10 March 2022

Beer Glossary to Boost Your Rating Skills

In addition to leaving just a numeral rating in the Pint Please app, you can also formulate written beer reviews. We collected a bunch of terms as a glossary to help you do that.

Normally the vocabulary used in beer reviews is somewhat multifaceted and colourful. It is the point to bring out one’s own individual voice also in the Pint Please reviews. We want to encourage our users to add their personal colour to the discussions about beer and formulate even more written reviews in our app.

To support the written reviews and help you guys get started, we’ve made a short introductory and a list of usual terms used in beer reviews.

Introductions for Writing a Beer Review

There are many characteristic features to point out in a beer review, but unfortunately we tend to concentrate only on the taste. Enjoying a beer isn’t only a taste experience, but an overall experience, based on all sense receptors.

Instead of just describing the taste, you can also notice several other things: colour and its intensity, smell, mouthfeel and richness, acidity and sourness, foam and alcohol volume. Together these elements form the overall impact or the flavour of the beer.

Beer is usually reviewed by comparing it to the criteria of the beer style. That’s why lagers and stouts aren’t comparable with each other. It’s relevant to know which beer style the reviewed beer is representing.

By familiarising with the essential elements of different beer styles you can learn to taste the difference. Blind tasting, for example, is a nice and practical way to test the tasting skills and their development.

There are many external reasons why beer may taste different in different kinds of situations. Temperature, freshness, glass or other serving dish, label and brand are all factors that may affect the review. So are also the place and the company in which you’re enjoying your beer, as well as your own mood and thirstiness.

That’s why we shouldn’t think that there’s only one correct way to write a review. It’s impossible to make an exhaustive conclusion in one review. Writing beer reviews is writing about one’s own taste and opinions. After that, when we compare the single reviews, we can finally form an overall picture of the beer. Therefore it’s only wise to appreciate everyone’s own opinion.

Beer Glossary

Here we’ve collected together some key terms that are usually repeated in the beer reviews written by professionals. You can use the terms as a support list for your own reviews. But nobody isn’t denying creativity and your own words either. Actually the identification process of different tastes and flavours is based on free association, so keep your mind and receptors clear and get ready to receive some new beer experiences.

Acidity: Acidity is highlighted in sour beer styles such as Lambic or Berliner Weisse.
Aftertaste: Aftertaste feels in the back of the mouth when swallowed. Usually a well-hopped beer has a lingering aftertaste.
Alcohol volume: The amount of alcohol in a beer may have an effect on its taste and other elements as fullness and viscosity.

Barrel-aged: Some beer styles are suitable for long aging periodes. Beer can be aged, for example, in old whisky or port wine barrels, in order to impregnate the liquor flavours to the beer.
Bitterness: Typical flavour for a beer. Bitterness is boosted with hops in the brewing process. It can be described as a sharpness of taste and lack of sweetness.
Body: Backbone of the beer, created with malts.

Caramel: See sweetness and malts.
Carbonic acid: Every beer contains carbonic acid to some extent. Richer foam tells of a greater carbonic acid. But it also affects the mouthfeel. You can notice it in your mouth as a slight liveliness and bubbles. Greater carbonic acid makes a beer also lighter to drink.
Cereal: Cereal flavour may allude to the taste of the different malts used in the brewing process. Barley is the most common grain in beer production. That’s why wheat, oat and rye may have more separable tastes.
Cloudy: Dim-coloured beer. It’s a typical but also not-so-wanted feature for many unstrained beer. Instead, the word hazy is used to describe a sought-after feature especially in New England style IPAs.
Complementing food: Usually opposite tastes complement each other, like sweet and salty. But beer can also be paired with food that’s similar in its taste in order to create harmonic tastes.

Diacetyl: Off-taste that comes usually from bad hygiene and makes the beer taste like butter.
Dry-hopped: Beer is dry-hopped when the hops are added during the fermentation. That’s a way to produce well-hopped beer styles, as dry hopping means a greater amount of aroma hops.

EBC: International scale in which the beer’s colour is informed. Smaller number means lighter colour.
EBU: See IBU.
Esters: Different kinds of fruity aromas created by the hops.

Fermentation: Beers are divided in two categories depending on the yeast. An ale yeast produces a top-fermented beer, a lager yeast a bottom-fermented beer.
Flavour: Overall profile of the beer produced together by taste and aroma and other elements.
Fullness: See viscosity and body.

Grassy: Off-taste or a sought-after taste. Some hop varieties are more grassy in their taste.

Hazyness: Sought-after feature in some beer styles, less appreciated in others. It is absolutely wanted for New England style IPAs that tend to look like fresh unstrained fruit juice.
Head: Layer of foam on top of the beer. In reviews it’s usual to notice the amount of the foam, its permanence, texture and the measure of the bubbles.
Hop burn: Off-taste that appears especially in well and freshly hopped New England style IPAs. It can be detected by the burning feel in the back of the mouth.
Hoppy: Hops are traditional beer condiments. Their tastes vary from citrus to grassy, piny, spicy, fruity, flowery and bitter flavours. Some beer styles are based on specific and/or local hop varieties. Usually hoppy is used referring to a well-hopped beer where the hop aromas are highlighted.

IBU: International scale in which the bitterness is informed. Smaller the number is, the less bitter the beer is.

Lacing: Lace that forms inside the glass as the head recedes. It tells of the permanence of the foam.

Malts: Malts create the body of a beer. They can be tasted as a sweetness or fullness. Different kinds of special malts have their own special taste profiles.
Mouthfeel: For instance, the amount of carbonic acid, viscosity and acidity may affect the mouthfeel. It can be sticky, drying, or so sour that it makes you wince.

Off-taste: There are some unwanted tastes that may even be called defects. They may be caused by bad ingredients, lack of hygiene or oxidation, for instance.
Oxidation: Off-taste that is typical for pale ales and lagers. Oxidation causes discolouration. The taste reminds of cardboard or paper.

Phenolic: Flavour that reminds of a medicine. Phenolic aroma is typical for some German wheat beers.

Roasty: Some beers taste roasty as coffee. Roasting flavour comes from the malts. It’s a typical flavour for porters, for example. It appears as a dry and slightly smoky flavour.

Strained/unstrained: Straining is used to make beer look brighter in colour. Especially the stored beer styles like lager are normally well-strained. An unstrained lager is easily detected for its dim appearance.
Surface tension: Tension in the surface of the beer that holds the aromas inside the beverage. A flavour is based on aroma. Therefore beer should be swirled in a glass before nosing.
Sweetness: Typical flavour caused by sugar or fullness.

Tulip: Tulip shaped beer glass is preferred in tastings because it conserves the aromas inside the glass.

Vintage: Vintage-beers are produced every year with an annual set. They are often meant to be aged.
Viscosity: Term that describes the fullness and is used to argue if the beer is thick or thin. A very thick beer may leave even an oily mark inside the glass.

Wild fermentation: Wild yeasts are nature’s own single-celled organisms in air and surfaces. They can be tapped to produce different kinds of sour beers.

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