So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Yeast 101

Uh oh. Your homebrewing buddy just said something about “brett” and is asking your opinion about buying a stir plate. This conversation is getting dangerously yeasty.

But that’s OK! I’m here to help put the “you” back in “Eukaryote” with a primer about yeast, and why it’s so damn important to beer.

Much like the other posts in this series, this primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a journey to the center of fermentation, check out Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff’s book from Brewer’s Publications.

Yeast as a Living Thing

Yeast is literally everywhere. You breathed some in just now. You probably ate some that was resting on your lunch. The little buggers are all up in your shit (literally), and play an important bit part in maintaining your body’s homeostasis. Fret not; it’s an integral part of our immune system and you’d have to ingest a very large amount of it to experience any ill effects (see: auto-brewery syndrome).

Biologically, yeast falls under the Fungi kingdom (here’s a quick reference if you forgot your high school taxonomy). They are technically eukaryotic (meaning their cells contain a nucleus that houses genetic information), but are the only single-cell eukaryote ever described by science. Despite any deeply romantic feelings you may have developed for your favorite IPA, yeast reproduces asexually, through the very painful-looking process of mitosis.

It’s tricky to organize yeast because they don’t all fit under one taxonomic group. But generally (please don’t kill me, biologists reading this) the yeast we use to brew can be classified by species, which are often sold to brewers as strains. Homebrewers and bakers will be familiar with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is probably the mostly commonly used yeast in ale. Lagers use Saccharomyces pastorianus. Then there’s the popular Brettanomyces, which is known for its distinctive and sort of gross qualities.

But that’s just a few, easy to recognize examples. There are ~1500 described strains of yeast, many of which we don’t use in brewing. The yeast in our bodies – often responsible for a number of nasty infections – is called Candida albicans. In healthy humans, this yeast is kept in check by bacteria. Fun fact: lactobacillus, a bacteria use to make some kinds of sour beer and sourdough bread, is one of the natural counter-balances to the yeast that grows in our guts.

Somewhat amazingly, we didn’t even know that yeast was a thing until one very cool French dude named Louis Pasteur described yeast and what is does in 1857. Although a scientist named Leeuwenhoeck (yea, I have no idea how to pronounce that, either) visually saw yeast in 1680, he didn’t really know what is was. Prior to Pasteur’s badass book, “The Diseases of Beer, Their Causes, and the Means of Preventing Them” some people assumed fermentation was spontaneous, and as White and Zainasheff note in their book, some people even thought it was the work of god(s).

Wooden brewing paddles were passed down through generations of brewers, all of who were apparently oblivious to the fact that wood was porous, and that the yeast from previous batches of beer were hiding deep inside all of their tools, just waiting to inoculate the next batch.

Yeast as a Brewing Ingredient

There’s a classic quote beer writers should know:

“We brewers don’t make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.” — Fritz Maytag

Yeast is going to do its thing regardless of what we do. The brewer’s job is more interior decorator than creator: she needs to turn the wort into a welcome, clean, inviting home that the yeast want to move into to start their family. But the yeast aren’t picky; they’ll move into any home that’s got plenty of sugar to eat, even one infested with other nasty tenants of less reputable backgrounds. The brewer has to do everything she can to make sure the yeast and its family are the only ones living in the house, and that they’re as healthy and comfortable as possible.

Yeast can come from third party labs as dry cells, or ready-to-use liquid. While pre-packaged yeast can be used (I’ve used it dozens of times), many brewers will create a yeast “starter.” This is basically a sugary proto-beer that kick starts the growth of the yeast. A starter ensures you’ve got plenty of healthy yeast to begin and maintain a strong primary fermentation. Some companies sell “smack packs” which are a sort of all-in-one starter (that includes an activator) where you just “smack” the bag of yeast to mix up the contents and create a mini early fermentation before pitching it into the wort.

Logistically, yeast is added after the wort has been boiled, hops have been added, and the combined concoction has been cooled. The drop in temperature in very important: yeast are living things, and adding them to hot liquid can easily injure or kill them. To properly reproduce, yeast need oxygen, so wort is aerated. This is tricky, because oxygen is a mortal enemy to fermented beer.

Oxygen before yeast? Good! Oxygen after yeast? Bad!

Yeast’s primary role is to eat the sugars extracted from the base malts during mash, and turn them into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide (C02). That’s an incredible oversimplification though; the amount, type, and length of sugars, the temperature of the fermenting beer, and the type of yeast used all dictate how the yeast will perform. Fermentation is what makes beer taste like beer; you couldn’t just add alcohol to hopped-wort and expect beer. Yeast is responsible for hundreds of other compounds that produce flavors we’re all familiar with (banana and clove and fruit esters, oh my!)

Yeast is the prime mover for the Original Gravity (OG) and Final Gravity (FG) equation. By measuring the original amount of sugar in the beer, and the comparing it to the final amount when fermentation in done, a brewer can calculate how much sugar is left in the beer, how much was eaten by the yeast, and how much alcohol it created. The amount of sugar the yeast ate is also called the amount of “attenuation.”

The trick to remembering the difference between ale and lager is that they are brewed using different yeasts (see above). Ale yeast ferments “on top” of the beer, while lager yeast ferments “on the bottom.” This is not a perfect rule. Yeast generally moves through the entire body of the fermenting beer, but this describes where “most” of the fermentation activity occurs.

More important than where they ferment is how they ferment; ale yeasts prefer warmer temperatures (55-70° F), while lager yeasts prefer colder temperatures (40° F). Ale yeast would go dormant and sleepy at such cold temperatures, but certain strains of lager yeast can and will ferment at higher temperatures, resulting in estery, fruity lagers a la “Steam Beer.”

Yeast as a Word

Yeast is almost always a noun. While I’m sure some intrepid wordworker could use yeast as a verb (I may be guilty of that), “yeasted” and “yeasting” don’t exist in a traditional vocabulary.

While it can be used as an adjective (yeasty) I’d warn against using it too often, because like “malty” or “hoppy,” it’s not overly descriptive. It functions perfectly well as a general label, but different yeasts perform and taste different, so when describing it, try to pull out words that capture the essence of what the yeast has done to the beer, not just that it is in fact, in there.

Writing about yeast tends to get biological very quickly, so be sure to balance your diction appropriately. No one wants to read a text book, but no one wants juicy scientific details left out either. Above all, respect yeast’s role in making beer, and remember that even though it’s not as glamorized and talked about as hops (or even malt), it’s (arguably) the single most taste-defining ingredient in the entire brewing process.

Don’t believe me? Try drinking straight, uncarbonated wort.

TL;DR – Remember that yeast is the “living” part of beer, ales and lagers are classified as such by their yeast strains, and the scientific names are always italicized.

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Malt 101

Hey, I see you there, backing away from that conversation about malt because one person started talking about amylase activity in mash.

Get back in there slugger! I got you covered with this overview of what malt is, how it’s made, and why it’s important.

This primer will cover the basics (yes, I left quite a bit out) for those who want to write (or speak) with a little more confidence. If you’re looking for a deep dive into delicious piles of malt, check out John Mallet’s book from Brewer’s Publications. I heard the guy who edited it is pretty cool.

Malt as a beer ingredient

While consumers may name hops as the most recognizable ingredient in beer (water is always so sadly overlooked), malt does a ton of selfless work in the brewhouse. Loose kernels of malted grain are cracked in a mill then added to the mashtun, where they steep at a specific temperature to encourage enzyme activity, ultimately creating the sweet primordial soup from which all beerish life will eventually emerge: wort.

A beer’s recipe will normally include a combination of base malts and specialty malts.

Base malts are generally pale with high diastatic power (also known as degrees Litner), meaning in layman’s terms that they have the potential to produce more sugar, more easily. They provide the food for the yeast (often called fermentables), and a beer made entirely of a single base malt would be a shade of yellow or gold with a singular complexity.

Specialty malts are added at various points during the mash (depending on the recipe), and contribute to the color, aroma, and flavor profile of the beer. Contrasting the base malts, they tend to contain very few fermentable sugars, and are used primarily for their other gustatory and olfactory qualities.

The length of the sugars extracted by the enzymes in mash dictate much of how the yeast will ferment the beer, too. It may not be as sexy as those sticky pods of lupulin, but malt is incredibly important to brewing (and enjoying) beer.

Malt as a verb

Although “malt” in the brewing industry often manifests as a noun (“what kind of malt did the brewer use in this beer?), the verb form – “to malt” – is more important to understanding the ingredient.

Cereal grains grow tall, and when they are mature, produce seeds. These seeds are like any other; out in the wild, they’d fall to the ground, get covered in dirt and moisture, and begin to grow when the next season came rolling in on Spring sun.

Simple enough.

But taken out of the natural cycle, cereal grains cannot make beer until they are malted, or more specifically, soaked, germinated, and dried. Maltsters (the people who make malt, shockingly enough) harness the seed’s biological imperative, and trick it into growing. They place the seeds into a bed of water and let them begin to grow roots and breathe. The goal is to allow the seed to change – or modify – sufficiently that it will break down its own internal sugars and release them into the hot waters of the mash to make wort.

When the seed is fully modified (or close to) they halt the growing and modification process by blowing hot air through the grain. After the tiny roots are removed (a process call deculming), the malt is kilned, both to prevent spoilage and create desired flavors through Maillard reactions. All of a beer’s color is derived from its malt; the darker the roast, the darker the beer, from the delicate daffodil of lager (pale bale malt) to the midnight dark of stout (roasted barley).

It’s imperative the grain be malted well before it reaches the brewery; without the malting process the seeds would be dry, rock hard, and lacking the necessary sugars to provide a feast for the yeast. Apparently some attempts at non-malt beer have been tried by the Japanese, but 99% of the time, when we’re talking beer as history and culture knows it, we’re talking malted grains.

Malt as a noun

“Malt” as a standalone makes for a poor noun. It’s far too abstract, as many different grains like rye, wheat, sorghum, oat, rice, and corn can be malted.

While yes, malted barley makes up the vast majority of all malt used in beer making, it’s important to quantify which type of malt you’re referring to, which is why you’ll often see references to “malt barley” in beer writing. Malted barley itself can be expanded out into a huge list of varieties and levels of roast, and many beer recipes use multiple types of malted barley to achieve certain flavors and colors (two-row, six-row, Munich, Carapils, Crystal, patent black, etc). Other beers mix types of malted grains – a rye IPA for example might use both malted barley and malted rye.

“Grain” is equally lacking as a noun. Industry jargon discusses the grain bill of a beer (or the list of malts that went into the mashtun) but the word itself refers to unmalted seeds. Grain exists in the fields; it’s an agricultural term. “Grist” – as in grist bill – reads similar; it implies ground grain (like that used to make bread flour), but makes no reference to whether or not it has been malted. Neither are fundamentally incorrect and both are used widely, but it’s always good to remember exactly what each means.

Malt as an adjective/adverb

In Chapter 2 of his book, Mallet says that he thinks Munich malt is the closet match to quintessential “malt flavor” and I tend to agree. It compares best to malt as it appears outside of beer: malted milkshakes and malted chocolate balls. But other varieties of barley malt taste very different; dark roasted specialty malts, like Special B for example, can have notes of raisins and dates, while some other pale base malts taste like Pillsbury dinner rolls or KFC biscuits. All that to say that while there is a basic malt flavor, varieties of malts can taste very, very different from each other.

“Malt” works perfectly as a traditional adjective: malted barley. Use it with impunity.

It doesn’t work at all as a blanket adverb: “malty.”

“Malty” is lazy. And boring. And uninspired.

It’s equivalent to boiling The Alchemist’s Heady Topper or Ballast Point’s Sculpin down to “hoppy.” A single adjective doesn’t do justice to the complexity and variety our tongue and noses are capable of experiencing. Saying a beer is “malty” is like saying that your steak tastes like meat or your wine tastes like grapes; of course it does, it’s quite literally made of that thing. Every single beer in the world (barring maybe that weird aforementioned Japanese stuff) will in some capacity taste malty.

Use bready or biscuity instead. Or toasted or roasted or burnt. Hundreds of other, more specific adjectives can describe what you’re tasting, so don’t  cop out and go with “malty.” Your future readers thank you.

I understand a lot of people use “malty” as a way to grade the level of noticeable malt flavor when compared to others beers and styles, but it’s still an unimaginative smear of language being used in the place of proper, descriptive prose. If something tastes more malty than something else, say exactly that, but then follow it up with concrete examples of what you’re actually tasting.

Malt is both simple and complex, both obviously present and hiding in the background. Take the time to get to know how malt works in your favorite beers, and you’ll discover a new appreciation for the naturalistic side of beer, and how amazing it is that maltsters have basically bridled and domesticated the Kreb’s cycle. It may not be glamorous, but it’s still beautiful in its own, agronomic way, and deserves to be treated with respect lest it, and your writing about it, be infested with weevils.

TL;DR – to use the term “malt” or “malted” is to imply that a grain underwent a specific process that has been used to make beer for centuries. It’s a verb first, a noun second, an adjective third, and an adverb never.

One million pounds of barley malt drying at the Budwesier malting plant in Idaho Falls, ID.

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Part 3 – Avoiding Sentimentalism

April’s run of The Session (hosted by Heather of Beer Hobo) brought out some well-informed conceits about beer, writing, and writing about beer. The commentary cut a pretty large swath through the grain fields of our culture, and I was pleased to see a lot of energetic opinions on how to elevate and evolve past the current trends in beer journalism. If you’re interested in reading more about beer as a nonfiction topic from some of the best sources in the business, Heather’s round-up is here.

Despite a few wonderful essays and some really thoughtful, constructive feedback for us writers, there was little discussion about the quality of the writing. Alan McLeod flirted with it at the end of his entry, but no one really cut deep into the tender meaty importance of writing in a syntactically, grammatically, structurally, and thematically engaging manner. If we have a problem in the beer writing community, I’m willing to bet that the problem isn’t the beer, or the community.

I could go on about sloppy writers who clumsily wield grammar like a linguistic sledge hammer, smashing clauses into phrases with about as much grace as a sloshed rhinoceros, but that wouldn’t be productive. If you’re going to be a writer (and yes, if you run a blog you’re a writer, like it or not), you have to learn how to use your tools. No excuses, no exceptions.

In place of getting into the literal literary nuts and bolts, we’ll pull our topic from the shadowy side of the discourse, illuminate that insidious and sneaky monster that permeates lots of modern writing: Sentimentalism.

We all know the word sentimental, and know the malformed lump of negative connotation on its back. It’s often thrown in as an declarative insult, “Stop being so sentimental.” Sentimentalism relies on opinion and feeling, coming from the writer’s innate emotion, often eschewing logic, reason, and repeatable fact. It’s the easy way out from a communication and creativity perspective; you can have an experience, form an opinion, then write about it. No extra research or parallel thinking needed. Hell, I’m doing that exact thing right now.

But sentimentalism, generally, doesn’t make for good writing. It makes for ephemeral jolts of subjectivity, none of which provide much context, none of which manage to dive very deep beneath the surface to expand, entertain, or educate. It’s brain-dumping in its purest form, the literary embodiment of “I think what I have to say matters, so I’m going to say it, regardless of qualification or contradictory evidence.” There are some writers who can use this style to great effect (especially in humor, see: David Sedaris) but for the most part, sentimentalism is the nonfiction writing plague of our generation.

It’s sort of the inborn cry of the internet denizens dashed in ink, a sense of entitlement brought to life with awkward phrases and unsupported assertions. Modern nonfiction slides ever towards the municipal landfill partly because we have fewer qualified gatekeepers (read: newspapers and magazines, and editors at both), significantly more avenues of publication that slip past any critical review, but also because a lot of young, new writers think that any opinion they have is valid, and worth writing 400 words about, in odd, self-fulfilling homage.

Honor thy elders

If we look at some nonfiction masters, we’ll find very little of how they feel about their topics. The best writing (that survives the test of time-based irrelevance) stands proudly objective; letting the facts and details portray the emotion and power of the scene, all without clunky attempts to two-hand shove insight into the reader’s path.  In Susan Orlean’s 1992 Esquire piece, “The American Male at Age Ten,” she never directly tells us what she thinks about Colin Duffy, her opinions on how he’s being raised, or her take on the social commentary oozing out of his budding pubescence. Instead, she lets Colin and his actions speak on the page by showing us who he is and how he lives. Not even a hint of sentiment, and yet, the piece is powerful and speaks volumes about our society’s treatment of young boys.

Some might argue that you can get away with not having feelings and opinions in a long-form journalistic piece, but that it wouldn’t work in other, more complicated context. To them I offer Joan Didion’s book “The Year of Magical Thinking,” a story so teeming with the potential to get sentimental that emotion-termites have eaten away most of the pages of my paperback copy. And yet, despite the surging, unfair realities of death in her life, Didion presents grief in a detached, objective manner, very rarely indulging in her own turmoil, and giving the reader fascinating (if heartbreaking) insight into the grieving process. The book succeeds in teaching the reader about life, death, grief, and love, because her intentional lack of direct editorial makes her messages approachable, universal, not just relevant to the prosaic bits and pieces of how it went down for her.

Still not convinced? Then just pick up any John McPhee, any David Quammen, any Michael Pollan, any Laura Hillenbrand. Go on a mystical vision quest to find direct, clear opinion from the writer. You won’t find much, if any, because the best writers don’t use it. They’re aware and capable enough to know that a story needs to stand alone without crutches made of empty sentiment.

So how do we avoid it?

Let me clarify: I’m not suggesting that beer writing should be robotic nonsense, completely void of feeling or emotion. That’s almost as bad as touchy-feely Buzzfeed fluff. There are times when you can’t avoid smearing your greasy soul all over the page, and times when that may be the perfect thing to do. Using it effectively goes back to the Composition 101 theory of “showing vs. telling.” Ninety nine times out of one hundred, a sentimental piece of writing is telling the reader how to feel about something, instead of showing them and letting them discover the meaning on their own. I may very well be guilty of doing that in this post, reinforcing my point.

When you draw from a sentimental core to write a beer review (or anything, actually), you’re attaching to it all of your own likes and dislikes, history and experiences, all while steeping it in environmental and mental circumstances that probably couldn’t be recreated by you, never mind a complete stranger. This is why I dislike ~90% of traditional beer reviews. Not because the format itself is flawed, or because the collection of flavor and aroma data for a beer is a bad thing, but because most of these reviews are unabashedly telling the reader what to think. The implication is that the writer’s opinion is as good as fact, and that without establishing any specific authority, you’re just supposed to go along with what they say just because they were able to say it. Very Cartesian, really.

This may sound odd, but your job as a beer writer is not to tell me about beer. At least not directly. Telling a person reading a beer blog about a beer in a review is like describing the nuances of a piece of plywood to a master carpenter; you’re going to bore the carpenter, and he doesn’t really care about that aspect of the wood, anyway. Your job is to connect a reader to the beer in a way they don’t expect, show them what it meant to you (or didn’t, if you hated it) and let them draw a conclusion. Do your best to actively avoid inserting your own take and viewpoint, and focus more on capturing the context that exists outside of the glass.

Warning: pulling this off may require the use of snooty literary things like metaphors and imagery. Use them anyway. Your writing, and your readers, will be happier.

“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.” – Jean Cocteau

 

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Part 2 – What are you reading?

If you’ve traipsed down the shadowy alley of writing advice, you’ve almost certainly come across the, “to be a better writer, you have to write!” obviousisms,  which are usually followed by the trumpeting accompaniment of, “but you have to read, too!” I’m not here to deny either of those pieces of advice. To be a better writer, you definitely do need to write, and possibly more than you’re writing now. To be a better writer you do need to read good writing, preferably more on the side of good books and essays and stories, and less on the side of Buzzfeed and TMZ and DailyMail.

What you read is just as (if not more) important as what you write. It gives you examples of excellent storytelling and wordplay. It offers perspective from another, educated angle. It shows you what it takes to write something marketable, that people will actually want to read.

One of the best aspects of being a beer writer is that you’re not really a beer writer. I mean you’re not only a beer writer. Our bubbly beau topically involves culture, chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology, economics, and all manner of other abstract intangibles like love and passion and modern facial hair styles. Beer is pretty close to an ideal nonfiction subject; the simple topics can be broken down into ever more complex and curious ideas almost infinitely, like a Russian Doll whose last, tiny form is located precisely wherever your imagination happened to run out of energy.

There’s a draw back to having so malleable a topic: to be successful you’ll need to know about more than just beer. Depending on what you want to write, maybe a lot more. If you so choose to don the hallowed robes of beer writing, you’re going to have become a science writer, too. And a memoirist. And a social pundit. And a journalist. And a critic. And an essayist. And maybe a bunch of other things I’m forgetting.

You’ve got to be a writer first and a beer lover second. The best way to do that is to round-out your bookshelf (or Kindle, if that’s what you crazy kids are into).

When I started my masters program, sitting in class with a bunch of other bright-eyed, crazy-minded writers all talking about their day-jobs and future writing prospects, it struck me that I was woefully under-read. My peers were throwing out author names and essay titles that I couldn’t even pretend like I’d heard of. I knew from the very first session of my very first class that I needed to start reading more. The only problem was, given the massive spread of options on Amazon and the daunting sprawl of stacks at the local library, I had no idea where to start.

If you’re like I was then, I’m here to help. I’ve created a list that includes my favorite books about beer, but also lots not about beer to serve as examples of great nonfiction. This list is by no means exhaustive, it’s just the writing I’ve connected to the deepest, and learned the most from.

(I also encourage you to throw out your favorites in the comments if you don’t see them here)

Science/Brewing Beer Books

Principles of Brewing Science – George Fix
For the Love of Hops – Stan Heironymous
Yeast – The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation – Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff
Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers – John Palmer
How to Brew – John Palmer

Beer Culture, Styles, and Tasting

The Brewmaster’s Table – Garrett Oliver
The Oxford Companion to Beer – Garrett Oliver
Beer Tasting Tool Kit – Jeff Alworth
The World Atlas of Beer – Tim Webb
Beer, Food, and Flavor: A Guide to Tasting, Pairing, and the Culture of Craft Beer – Schuyler Schultz
The Audacity of Hops – Tom Acitelli

Science/Food Nonfiction

Ominvore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
Botany of Desire – Michael Pollan
Oranges – John McPhee
Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
Stiff – Mary Roach
The Soul of a New Machine – Tracey Kidder

Other Nonfiction

Up in the Old Hotel – Joseph Mitchell
Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
The Hero With a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
The Golden Bough – James Frazer
Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
The Perfect Storm – Sebastian Junger

Memoir

The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
This Boy’s Life – Tobias Wolff
Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight – Alexandra Fuller
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
The Pharmacist’s Mate – Amy Fusselman

Essays/Journalism

Strawberries Under Ice – David Quammen
The Search for Marvin Gardens – John McPhee
Frank Sinatra has a Cold – Gay Talese
Dark Horse – Lisa Couturier

I didn’t mention magazines because I’m still dipping my toes into that pool and can’t speak with much authority. You can’t really go wrong with The Atlantic, Smithsonian, NatGeo, or the New Yorker though.