Beer styles explained: pale ale, amber, porter and stout
Beer styles read like a wine list until you work out that nearly all of the difference between them comes down to two decisions, which are how dark the malt has been roasted and how much hop goes in and when. Once those click into place the whole list stops being a set of names to memorise and becomes a couple of dials you can turn, and that's the point where brewing at home gets properly interesting.
Pale ale
Pale ale is where most people start and it's a sensible place to start, because it's forgiving, it ferments at a temperature you can hold in a normal house, and it's drinkable young instead of needing months to come good. The malt is light so it hides nothing, which cuts both ways, and the hops are what you're actually tasting. If you want a citrus lift then Cascade or Citra will give you one, and Galaxy pushes it towards passionfruit and stone fruit. Worth knowing with a kit: the bittering has already been done for you in the tin, so anything you add late is going in for aroma rather than to make the beer more bitter.
Amber ale
Amber sits a step darker and what you're chasing is caramel and biscuit rather than fruit, and you get there with crystal malt, which is malt that has been stewed before kilning so some of the starch turns into sugars the yeast can't ferment out. That's the reason an amber tastes fuller than a pale ale of the same strength. A little goes a long way and too much of it makes the beer syrupy, which is the commonest way the style gets overdone.
Porter
Porter is the roasty, chocolatey one that sits between an amber and a stout, and I'll be straight with you, it's the one style here we don't carry a kit for. The honest answer is that you build it from a dark ale kit with some dark malt extract and you land somewhere very close to it. Porter takes additions better than almost any other style, which is half the reason people brew it, so coffee stirred in after fermentation works well and so does vanilla. Add one of them and taste before you reach for a second, because they stack up faster than you expect.
Stout
Stout is the darkest of the four and the flavour comes from roasted barley rather than from strength, which is the thing people most often have backwards, because a dry Irish stout can be lower in alcohol than the pale ale you brewed before it. The roast is what gives you the coffee bitterness and the dark chocolate note, and the silky mouthfeel that milk stouts have comes from unfermentable sugar rather than from more roast. Stout is also forgiving of a rough ferment, since the roast covers a multitude of sins, which makes it a surprisingly good second beer for somebody whose first one came out harsh.
Where to actually start
Brew the same style twice before you move on to another one. The first batch tells you what the recipe does and the second tells you what you do, and you'll learn more from the gap between those two than from brewing four different styles once each. And a brewing question is worth asking however basic it sounds, because the expensive ones are the questions you don't ask and then find out about 6 weeks later in the glass.
Shop related products
- Thomas Coopers Bootmaker Pale Ale 1.7kg. A hoppy pale ale kit and a straightforward first brew.
- Thomas Coopers Family Secret Amber Ale 1.7kg. The malty middle ground, caramel rather than fruit.
- Coopers Original Dark Ale 1.7kg. The base to build a porter on.
- Coopers Dark Malt Extract 1.5kg. What pushes that dark ale towards porter territory.
- Coopers Original Stout 1.7kg. Roast, coffee and dark chocolate, and forgiving with it.
The rest of the kits and ingredients are in the beer supplies range.
Did you know we also stock Cascade finishing hops, Citra, Chinook, Centennial, Nelson Sauvin, Fuggles and Kent Golding pellets, Galaxy pellets, Gladfield medium crystal malted grain and the Coopers Irish Stout kit in the shop. They aren't all on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.
If you want a hand picking a style to start on, Brewhilder is our homebrew helper, or come in and have a yak about it.
More from the brewing bench
- Beer ingredients explained: malt, hops, yeast and water
- What makes homebrew beer taste off, and how to stop it
- How to store your homebrew so it still tastes right
Still learning, and I'd rather brew the same beer twice well than four beers once each.
Cheers,
Candeece
