porters and are much more complex than Browns. Dive into these Porters: