2022’s Best Cities for Beer Lovers

What emerging brewing trends, if any, are making a splash in the beer universe?

The word of the moment is “hyperlocal.” Customers are not satisfied to buy beers that are made in their state, they want to support local businesses in their town. The pandemic showed people the importance of supporting their neighbors’ businesses and I think that will continue.

A local brewery can become almost like a sports team in the sense that people root hard for their success.

What’s the best way to discover great beers?

Microbreweries almost all serve “flights” which consist of several small samples of different brews. Most grocery stores have a “pick six” offering where customers select six different beers and buy them as a six pack. Both are great ways to try a wide variety of offerings.

In terms of getting recommendations, I would skip the apps where people rate beers and find an individual or two who has similar preferences to you. As a side benefit, you can make new friends this way.

How does container material (glass, aluminum, etc.) affect taste?

It’s a myth that aluminum cans detract from the taste of beer. Oskar Blues Brewery – founded by Auburn University alum Dale Katechis – pioneered the craft beer move to cans in the early 2000s and these days canning is very popular among craft brewers.

Pay attention instead to when a beer was brewed – old beer loses taste.

What’s the best way to discover great beers?

Flights. This is a great way to try a little of several beers. Especially flights at a tap room, since the variety of beers is curated by a brewer trying to create a variety of flavors to attract the best customers.

Sometimes the brewery even has a specialty, such that there may be an interesting underlying theme to their beer list.

What types of food pair best with which types of beer?

Whatever tastes good. There are ways to match spicy to not spicy, etc. However, the exploration is the most fun.

My advice is to start with an IPA and beer cheese and a cream ale with vanilla wafers.

How does temperature affect taste?

The consumer gets to decide the best temperature for themselves. If it tastes good, you should drink it. If you want to drink it at the temperature that the brewer designed the beer for, you’ll want to pay attention to the temperature. Very cold temperatures work best with light lagers and as the beer gets darked the desired temperature can increase to 60 F for the heavy beers like Imperial Stouts, Belgian Strong Ales, Doppelbock.

How does container material (glass, aluminum, etc.) affect taste?

There was a time where beer from a can did have a metallic taste, however, today cans are designed better, and the taste isn’t affected by the can. While bottles are nostalgic and still a great way to enjoy a nice beer, cans are more recyclable, stackable, and prevent oxidation.

The best advice is to use an appropriate glass to take advantage of the look and escape of carbon dioxide.

How does the water source influence the brewing process?

Good water makes good beer. However, the composition of the water can affect the final taste of the beer. The pH and the concentration of minerals can affect the entire brewing process. A brewer that chooses to alter their water for a specific composition is considering the water to be a pivotal ingredient and the end product can be enhanced by the extra care for water conditioning.

The fun part of exploring the world of beer is that the possibilities are endless–giving brewers a unique opportunity to use the raw ingredients to create an endless list of possibilities. Exploring endless possibilities is an exciting journey.

You can choose to follow the lead of the brewer and choose the glass and temperature that matches the style, but you can also choose to enjoy their creation in any way you want.

What emerging brewing trends, if any, are making a splash in the beer universe?

The variety of beers that is available to the American public has exploded over the past few decades. Brewers will continue to push the boundaries to develop new flavor combinations and introduce less known styles, such as saison and gose styles.

Hops have dominated the craft brewing industry in the US, especially with the great proliferation of IPA’s. Hop growers are continuously developing new strains that produce new combinations of aromas and flavors and those are always exciting to try out.

What’s the best way to discover great beers?

I recommend tasting more and listening less. Everyone has their opinion on what makes a great beer but that is completely subjective.

Don’t pay as much attention to ratings and reviews – they can give you a sense of what to expect but not how you are going to perceive (and enjoy) the flavor combinations. Most reviews are just opinions on the style, not on how well the beer adheres to the style. So the only way to discover great beers (great, in your opinion) is to try them.

I would also recommend going through a beer tasting course so you “force” yourself to try many different styles. One I enjoyed was the book, The Complete Beer Course by Joshua Bernstein.

What types of food pair best with which types of beer?

There are many great books on this subject. Basically, you can either balance your beer and food flavors or emphasize them.

You can use the hop bitterness to balance out a level of sweetness in your foods, such as an IPA paired with a sweet bbq. You could use the subtle sweetness in a beer (for instance, Marzen) to balance the umami flavors in meats and some vegetables or to balance the flavors in very spicy foods. As a contrast, you can use the bitterness in beer to emphasize a very spicy dish (IPA’s with Cajun dishes is a great combination).

There are many similar flavors and aromas in beer that can be paired with similar foods. A citrus hop aroma can be paired with citrus fruit in a salad or as a sauce on a main dish. The roasted caramel flavors of darker beers can match well with grilled, caramelized meats or vegetables. There are lots of combinations that go well, either as a balance or a contrast.

My only suggestion is to balance the intensity of the flavors. The strong toasted flavors in a brown ale may overpower (and leave almost tasteless) similar flavors in lightly-baked products, such as garlic bread, while enhancing the flavor of such foods as fried chicken and some Mexican dishes.

A food with a very strong flavor profile, like bbq, can also overpower the subtle tastes in lighter beers, such as Helles or other light lagers. It may go great together but you are really not tasting much of the beer.

How does temperature affect taste?

The warmer the beer, the more aromatics you will get from the beer. In many cases for lighter beers, there really are not many additional aromas that will come out (there are some and it’s worth experimenting).

In darker beers and sours, there are a lot of aromas and flavors that are locked in by low temperatures.

I would encourage drinkers to allow their beers to warm up a bit and taste them. You may discover flavors emerging that you never noticed before. And many of them can enhance your enjoyment of the beer.

Now, temperature is also a way of masking a flavor that doesn’t belong in the beer. You may not notice an off-flavor such as diacetyl (a buttery, toffee flavor) in a very cold beer but that becomes noticeable (and unpleasant) when the beer warms up.

If it’s not a well-crafted beer (i.e., made true to style with no off-flavors), you may want to keep it cold.

How does container material (glass, aluminum, etc.) affect taste?

The standard tasting vessel is glass, inert and has no taste. Plus, you can see the carbonation and the color of the beer so I would recommend tasting your beers in glass, as much as possible.

The glass bottle carries some issues. Not only is it breakable and light shines through (even in the brown bottles which can cause light-struck beer which has a skunky aroma), but the crowns (bottle caps) do not seal the bottle completely and over time (and with temperature changes), the beer will pick up oxygen and you will start to get a papery, stale flavor in your beer.

But for a beer you are consuming now, I would encourage you to pour it into a glass.

The linings of beer cans have gotten very good over the last few decades so the can really doesn’t impart a great deal of flavor. And, if it is filled properly, it will not pick up oxygen and cans prevent sunlight from entering the beer, so the can is really a better storage for beer.

But as you drink from the can (and the same can be said of the bottle), you don’t get much of the aroma of the beer. What you tend to smell is the can top and that doesn’t enhance the enjoyment of the beer.

How does the water source influence the brewing process?

I can spend days on the importance of water in brewing. In fact, I do with my students. Most beers are about 95% water so it makes a difference and it is why most of the beer styles have evolved as they did.

The water should also be free of chlorine (used to sanitize the water) which can add a medicinal flavor to the beer. It is easily removed by passing your brewing water through a carbon filter.

Usually most attention is focused on the salts in the water. The local water source for Burton-on-Trent, England, is very hard water with excess calcium and magnesium ions, making it an ideal water supply for IPA’s and pale ales.

The water in Dublin, Ireland, is dominated by carbonate ions which requires the use of darker malts to maintain the proper pH of the water (think Guinness Stout).

Most brewers today start with fairly soft water (low in all ion content) and add the needed salts to match the style.

So the natural water source can play a role in what styles of beer can be created true to style. But most breweries have sources of water that are low in salts and theoretically can produce any style of beer with the appropriate additions of brewing salts.

What emerging brewing trends, if any, are making a splash in the beer universe?

I will not speak broadly, but in the Philadelphia region, the Philly sour yeast strain first identified in Matt Farber’s Lab at the University of the Sciences is creating a splash. It’s been taxonomically classified into a different species and genus than traditional brewing yeasts.

The yeast develops lactic acid as well as ethanol, the combination works well in fruit beers. Check out Levente brewing in West Chester for some examples.

Also local, Conshohocken Brewing has made some interesting strong ales with a Norwegian Farmhouse Ale yeast.

What’s the best way to discover great beers?

Travel widely and drink the beer made in that region.

What types of food pair best with which types of beer?

This is also not my expertise, but I would try to complement flavor profiles. A delicate seafood dish? Perhaps a Belgian blonde or Witbeer. Dark roasts? How about a hoppy intense Double IPA or dark lager (a Schwarzbier). A dark chocolate dessert? Try a raspberry Russian Imperial Stout. Vanilla ice cream or creme brulee? Maybe a framboise, a raspberry Lambic.

How does temperature affect taste?

Every beer has an optimum serving temperature, and that temperature is also an individual preference. Preferences are also situational. I tend to like my beers closer to room temperature than refrigerator temperature, but after cutting the grass on a 95° day in mid-July, I want one of those 9 oz ice-cold, 32.001°F Rolling Rock ponies.

How does container material (glass, aluminum, etc.) affect taste?

I do not believe the material itself matters. It’s really the packaging technology associated with the material. In particular, it’s how much that technology allows oxygen into the beer during packing, and how much oxygen creeps in over time.

My feeling is brewers have or can have good control (for the most part) over oxygen levels in both glass bottle and aluminum canning technologies. Most beers are meant to be drunk fresh, but this depends on style and how the beer was handled through the delivery process.

New England hazy IPA’s absolutely demand to be delivered and stored cold; stouts can suffer some time at room temperature before they go south.

When a local merchant continued to display a wonderful, locally produced, oak-aged stout in the cooler, and kept out on the shelf, at room temperature, one of my favorite NE hazy IPS from a favored brewery, I stopped patronizing that merchant.

The interesting question is what happens with time.

Crown caps on glass bottles are known to allow oxygen into beer over time, aluminum cans are believed to do less so. Some beers benefit from time in the bottle: I’m running a little experiment now with Troeges Mad Elf from last year (2020) in both cans and bottles. This is a seasonal strong amber ale (10+% ) brewed with honey and cherries.

New, it is intense, fresh fruit, malty, a bit raw. Wait a year in the bottle, this turns into an elegant ripe-fruit toffee-cherry pie. But that’s in the bottle. Last year Troeges put Mad Elf in Cans and bottles. I picked up a case of both, and will see how they compare this Christmas season. Ask me again in January…