Belgian Graphs

Descending further into the blurred line between work and home, work and fun, fun and obsession, and the ability to talk in math, I present more charts from the BJCP style guideline.  I took on Belgians, but didn't get a ton of good information. Still, here are some relatively interesting charts. Overall I've learned the Belgians aren't as dogmaticaly practical in their brewing as the Germans, which when extrapolated as reliability in life might help explain the latter half of the 19th C and the 1st 46 years of the 20C. Or its just being downwind of Holland, which is the only excuse I can think of for Lambics. But enough of my bellyaching (also, I might be in Belgium for a few days in July, so my tune may change). 

Back to the math graphs. First up are the IBUs by ABV. I find it easier to think in ABV, as mentioned previously, and here we don't see the strong trend. Still, it is interesting to see all the beers lined up- the Belgian/French Ale category (16) along with the strong Belgians (18) (most made, coincidently, after 1945). 

 With the three strongest beers we see the mid-point IBU decline as the mid-point ABV increases slightly. We also see the very low ABV and IBU of the Wit- to be expected of a wheat based beer. Perhaps more interesting is the comparison of IBU and SRM- which is where Belgian beers get seperated (all of them pretty white-lightning strength on their own).

Crowded though this graph is, there are some interesting points to be made. The sweetest of the beers are the dubble and dark strong, which makes sense as they are the darkest. The hoppiest are in the middle range, the pale ale and Saison. The Triple, golden strong, and blonde (sorry, mis-spelled on graph) hang in there, but all are pretty big beers. Not IPAs certainly, but hoppy and alcoholic. As for hop flavor and aroma-- they didn't really graph too well, and I'm going to let them be for now. I ran up graphs for the hybrids, but being a catch all category it is not too interesting. I'm going to do the American and English beers for next week- so stay tuned!

PSA - those blue lips aren't hypothermia

It's interesting that B. James just posted his Thunderbird commercial. I had to modify my latest post a little here to make note of it.

After looking back on our last few months of posts, we've been on a little bit of a run with posts preaching responsibility with alcohol. We happen to be professional alcoholic, and the things we do should not be tried by...well, anyone. "Do as we say, not as we do." In these economic times, we find ourselves stretching our booze budgets. But at what point do you draw the line? At what point do you replace thrifty with just plain f*ck'n stupid? Well thanks to our friends over at cracked.com we have an answer. Once again Cracked has come to our aid, and has generated a list of the world's 5 worst ways to get drunk.

The next time your thinking about grabbing that bottle of Thunderbird, why not instead take a ride on the Night Train Express.

EDIT: Sorry R-Dicks (R Huge), but I just have to add this, about Blue Nun: the wine so bad it made the news! ~mR 

"Unusual"

BJCP Graphs, German Pilsners, etc.

Yesterday I was felled, not by in-laws who disapprove, but by in-laws who's profession (running half-way houses and interventions) make me a bit more hesitant to point out my blog than I am to most people. Still, today I've had some time and rather than run stats on old-folk fucking (which I do professionally some of the time) I decided to make some graphs about beer.

As mentioned previously, I'm studying for the BJCP and I have a lot of trouble with the German beers and the statistics. I've not been a huge lager fan (until this course that is) and I can't keep them straight. So graph number 1 today is the IBU over ABV for the styles. The guidelines give a range and I've taken the mid-point, though it is often pointed out that the winning beers are likely to be at the top end of the styles (or beyond). Still, here is graph 1, which includes styles 1d - 4c.

So here we see that in general the high end of the light lager (1d,e), the Pilsner (2), European Amber Lager (3) and Dark Lager (4) varietals all go down in bitterness as the ABV increases, The exception is the American Pilsner, but we over-hop everything compared to Europe. The other is the Dortmunder, which I inlcude here as it is German (ditto the Munich Helles). Still, a tidy way to sort the beers. I also graphed the OG:BU that Ray Daniels talks about in his excellend Designing Great Beers. I've never found that to be too intuitive, but its just a factor change from what I'm doing (as the BJCP almost always figures the FG to be 75% lower than the OG, and ABV is calculated out from that). Still, here it is, again using the OG:BU of the mid-point values.

So, pretty clear that the Oktoberfest will be sweetest, with the Dark American Lager a pretty distant second.  The classic American Pilsner, despite my earlier claims- shouldn't seem a more bitter beer, but is just a bigger beer all around. It still strays from the German trend, but... guess what... its not German (thanks in part to the steel machine that was my hometown during the first half of the 20th century). 

Now, what of hop aroma and flavor? Here it gets tricky. I've gone back and coded the guidelines to try and quantify the descriptors. The next graph shows hop aroma by SRM. 

We see that the darker beers have less hop aroma, with Oktoberfest having none at all allowed. The Munich and Dortmunder have lower levels of hops, while those for the German and Bohemian Pilsners are 'distinctive,' so they could go higher. The American interloper are listed as medium to moderately high, so they could go down. I don't have a ton of experience with these beers so I think some research is necessary. The flavor hop character is similar as the aroma, though the Schwarzbier is allowed some extra hop flavor compared to the other dark lagers.

I have other statistics, but this should work for a start. Requests, corrections, complaints, suggestions and the like are all welcome in the comments!