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this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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As someone who doesn't drink beer, reading this thread feels like I'm trying to read Dutch: I definitely know some of these words, but the rest is a mystery.
I kinda thought all beer was made roughly the same with just different ingredients, now I'm falling down a deep Wikipedia rabbithole.
It gets nutty.
The Bavarian purity laws defined beer in that part of the world as something that can only have hops, water and wheat. German beers tend to be straightforward and balanced
Belgians had no such compunctions and some will put fruit and other stuff in their beers. Their beers are a bit more out there and yeast (clovey) forward. Lots of Belgian beers also add candy sugar that gets fermented off which is how you get some golden ales that don't have heavy bodies but have ABVs of 9% and up (Bud is 4% and wine stays around 15%)
British beers tend to be malt forward (ie, biscuity) ales. Legend has it that when the Brits shipped beer to their far off colonies that they over hopped the beer (hops are the bitter element that also acts as a preservative) the deployed soldiers came home and asked for the pale ales like they had grown to love in India and the IPA was born
Americans kind of picked and chose from a lot of the styles around the world and true to form made them bigger, bolder and borderline obnoxious. A lot of the hops being grown these days have been bred to taste certain ways which is why some IPAs taste like citrus or pine trees.
Edit: typos
Hops, water and barley. I think not using wheat was kind of the point actually, since wheat can be made into bread, and you wouldn't want a bread shortage, would you? Banning others from brewing wheat beers, and then giving a monopoly to your own court brewery to corner the market, is also a baller business move.
Bah! You're right.
And that's funny: I never knew it was for someone else to have a monopoly on what beers. Thank you!