BEER MYTHS EXPOSED by Roger Mayhew

1. Dark Beer is stronger
The only absolutely true thing to be said about dark beer is that it's, well, dark. The hue of the beer comes from the colour of the grain used to brew the beer. Therefore, pale grain produces pale beer, and so forth. The grain to make beer (mainly barley) gets its colour from the heat applied to stop germination, a step in converting barley grain to malt. Back in the days when this heat couldn't be well controlled, the roasting was uneven and most beer was darkish. With advances in technology, maltsters could produce malt that varied in colour from pale straw to black. These advances allowed brewers to choose the grains to produce beers with the colour and flavour characteristics they wanted. Therefore today a pale straw coloured beer can be just as strong as a dark ale.


2. Ale is stronger than lager
The world of beer can be divided into two families: ales, where the yeast performs best at warm temperatures and lagers, in which the yeast thrives at colder temperatures. The ale/lager divide has nothing to do with alcohol strength but with it's fermentation temperature. there are weak ales and strong ales, weak lagers and strong lagers. Cold fermentation produces a very clean beverage; warm fermentation allows for more fruity and spicy tastes that are the hallmark of ales.