Beer, a complete course

Class F5.1

Three questions

Three questions, asked in a fixed order, that take a menu you cannot read down to two or three taps you can choose between.

By the end of this class you will be able to

Ask the three questions in the order you can actually answer them
Answer question one from across the room, before you have read anything
Turn three answers into one sentence a bartender can act on

F5.1.1 The three questions

Colour, then weight, then what leads. The order is the useful part.

A beer menu answers questions you have not asked yet. Forty taps, forty names, and no way in. Three questions, asked in this order, cut that down to two or three.

How dark do you want it: pale, amber, or dark.
How big do you want it: light and cold, or rich and slow.
What do you want leading: grain, hops, yeast, or sour.

Why colour goes first

You can answer it knowing nothing at all. Look at what other people are holding and point. No vocabulary, no menu, no opinion about beer required.

Colour also does one job honestly. It tells you whether the grain was roasted, so it tells you whether to expect bread and toast or coffee and chocolate. That is a real prediction and it is usually right.

What it does not tell you is strength, weight or bitterness. Question two exists because of that gap.

Covered in Module F1, What beer is

Why colour tells you less than it looks like it does. SRM is colour and nothing else. Read the strength, ignore the colour.

Why weight goes second

Weight is strength plus how much of your evening the beer takes. It is printed on the menu, so it costs you nothing to check, and it is the number that decides how the night goes.

The edges are soft. A 5.6% beer is not a different animal from a 5.4% one.
Band	Roughly	What it is for
Light and cold	Under 5.5%	A beer you drink over an hour. You can have two and still taste the second one.
The middle	5.5-7%	One is a proper drink. Two is an evening. This is where most craft beer sits.
Rich and slow	Over 7%	A small pour and a long sit. Often sold in a smaller glass for exactly this reason.

Why what leads goes last

This is the only one of the three that needs your nose, or a taste, or a question to the person pouring. It goes last because you can already have narrowed the list before you have to ask anything out loud.

Lead	What it smells and tastes like	Where it comes from
Grain	Bread, toast, biscuit, caramel, chocolate, coffee	The malt, and how hard it was roasted
Hops	Grapefruit, pine, mango, grass, and a bitter ending	The hops, and when they went in
Yeast	Banana, clove, pepper, orchard fruit	The yeast, worked warm
Sour	Tart, sharp, lemony, sometimes vinegary	Bacteria, put there on purpose

Covered in Module F1, What beer is

Which ingredient makes which flavour. Malt gives bread and roast. Hops give citrus and bitterness. Yeast gives fruit and spice. Four ingredients, four jobs.

Worth remembering

Colour, weight, lead.

Colour you can answer across a room. Weight is printed on the menu. What leads needs your nose, so it goes last. Answer them in that order and you never have to back up.

The question you usually get asked instead

The standard opening question at a bar is do you like hoppy beers. It is a bad first question for three reasons.

Hoppy means two different things, bitterness and smell, and they come from two different decisions.
It asks you to have an opinion about something you may not have had.
It is answerable only in the last of the three positions, after colour and weight have already done most of the work.

Colour asks you to look at a glass. Anyone can do that on their first night out.

Check yourself

Why does the tree ask about colour before it asks about strength or flavour?
Answer: You can answer it from across the room, before you have read anything
Colour is first because it is answerable with no knowledge and no menu. The third option is the colour trap wearing a hat: dark grain adds roast flavour and no alcohol at all. The second is closer but still too generous, because colour predicts roast and nothing else.
Put the three questions in the order the tree asks them.
Answer: 1. How dark: pale, amber or dark 2. How big: light and cold, or rich and slow 3. What leads: grain, hops, yeast or sour
Colour, weight, lead. The order tracks how easily you can answer each one. Colour needs your eyes, weight needs the menu, and what leads needs your nose or a taste. Ask them the other way round and you are guessing about flavour while still looking at forty taps.
Before you read on. Where does the line sit between a beer you drink over an hour and one you sip?
Answer: 7%. A standard American lager is 5%. A glass of wine is about 12%.
Around 7%, and the line is soft. Above it, most bars start pouring smaller glasses without being asked, and one drink stops being one drink. Guessing higher is common because 7% does not sound like much next to wine. The difference is that nobody drinks a pint of wine.
Sort these into what you can settle from across the room and what needs the glass in your hand.
Answer: How dark it is goes in Answerable from across the room · Whether it is clear or hazy goes in Answerable from across the room · How big the pour is goes in Answerable from across the room · Whether the hops smell of grapefruit goes in Needs the glass in your hand · Whether the finish is dry or sweet goes in Needs the glass in your hand · Whether it is sour goes in Needs the glass in your hand
The first three are all visible at ten feet, which is why the tree spends its first two questions there. The last three need a nose or a mouth. Haze is the one people put in the wrong bucket, because it feels like a flavour question. It is not. You can see it before you can smell anything.
Do you like hoppy beers is a good first question to ask a beginner.
Answer: False
False, though it is the question almost everyone gets asked. Hoppy covers both bitterness and smell, which come from two separate decisions, so the answer means different things to different people. It also asks for an opinion about a beer the person may never have had. How dark do you want it needs no vocabulary at all.
A menu lists a beer at 6.5%. Which band does the tree put it in?
Answer: The middle, 5.5% to 7%
The middle band. One of these is a proper drink and two make an evening. The bands exist to tell you how many you are having, not to grade the beer. Both wrong answers pick one edge of the band and ignore the other, which is the usual way people misread a range.
Pair each lead with where it comes from.
Answer: Bread, toast, caramel, chocolate with The malt · Grapefruit, pine, mango with The hops · Banana, clove, pepper with The yeast, worked warm · Tart and lemony with Bacteria, put there on purpose
Four leads, four sources, and the third question is really asking which of the four ingredients you want to hear from. Banana under hops is the tempting error, because hops are a plant and plants smell of things. Banana is yeast every time, and swapping the yeast makes it disappear.
Three words, in order, for the three questions.
Answer: colour weight lead
Colour, weight, lead. Bitterness is in the word bank as a distractor, because it is what most people reach for first. It belongs inside the third question rather than being one of the three. If you can hold three words you can rebuild the whole tree from them.
You want something you can drink over an hour on a hot afternoon. What does that settle?
Answer: You are in the light and cold band, so roughly under 5.5% · Colour is still wide open, because colour does not set strength
It settles question two and leaves questions one and three open. Avoiding dark beer is the tempting third choice, because dark reads as heavy. Irish Stout is one of the lightest beers on most bars and it is black. Bitterness has nothing to do with how long a beer takes to drink.
Click the first band that the tree calls amber rather than pale.
Answer: Amber to copper
Pale runs from straw through gold and stops where copper starts. Deep gold beers sit right on that line, and it does not matter much which side you put them: the second and third questions do the real narrowing. Reaching for the gold band is a reasonable miss, because a deep gold Helles and a light amber Vienna Lager can look alike under a bar light.

F5.1.2 Saying the answer out loud

Three answers make one sentence, and the sentence is the thing you say at the bar.

Three answers combine into one sentence. Say the sentence and a bartender will hand you something close, even in a bar whose list you have never seen and cannot pronounce.

The sentence

Colour, then weight, then lead, in the order you worked them out.

Something pale, light, and not bitter, please.
Something dark but not strong, more chocolate than coffee.
Something amber and malty, around 6%.
Something pale and strong, with a lot of hop smell.

You do not need a style name. The sentence is more useful than a name you half remember, because it says what you want rather than what you read.

The number is the class that teaches the style. 2.9 is Module 2, class 9.
What you say	What usually arrives	Class
Something pale, light and not bitter	Munich Helles, or a Czech pale lager	1.7, 1.C
Something pale, light and crisp with a bite	German Pils or Italian Pilsner	1.6, 1.11
Something pale with a big hop smell	American Pale Ale or an IPA	3.1, 3.2
Something cloudy that tastes of banana	Hefeweizen	4.1
Something amber and malty around 6%	Marzen, or Vienna Lager if you want it lighter	2.2, 2.1
Something dark but not heavy	Irish Stout or Munich Dunkel	6.3, 2.3
Something strong to sip	Doppelbock, Tripel or Imperial Stout	2.9, 7.5, 6.10
Something sour and refreshing	Gose or a fruited kettle sour	8.2, 8.9

That last column is the point of the tree. It does not just hand you a name in a bar, it hands you somewhere to go and read afterwards, while the beer is still in your memory.

When you cannot answer question three

Ask for a taste. A small pour costs the bar almost nothing and is expected of them, and two tastes settle the third question faster than any amount of reading.

Covered in Module F4, At the bar

Pour sizes and how to ask. Full pours, halves, samples and flights, plus what each one costs you socially. Taught once, in Module F4.

What the tree does not do

It does not find the best beer on the list, because there is no such thing. Preferences are preferences, and a bar full of people disagreeing about a tap list is the normal state of affairs.

What it does is get you to a family you asked for. That is a much better place to be than pointing at a name you liked the look of. When you like the beer you will know why, and when you do not you will know which of the three answers to change.

Two answers is often enough

You do not always need all three. Pale and light on its own knocks a long tap list down to a handful, and any of them will be a reasonable beer to be holding. Use question three when you want to choose between them, not as a hurdle.

Check yourself

Which sentence gives the person pouring the most to work with?
Answer: Something pale, light and not too bitter, please
The first names a colour, a weight and a lead, so it rules out most of the list in one go. The other two hand the decision back and you get whatever the bar is trying to move. Asking what is popular is not rude and it is not useless, it just answers a question you did not ask.
Pair each sentence with what usually lands in front of you.
Answer: Something pale, light and not bitter with Munich Helles · Something pale, light and crisp with a bite with German Pils · Something dark but not heavy with Irish Stout · Something amber and malty around 6% with Marzen
The first two are the same colour and the same weight. The only thing separating them is bitterness, which is why the tree asks about lead last rather than not at all. Dark but not heavy sounds like a contradiction until you have had an Irish Stout, which is black, dry and one of the lightest beers on the bar.
Used properly, the tree finds the best beer on the list.
Answer: False
False. No beer is the best one, only beers that match what you asked for. The tree narrows a list to a family and hands you a name, and whether you enjoy it is a separate question that only you can answer. Anyone who tells you a style is objectively better is telling you what they like.
You have answered pale and light. Which of these are still open?
Answer: Whether it is bitter · Whether it is sour · Whether it is an ale or a lager
Pale and light still contains German Pils, Munich Helles, Hefeweizen, Kolsch and Berliner Weisse, which covers bitter, sweet, fruity and sour, and both yeast families. Colour is the answer that has already been used, so the last option is the one thing you have settled.
A row on the tree ends with 6.10. Which module and class is that?
Answer: module 6 class 10
Module 6, class 10, which is Imperial Stout. Every row ends with the class that teaches the style, so the tree doubles as an index. The number before the dot is the module and the number after it is the class inside that module. A C after the dot, as in 1.C, is the group of short cards at the end of that module.
You asked for pale, light and not bitter. Sort these taps into likely and unlikely.
Answer: Munich Helles goes in Likely to arrive · Czech Pale Lager goes in Likely to arrive · West Coast IPA goes in Unlikely to arrive · Imperial Stout goes in Unlikely to arrive
The first two are pale, under 5.5%, and led by grain rather than hops, which is the whole request. West Coast IPA fails on the third answer and Imperial Stout fails on all three. If a bartender hands you the IPA anyway, they heard pale and stopped listening, which happens often enough to be worth noticing.
You cannot answer question three because you have not smelled anything yet. What is the move?
Answer: Ask for a small taste of the two you are choosing between
Ask for a taste. It is expected, it is free in most places, and it answers the question better than any description will. Strength is the tempting shortcut and it does not work: plenty of 4% beers taste louder than 9% ones, and the 9% one will end your evening early.
Put the steps in the order you would use them standing at a bar.
Answer: 1. Answer the colour question by looking around the room 2. Read the strengths on the menu and pick your band 3. Ask what leads, or ask for a taste 4. Say the sentence
Eyes, then menu, then nose, then mouth. Each step costs a little more social effort than the one before. Doing them in this order means the list is already short before you have to talk to anybody. People who start by talking end up being sold something.
You have to give a style name, or the person pouring cannot help you.
Answer: False
False, and the belief is a large part of why ordering beer makes people anxious. A description of what you want is more useful than a name, because a name can be misremembered and a description cannot. Pale, light and not bitter is a complete instruction.
Which of these are fair reasons to ignore your own answers and order something else?
Answer: A regular tells you the fresh one has just gone on · You want to try something you have never had · You saw someone with a glass you liked the look of
Freshness, curiosity and pointing at a nice looking glass are all good reasons, and the tree exists to serve you rather than to be obeyed. The last one is the odd option out, because there is no such thing as an objectively better style. The bartender is allowed a preference, they just cannot have it on your behalf.

Class 1 done

You have three questions, in the order you can answer them, and a sentence to say out loud at the end of them.

The three lines worth keeping

Colour, weight, lead. Eyes, menu, nose.
Colour predicts roast flavour and nothing else.
Say what you want, not a style name you half remember.

Class F5.2

The decision tree

The whole tree on two screens. Every family in the course sits on it somewhere, with the class number that teaches it.

By the end of this class you will be able to

Follow any set of three answers through to a named style
Find the class number for anything the tree hands you
Name the beers three questions cannot reach, and say why they escape

F5.2.1 Pale and amber

The first two branches in full. Answer colour and weight, then read down the column.

Pale runs from straw to deep gold and holds more of the beer sold on earth than the other two branches combined. It is also where the tree does the most work, because pale beers look alike and taste nothing alike.

Pale, and under 5.5%

The biggest cluster in beer. F5.3 takes this table a level deeper.
What leads	Order this	Class
Grain	Munich Helles, International Pale Lager, American Lager, Czech Pale Lager, Kellerbier, Helles Exportbier	1.7, 1.3, 1.C, 1.10
Hops	German Pils, Czech Premium Pale Lager, Italian Pilsner, Ordinary Bitter, Best Bitter, Session IPA	1.6, 1.5, 1.11, 3.3, 3.4, 3.2
Yeast	Hefeweizen, Kristallweizen, Witbier, American Wheat, Kolsch, Belgian Single	4.1, 4.C, 4.5, 5.7, 7.C
Sour	Berliner Weisse, Gose, kettle sour and fruited sour	8.1, 8.2, 8.9
Almost nothing, on purpose	American Light Lager, Rice Lager, non-alcoholic beer, table beer	1.C, 11.1, 11.2

Pale, and stronger

Weight	What leads	Order this	Class
5.5-7%	Hops	American Pale Ale, American IPA, West Coast IPA, Hazy IPA, English IPA, Belgian IPA, Rye IPA, Brut IPA, Strong Bitter	3.1, 3.2, 3.5
5.5-7%	Yeast	Belgian Blond, Belgian Pale Ale, Saison, Biere de Garde	7.3, 7.C, 7.7, 7.8
5.5-7%	Grain	Festbier, Helles Bock and Maibock, Australian Sparkling Ale	1.8, 2.C, 3.C
5.5-7%	Sour	Lambic, Gueuze, fruit lambic	8.3, 8.4, 8.5
Over 7%	Hops	Double IPA, American Strong Pale Ale, Wheatwine	3.2, 3.C, 9.C
Over 7%	Yeast	Tripel, Weizenbock, Biere de Garde at the top of its range	7.5, 4.3, 7.8
Over 7%	Sour	Gueuze at the top of its range, American Wild Ale	8.4, 8.8

Amber to copper

Amber is the branch where colour tells you least. F5.4 takes the lager half of it deeper.
Weight	What leads	Order this	Class
Under 5.5%	Grain	Vienna Lager, Czech Amber Lager, Irish Red Ale, Scottish Ales, California Common	2.1, 2.C, 5.8, 5.C
Under 5.5%	Hops, balanced	Altbier, American Amber Ale, Best Bitter, British Golden Ale	5.6, 5.1, 3.4, 3.C
5.5-7%	Grain	Marzen and Oktoberfest, Bock, Rauchbier, Kentucky Common	2.2, 2.7, 2.12, 10.C
5.5-7%	Hops	Red IPA, Strong Bitter and ESB, Cold IPA	3.2, 3.5, 3.C
5.5-7%	Yeast	Dubbel, Sahti, Norwegian farmhouse and kveik, Roggenbier	7.4, 10.C
Over 7%	Grain	Wee Heavy, English Barleywine, Old Ale, Doppelbock	5.10, 9.1, 9.C, 2.9
Over 7%	Hops	American Barleywine, American Strong Ale	9.2, 9.C
Any	Sour	Flanders Red Ale	8.6

Two things about reading these tables. A style can appear in two rows when its range crosses a band, and that is honest rather than sloppy. And a row is a neighbourhood, not a single beer.

Covered in Module F1, What beer is

Ale or lager, and why it is not about colour. Two yeast families at two temperatures. Ale is warm and fast, lager is cold and slow. Both families appear in every branch of this tree.

Check yourself

Before you read on. Guess how many named styles this course covers in total.
Answer: 105styles. Twenty one modules, eleven of which are nothing but styles.
105, and every one of them sits somewhere on this tree. Most people guess lower, somewhere near thirty, because that is roughly how many names a good bar puts on a board. The tree exists because 105 is too many to hold and three questions are not.
A row on the tree ends with 2.9. What does that number tell you?
Answer: Module 2, class 9, which is where that style is taught
Module and class. Every row on the tree ends with a place to go and read, which is the difference between a chart and an index. Reading it as a strength is a fair mistake on a page covered in percentages, and the giveaway is that no beer in Module 2 is anywhere near 2.9%.
Sort these into the branch the tree would put them in.
Answer: Munich Helles goes in Pale · German Pils goes in Pale · Vienna Lager goes in Amber to copper · Marzen goes in Amber to copper · Irish Stout goes in Dark · Schwarzbier goes in Dark
Two lagers in each branch, which is the point of the exercise. All six are lagers, all six are between 3.8% and 6.3%, and colour is the only thing separating them here. Anyone who reads dark as strong will put Schwarzbier in the wrong place on strength and be right on colour by accident.
Everything in the pale branch is light in strength.
Answer: False
False. Tripel, Double IPA and Wheatwine are all pale and all over 7%, and a Tripel is pale gold and can reach 9.5%. Pale reads as light because the beers most people meet first are both. The two questions are separate on purpose, which is exactly why the tree asks them separately.
Pair each set of answers with the style it lands on.
Answer: Pale, light, grain leads with Munich Helles · Pale, light, hops lead with German Pils · Pale, light, yeast leads with Hefeweizen · Pale, light, sour with Gose
Four beers, one colour, one weight, four completely different drinks. This row of the tree is the best argument for asking the third question at all. Helles and Pils are the pair people confuse, because they are the same colour and the same strength and differ only in how much hop there is.
Pale, middle strength, hops leading. Which class does the tree send you to?
Answer: 3.1 and 3.2, the pale ales and the IPAs
The pale ales and IPAs, which is where nearly half of American craft beer lives. Helles fails the third answer and Gose fails it in the other direction. If you find that row too bitter, the fix is to move one column left to grain, not to change branch.
Amber, around 6%, toasted malt leading. Name the style the tree lands on.
Answer: marzen
Marzen, also sold as Oktoberfest. Festbier is accepted because it is the same festival and the same strength band, and the only real difference is that Festbier is pale. If you answered Vienna Lager you were one question away: Vienna is the same colour and about a percentage point lighter.
Which of these sit in the amber branch?
Answer: Vienna Lager · Marzen · Irish Red Ale
The first three, and they cover both yeast families: two lagers and one ale that look much the same in the glass. German Pils is the odd one out and it is pale straw. Irish Red is the one people hesitate over, because red sounds darker than amber. It is not, it is amber with a copper tint.
Two styles sharing a row on the tree will taste much the same.
Answer: False
False. A row is a neighbourhood, not a beer. Hefeweizen and Witbier share a row and one tastes of banana and clove while the other tastes of orange peel and coriander. The row got you to within two or three candidates, which is the job. F5.3 and F5.4 split the rows.
Why do the sour styles get a row in every colour band instead of a branch of their own?
Answer: Sourness happens at any colour and any strength, so it cuts across the whole tree
Souring is a decision about bacteria, and it can be made about a pale 3% beer or a dark 8% one. Berliner Weisse and Flanders Red are both sour and share nothing else. The third option is the intuitive one because the famous sours are pale, and Flanders Red and Oud Bruin are the counterexamples.

F5.2.2 Dark, and the side doors

The dark branch in full, then the beers that three questions genuinely cannot reach.

Dark brown to black

Dry against sweet does more work in this branch than anywhere else on the tree.
Weight	What leads	Order this	Class
Under 5.5%	Roast, dry	Irish Stout, Schwarzbier, English Porter	6.3, 2.4, 6.1
Under 5.5%	Roast, sweet	Sweet Stout, Oatmeal Stout, Munich Dunkel, English Mild	6.5, 6.6, 2.3, 5.3
Under 5.5%	Grain, brown not black	English Brown Ale, American Brown Ale, Czech Dark Lager, Dunkles Weissbier	5.4, 5.C, 2.C, 4.C
5.5-7%	Roast	American Stout, American Porter, Foreign Extra Stout, Tropical Stout, Irish Extra Stout	6.9, 6.2, 6.7, 6.C
5.5-7%	Hops	Black IPA, Brown IPA	3.2
5.5-7%	Yeast	Dubbel, Weizenbock	7.4, 4.3
Over 7%	Roast	Imperial Stout, Baltic Porter, Pastry Stout	6.10, 2.11, 6.11
Over 7%	Grain, no roast	Doppelbock, Eisbock, Wee Heavy	2.9, 2.C, 5.10
Over 7%	Yeast	Quadrupel and Belgian Dark Strong	7.6
Any	Sour	Oud Bruin, Flanders Red Ale	8.7, 8.6

The dark branch has the widest strength range of the three. Irish Stout starts under 4% and Imperial Stout runs to 12%, and both are black and both taste of roast. Question two is doing almost all of the work here.

Five side doors

Three questions cannot reach everything. Pretending otherwise would leave you standing at a tap wondering why the tree did not mention the thing in front of you. Five groups sit off it.

Side door	What is in it	Class	Why three questions miss it
Something was added	Fruit Beer, spiced and vegetable beer, Pastry Stout, fruit lambic	9.6, 9.C, 6.11, 8.5	Whatever went in leads, whatever the base beer was doing
Smoke	Rauchbier, Grodziskie	2.12, 10.C	Smoke overrides colour and weight both, so neither of the first two questions predicts it
Alcohol is the question	Non-alcoholic beer, table beer, hop water	11.1, 11.2, 11.C	You settle how much alcohol you want before the tree starts, not during it
Wild yeast	American Wild Ale, Brett Beer	8.8, 8.C	Funk is not sourness, and it is not one of the four leads
Rare and historical	Sahti, Norwegian farmhouse and kveik, Grodziskie, Kentucky Common, Pre-Prohibition Lager, Roggenbier	10.C	They sit on the tree on paper. You will not meet them on a normal bar list

One more honest limit. Grain and hops are a balance rather than a switch, so a beer can sit between those two columns and plenty do. American Amber Ale and Best Bitter live exactly there.

The tree gives one right answer

It does not, and it is not trying to. Three questions get you to a row holding two to five styles, all of which fit what you asked for.

That is the correct amount of narrowing. A chart promising one name per set of answers would be lying about how much three questions can do. You would stop trusting it the first time the bar did not stock the answer.

Covered in Module F2, How beer is made

Why dark grain tastes of coffee. Barley dried in a kiln. How hot that kiln runs sets the colour and the roast flavour at the same time, which is why the two travel together.

Check yourself

Black, under 5%, dry, tasting of coffee. Where does the tree land?
Answer: Irish Stout or Schwarzbier, at 6.3 and 2.4
Both are black, both are under 5.5% and both finish dry. Imperial Stout fails on weight by a wide margin. Doppelbock fails on lead, because it is dark from kilned rather than roasted grain, and tastes of bread and raisin. That last distinction is the whole of F5.4.
Sort these dark beers into their weight bands.
Answer: Irish Stout goes in Under 5.5% · Munich Dunkel goes in Under 5.5% · American Stout goes in 5.5% to 7% · Foreign Extra Stout goes in 5.5% to 7% · Imperial Stout goes in Over 7% · Baltic Porter goes in Over 7%
Four of these are stouts and they land in three different bands, which is why the word stout on a menu tells you almost nothing on its own. Irish Stout is the one that surprises people, because it is the most famous black beer there is and it is also one of the weakest beers on any bar.
A black beer is a strong beer.
Answer: False
False, and it is the single most common wrong assumption a beginner brings to a bar. Colour comes from roasted grain and roasting adds no alcohol. The dark branch runs from under 4% to 12%, and the palest branch on the tree contains a 9.5% Tripel. Read the strength, ignore the colour.
Pair each side door with the class that teaches it.
Answer: Fruit Beer with 9.6 · Rauchbier, the smoked one with 2.12 · Non-alcoholic beer with 11.1 · American Wild Ale with 8.8
All four escape the three questions for different reasons, and all four are taught somewhere. The side doors are not leftovers. Rauchbier in particular is one of the most distinctive beers in Germany, and no answer to colour or weight would ever have predicted smoke.
Which of these are honest limits of a three question tree?
Answer: A beer with something added does not fit any of the four leads · Grain and hops are a balance rather than a switch, so beers sit between them · It cannot tell you which beer is best
The first three are real limits and the module says so rather than hiding them. Colour is the one thing the tree does answer, since it is question one. A tool that never states its limits is a tool you will abandon the first time it fails, so the limits are part of the design.
Why does smoke get a side door rather than a place on the tree?
Answer: Smoke overrides colour and weight both, so no answer to the first two questions predicts it
Smoked malt can go into a pale beer or a black one, at any strength, and when it does it is the first thing you notice. Rauchbier is amber and around 5%, which puts it in a row full of Marzen, and it tastes nothing like a Marzen. The wrong options both assume smoke travels with something else. It does not.
What do a fruit beer, a spiced beer and a pastry stout have in common that puts them off the tree?
Answer: something was added
Something was added after the base beer was designed, and whatever went in leads. A pastry stout is the clearest case: it is a dark strong stout by the numbers, and what you taste is vanilla and coconut. The lead question has four answers and none of them is a bag of coconut.
Put these four dark beers in order, weakest first.
Answer: 1. Irish Stout 2. American Stout 3. Baltic Porter 4. Imperial Stout
Irish Stout sits under 5%, American Stout in the middle band, and Baltic Porter and Imperial Stout both above 7%, with Imperial Stout reaching furthest. All four are black and none of that is visible. This is question two doing work that question one cannot.
You take your coffee black and you like dark chocolate. The dry roast row of the dark branch is a sensible place to start.
Answer: True
True, and it is the clearest transfer of taste in the whole tree. Roasted barley and roasted coffee beans go through the same reaction, so the flavours are genuinely related rather than poetically related. If you take three sugars in your coffee, move one row down to the sweet stouts instead.
Someone tells you the dark branch is where the serious beer is. What is the accurate correction?
Answer: Dark says the grain was roasted, and nothing else. Every branch has serious beer in it
Colour is one decision at the kiln. A well made Helles is one of the hardest beers on earth to brew, because a pale lager has nowhere to hide a fault. The belief survives because strong dark beers are memorable and pale lagers are the background of most people lives, which makes one feel like an achievement and the other like wallpaper.

Class 2 done

You can put any beer in the course on the tree, and find the class that teaches it in the same movement.

What to take from the tables

A row is a neighbourhood of two to five styles, not one beer.
The number at the end of a row is where to go and read.
Five groups sit off the tree: additions, smoke, low alcohol, wild yeast, and the historical rarities.

Class F5.3

Pale beers, the branch

The pale branch one level deeper. Hop smell splits it in two, and what the finish does splits it again.

By the end of this class you will be able to

Split the pale branch by hop smell before you have tasted anything
Separate two pale beers that look identical, using the finish alone
Name the pale style in your hand, or the two it is between

F5.3.1 Pale and quiet

No hop smell. Six beers that look the same in the glass and separate on the finish.

Pale, under 5.5%, and no hop smell is the biggest single cluster of beer on earth. Everything in it is trying to do the same job: taste clean and go down easily. What separates them is the last second of the mouthful.

Nine beers, one colour, one strength band, no hop smell on any of them.
Style	What you smell	What the finish does	Class
Munich Helles	Faint fresh bread, then nothing	Soft, round, gently sweet, and short	1.7
Czech Pale Lager	Bread with a little herbal spice	Gently bitter, drier than Helles	1.C
Helles Exportbier	Bread, a shade firmer	Drier, and a little stronger	1.C
Kellerbier	Bready, often hazy, softer bubbles	Rounder, less fizzy, sometimes faintly yeasty	1.10
American Lager	Almost nothing at all	Clean, thin, and over quickly	1.C
International Pale Lager	Faint grain, sometimes a touch of sweetcorn	Clean and short	1.3
Kolsch	A whisper of pear or apple	Dry, crisp and firm	5.7
American Wheat	Faint bread with a light tang	Soft and clean, and no banana	4.C
Non-alcoholic beer	Grainy, sometimes sweetish	Short, and drier than most people expect	11.1

The two you will actually confuse

Munich Helles and Kolsch are the same colour and within a few tenths of a percent of each other. Helles is rounder and finishes gently sweet. Kolsch is drier, firmer, and carries a faint note of pear or apple that Helles does not have.

That pear note is the tell, and it comes from the yeast. Kolsch is fermented warm like an ale and then stored cold like a lager, so it ends up between the two families rather than in one of them.

Covered in Module F1, What beer is

Why warm yeast makes fruit. Ale yeast worked warm makes fruity compounds. Lager yeast worked cold makes almost none. Kolsch does one then the other.

Worked example: A pale glass you cannot name

Someone hands you a pale gold beer with a white head, in a plain glass, and tells you nothing. Three moves settle it, in this order.

Smell it. No hop smell at all, so you are on this screen rather than the next one.
Sip and wait. The finish is dry and firm rather than round and sweet, which rules out Helles and Kellerbier.
Go back to the smell now that you know what to look for. A faint pear note underneath the bread.
Check the glass if there is one to check. A tall narrow straight glass points hard at Kolsch.

Kolsch, or a Helles Exportbier if the pear is absent and the beer feels a shade stronger. Two candidates left out of nine is what this branch can do, and the third question got you there.

The bitterness column is the only one that separates the first two rows from the last three.
Style	ABV	IBU
Munich Helles	4.7-5.4%	16-22
Kolsch	4.4-5.2%	18-30
German Pils	4.4-5.2%	22-40
Czech Premium Pale Lager	4.2-5.8%	30-45
Italian Pilsner	4.6-5.3%	25-50

Covered in Module F1, What beer is

What an IBU figure is worth. A laboratory measurement of bitter compounds. It compares two beers within a style honestly and lies across styles.

Nowhere to hide

This row is where faults show up first. There is no roast, no hop smell and no yeast character to cover anything, so a tired or badly made pale lager announces itself. Brewers use pale lager to judge whether a brewery knows what it is doing, and you can do the same.

Check yourself

Before you read on. Munich Helles is the least bitter beer in this group. Guess its bitterness in IBU.
Answer: 19IBU. The scale runs from about 5 to about 100. German Pils, which tastes clearly bitter, sits between 22 and 40.
16 to 22 IBU, so barely more than nothing. The hops in a Helles are there to stop the malt tasting sugary and for no other reason. People guess higher because the beer is well made and assertive beers feel bitter, and this one is assertive about being gentle.
Two pale beers, same colour, both around 5%. One finishes round and gently sweet, the other finishes dry with a faint pear note. Which is which?
Answer: Round and sweet is Munich Helles, dry with pear is Kolsch
Helles finishes soft and short, and Kolsch finishes dry and firm with a whisper of orchard fruit from the ale yeast. This is the hardest pair in the branch, because the two beers look identical and sit within half a percent of each other. Everything that separates them happens after you swallow.
Sort these pale beers by what the finish does.
Answer: Munich Helles goes in Finishes soft and sweetish · Kellerbier goes in Finishes soft and sweetish · American Wheat goes in Finishes soft and sweetish · Kolsch goes in Finishes dry and crisp · German Pils goes in Finishes dry and crisp · Czech Premium Pale Lager goes in Finishes dry and crisp
All six are pale and under 5.5%, so colour and weight have run out of things to tell you and the finish has to do the work. Kellerbier is the one people misplace, because it is often hazy and hazy reads as sharp. It is the opposite: less carbonated and rounder than the beer it is based on.
Kolsch is a lager, because it is pale, clean and crisp.
Answer: False
False. Kolsch is an ale, fermented warm, and then stored cold for weeks in the way a lager is. The result reads as a lager, which is why the guess is reasonable. The faint pear or apple note is the ale yeast leaving its fingerprint, and no true lager has it.
Pair each pale beer with the one thing that gives it away.
Answer: Munich Helles with Fresh bread, and a soft short finish · Kolsch with A whisper of pear under the bread · Kellerbier with Hazy, and softer bubbles than it should have · American Lager with Almost no smell at all
Four beers of the same colour and four different tells, none of which is a flavour you have to hunt for. American Lager having no smell is a real answer rather than a joke: an absence is as identifiable as a presence once you are looking for it.
Kolsch sits between the two yeast families. What did the brewer actually do?
Answer: Fermented warm with ale yeast, then stored the beer cold for weeks
Warm first, then cold. The warm fermentation gives the light fruit and the cold storage cleans up everything else, which is why the beer reads as a lager with a secret. Mixing the two yeasts sounds plausible and is not how it is done, because one of them would simply win.
Name the pale lager whose whole design is that nothing stands out.
Answer: munich helles
Munich Helles. Every other beer in this branch has one thing it does: bitterness, haze, pear, tang. Helles has none, on purpose, which makes it both the hardest to identify and the hardest to brew. If you answered American Lager you were close in effect and wrong in intent, since one is quiet by design and the other is quiet by cost.
You want a pale beer with no bitterness that you can drink for an hour. Which of these fit?
Answer: Munich Helles · Kellerbier
Helles and Kellerbier are both pale, both under 5.5%, and both led by grain rather than hops. German Pils is the near miss: same colour, same strength, roughly twice the bitterness. The IPA fails on bitterness and on strength at once.
A pale lager hides its faults well, because there is so little going on in it.
Answer: False
False, and it is exactly backwards. No roast, no hop smell and no yeast character means nothing is covering anything, so a fault sits in the open. That is why brewers order a pale lager to judge a new brewery. It is also why a pale lager from a slow tap tastes obviously wrong rather than merely dull.
Click the part of the glass where you would look to decide whether a pale beer is hazy or bright.
Answer: The body of the beer
The body, held up against a light. The head is white in almost every pale beer and tells you nothing about clarity. Sediment at the bottom is a different question: a Kellerbier or a Hefeweizen can carry yeast there deliberately, and the beer above it can still be judged on its own.

F5.3.2 Pale and loud

Hop smell, yeast spice, or sourness. Three loud pale families, and how they come apart.

Everything on this screen announces itself before you sip. Which of the three it is comes down to what the smell actually is: fruit that came from a plant, fruit that came from yeast, or sharpness that came from bacteria.

Hops leading

Twelve IPA variations share one class, 3.2, because they are twelve answers to the same question.
Style	What you smell	What the finish does	Class
American Pale Ale	Citrus and pine, at a moderate volume	Bitter, but the malt is still there	3.1
American IPA	Loud citrus and tropical fruit	Dry and firmly bitter	3.2
West Coast IPA	Pine and grapefruit, and the beer is clear	Bone dry, and the bitterness lasts	3.2
Hazy IPA	Mango and stone fruit, and the beer is opaque	Soft, thick, barely bitter	3.2
Session IPA	The same smell in a smaller beer	Dry and light	3.2
English IPA	Earthy, marmalade, quieter	Bitter and dry, with more malt underneath	3.2
Brut IPA	Hop smell with no sweetness behind it	Bone dry, closer to sparkling wine	3.2
Ordinary and Best Bitter	Gentle earthy hops	Dry, soft bubbles, often served from cask	3.3, 3.4
Cold IPA	Hop smell over a lager clean base	Dry and crisp	3.C

Yeast leading

Style	What you smell	What the finish does	Class
Hefeweizen	Banana and clove, and the beer is cloudy	Soft, full, and low in bitterness	4.1
Kristallweizen	The same beer, filtered bright	Same flavour, crisper edge	4.C
Witbier	Orange peel and coriander, and cloudy	Light, with a tart edge	4.5
Belgian Blond	Light fruit and a little spice	Sweetish, then dry	7.3
Saison	Pepper, lemon, dry hay	Very dry, and very fizzy	7.7
Tripel	Pear, pepper and honey	Strong, dry, and far too easy to drink	7.5
Belgian Single	Light spice, low volume	Dry and short, and weaker than it smells	7.C

Sourness leading

Style	What you smell	What the finish does	Class
Berliner Weisse	Lemon, at low volume	Sharp, very light, gone quickly	8.1
Gose	Lemon, coriander and a salt edge	Tart, then savoury	8.2
Kettle sour	Whatever fruit went in	Clean tartness, and no barnyard	8.9
Lambic	Barnyard and old apple, and no bubbles	Dry, still and austere	8.3
Gueuze	Barnyard and lemon, and very fizzy	Bone dry and sharp	8.4
Fruit lambic	The fruit, with the barnyard underneath	Dry and tart, rarely sweet	8.5

The three pairs worth knowing

Hefeweizen against Witbier. Both cloudy, both wheat, both about the same strength. Banana and clove against orange peel and coriander. The yeast is doing the first and added spice is doing the second.
Hazy IPA against Hefeweizen. Both opaque and pale. If the smell is mango and grapefruit it is hops. If it is banana and clove it is yeast.
Saison against Tripel. Both Belgian, both dry, both strong. Saison is peppery and lean and Tripel is rounder with a honeyed middle.

Cloudy means unfiltered means better

Haze is a decision, not a grade. A Hazy IPA is hazy because the brewer built it that way, and a Hefeweizen is hazy because the yeast is meant to be in there.

The same haze in a German Pils means something has gone wrong. Kristallweizen is the proof, since it is a Hefeweizen with the yeast filtered out and it tastes of banana and clove exactly as before.

Check yourself

Two cloudy pale beers of the same strength. One smells of banana and clove, the other of orange peel and coriander. Which is which?
Answer: Banana and clove is Hefeweizen, orange and coriander is Witbier
Hefeweizen gets its banana and clove from the yeast alone, with nothing added. Witbier really does have orange peel and coriander in it. They are the most confused pair in the wheat family because they look identical in the glass, and the smell settles it in one second.
Sort these loud pale beers by what is doing the shouting.
Answer: American IPA goes in Hops · West Coast IPA goes in Hops · Hefeweizen goes in Yeast · Saison goes in Yeast · Gose goes in Bacteria · Gueuze goes in Bacteria
Three sources, three completely different drinks, one colour band. This is the whole argument for asking what leads rather than asking whether someone likes hoppy beer. Saison is the one that catches people, because it is dry and lively in a way that reads as hoppy, and its pepper comes from the yeast.
Before you read on. A Tripel is pale gold and tastes of pear and pepper. Guess its strength.
Answer: 8.5%. It is pale, it is fizzy, and it does not taste strong. Most beer on a bar sits between 4% and 7%.
7.5% to 9.5%. Tripel is the clearest case in the course of a beer that hides its strength, because the sugar is fully fermented out and nothing is left to taste heavy. Guessing around 5% is the standard answer and it is the reason a Tripel is sold in a small glass.
Pair each pale beer with the smell that gives it away.
Answer: Hefeweizen with Banana and clove · Witbier with Orange peel and coriander · Saison with Pepper and dry hay · Gose with Lemon with a salt edge
All four are pale, all four are cloudy or nearly so, and none of them smells remotely like the others. Gose is the only one carrying salt, which is genuinely in the recipe rather than imagined, and once you have met it you will never mistake it again.
A hazy beer is unfiltered, and haze means more flavour.
Answer: False
False. Haze is a choice in a Hazy IPA and a requirement in a Hefeweizen, and in a German Pils it means something has gone wrong. Kristallweizen settles the argument: filter a Hefeweizen bright and it still tastes of banana and clove. What haze does change is how the beer feels, which is a different claim.
You like grapefruit and you dislike sweet drinks. Which row of the loud pale branch fits?
Answer: West Coast IPA, at 3.2
West Coast IPA is clear, dry and bitter, and grapefruit is its signature. Hazy IPA has the tropical fruit but arrives soft and almost sweet, which is the half of the request it fails. Belgian Blond fails both halves. Two beers can share a class number and still be opposites in the mouth.
Name the cloudy pale wheat beer that smells of orange peel and coriander.
Answer: witbier
Witbier, taught at 4.5. Unlike its German cousin, the orange and coriander really are in the recipe, so this is one of the few beers where the smell and the ingredient list agree. Answering Hefeweizen is the near miss, and the giveaway is that a Hefeweizen has no spice in it at all.
Which of these are true of a Hazy IPA and not of a West Coast IPA?
Answer: Opaque rather than clear · Soft and low in bitterness
Haze and softness are the two real differences. A loud hop smell is true of both, which is exactly why people who order by smell alone get surprised by the first mouthful. The last option describes West Coast IPA, and it is the thing Hazy IPA was invented to avoid.
All twelve IPA variations in this course are taught in one class, 3.2.
Answer: True
True. English, American, West Coast, Hazy, Double, Session, Black, Red, Belgian, Rye, Brut and Brown are twelve answers to the same question, so they are taught side by side rather than one per screen. Putting confusable things next to each other is the arrangement that separates them fastest.
Which sentence lands you in the pale, yeast led row?
Answer: Something pale and cloudy that tastes of banana
Colour, then the visible tell, then the flavour, which is the three questions in the order you can answer them. The other two sentences are just as clear and land you one row away in each direction. Any of the three is a better instruction than naming a style you are not sure how to pronounce.

Class 3 done

The pale branch now comes apart in your hands: quiet or loud, and then hops, yeast or bacteria.

The pale branch in three lines

Smell it first. Hop smell puts you on the loud side, and no smell puts you on the quiet side.
On the quiet side the finish decides: soft and sweetish, or dry and firm.
On the loud side the smell decides: plant fruit is hops, banana and clove is yeast, sharp is bacteria.

Class F5.4

Amber and dark lagers, the branch

The branch where colour tells you least. Toast or chocolate, then strength, and then the ale sitting next to it that looks the same.

By the end of this class you will be able to

Split amber and dark lagers by whether the malt reads as toast or as chocolate
Use strength to separate three amber lagers that look identical
Tell a dark lager from the dark ale next to it on the list

F5.4.1 Amber: toast, and how strong

Amber lagers all taste of toast. Strength is what separates them.

Every beer in this row tastes of toasted bread and light caramel. None of them is bitter and none of them is roasted. What changes from one to the next is how much of it there is, which tracks how strong the beer is.

So the second question stops being about your evening and starts being the identifying feature. Read the strength off the menu and you have usually named the beer.

One flavour family, sorted by strength. Rauchbier is the exception and it announces itself.
Style	ABV	What you taste	Class
Vienna Lager	4.7-5.5%	Light toast, lean, dry finish	2.1
Czech Amber Lager	4.4-5.8%	Toast and caramel with a peppery hop edge	2.C
Marzen and Oktoberfest	5.6-6.3%	More toast, rounder, faintly sweet	2.2
Festbier	5.8-6.3%	The same strength and the same festival, but pale gold	1.8
Helles Bock and Maibock	6.3-7.4%	Deep gold to light amber, bready, warming	2.C
Bock	6.3-7.2%	Dark amber to brown, toast and light caramel	2.7
Rauchbier	4.8-6%	A Marzen made with smoked malt. Bacon, or a campfire	2.12

The pair you cannot settle by eye

Vienna Lager and Marzen are the same colour and grew from the same malt. About a percentage point of alcohol separates them, and that percentage point is also the difference between lean and round.

There is a reason for the gap. Marzen was brewed in March at the end of the brewing season and had to survive a warm summer in a cellar, so it was built with more grain behind it. Vienna Lager was an everyday beer and never needed that.

The ale next door

Five amber ales that share a colour band with the lagers above them.
Style	Family	How to tell	Class
Irish Red Ale	Ale	Softer, slightly sweet, with a dry toasted edge at the end	5.8
American Amber Ale	Ale	Citrus hop smell over the caramel. No lager has that	5.1
Altbier	Ale	Fermented cool and stored cold, so it reads almost like a lager. Drier and more bitter than Vienna	5.6
California Common	Both, sort of	Lager yeast worked at ale temperatures. Woody, minty, firm	5.C
Scottish Ales	Ale	Rounder and sweeter, with a soft malty middle and low bitterness	5.C

The usual tell for an ale is a faint fruitiness from the yeast. Altbier is the trap, because it was fermented cool and then stored cold, so the fruit never arrives. If an amber beer is dry, firm and noticeably bitter with no fruit, Altbier is the answer that most people miss.

Covered in Module F1, What beer is

Ale or lager, and why it is not about colour. Two yeast families at two temperatures. Warm and fast gives fruit, cold and slow gives clean. A few styles do one then the other.

Check yourself

Before you read on. Vienna Lager and Marzen are the same colour. Guess how far apart they are in alcohol.
Answer: 0.9%. One was an everyday beer. The other was brewed in March to survive a summer in a cellar.
About 0.9 of a percentage point, which sounds like nothing and is the whole difference between the two styles. Vienna runs from 4.7% and Marzen from 5.6%, and that extra grain is what makes one lean and the other round. Guessing two or three points is common, because two beers that taste this different feel further apart than they are.
Two amber lagers, identical in the glass, one at 5.0% and one at 6.0%. Which is which?
Answer: The 5.0% is Vienna Lager and the 6.0% is Marzen
Strength is the reliable separator in this row, which is unusual and worth using. Tasting them side by side works too, and you would find the stronger one rounder and sweeter. In a bar you can settle it off the menu without ordering anything, which is faster and cheaper.
Sort these amber beers into their yeast family.
Answer: Vienna Lager goes in Lager · Marzen goes in Lager · Rauchbier goes in Lager · Irish Red Ale goes in Ale · Altbier goes in Ale · American Amber Ale goes in Ale
Six beers of the same colour split evenly between the two families, which is the clearest proof that colour says nothing about yeast. Altbier is the one that gets misfiled, because it was fermented cool and stored cold and comes out tasting clean. Alt means old, and it refers to the old way of brewing rather than to the beer being aged.
Amber colour means the beer will be sweet and caramelly.
Answer: False
False often enough to be worth breaking. Vienna Lager is amber and finishes dry and lean, and Altbier is amber and finishes bitter. Amber does tell you the grain was kilned rather than roasted, so expect toast rather than coffee. How sweet the beer ends up is set later, by how much sugar the yeast was allowed to leave behind.
Pair each amber beer with the one thing that gives it away.
Answer: Rauchbier with Smoke, before you have even lifted the glass · American Amber Ale with A citrus hop smell over the caramel · Marzen with Toast and roundness at about 6% · Vienna Lager with The same toast, leaner, at about 5%
Two of these are settled by smell and two by the menu, which is the branch working as designed. Rauchbier is unmistakable and people still order it by accident, because nothing about an amber lager at 5.5% warns you that it will taste like a bonfire.
Why is Marzen stronger than Vienna Lager, when they started from the same malt?
Answer: It was brewed in March to last a warm summer, so it was built with more grain behind it
More grain in, more sugar for the yeast, more alcohol out. Brewing stopped over the summer in the days before refrigeration, so the March beer had to survive until autumn. Longer fermentation is the tempting answer and it does not work: time does not create sugar, it only finishes what was already there.
Amber, around 6%, toast leading. Which class does the tree send you to?
Answer: 2.2
Class 2.2, Marzen and Oktoberfest. Vienna Lager at 2.1 is the neighbour and it sits a percentage point lower. If you wrote 1.8 you found Festbier, which is the same strength at the same festival and pale gold rather than amber, so you were one colour away.
You liked a Marzen and want something in the same direction but lighter. Which fit?
Answer: Vienna Lager · Czech Amber Lager
Both are the same colour and the same flavour family, a step down in strength. Doppelbock is the same family going the other way and will be twice the beer you asked for. Imperial Stout shares nothing but a vague sense of being brown, and that is the colour trap in its most expensive form.
Altbier is easy to spot as an ale, because ales taste fruity.
Answer: False
False, and this is the one beer in the branch that breaks the usual test. Altbier is fermented cool and then stored cold, so the yeast never makes much fruit. What you get is dry, firm and more bitter than the lagers around it. Trusting the fruit test here is reasonable and it will still get you the wrong answer.
Click the band where both Vienna Lager and Marzen sit.
Answer: Amber to copper
Amber to copper, and they share it exactly, which is why the menu settles them and your eyes cannot. Reaching for brown is a fair miss, because a Marzen poured under warm bar lighting reads darker than it is. Hold it up to a window and the red comes through.

F5.4.2 Dark: chocolate or coffee

One question splits the dark lagers faster than anything else: does the malt read as chocolate or as coffee.

Dark lagers divide on one thing. Either the malt reads as chocolate and bread crust, which is a kiln, or it reads as coffee and dry ash, which is a roaster. Ask that question and the branch halves.

Strength runs from under 5% to 14% in one colour band. Question two is doing all of the sorting.
Style	ABV	Chocolate or coffee	Class
Munich Dunkel	4.5-5.6%	Chocolate and bread crust. No bitterness at the end	2.3
Czech Dark Lager	4.4-5.8%	Chocolate, sweeter, sometimes a hint of liquorice	2.C
Schwarzbier	4.4-5.4%	Coffee, but light. Black, dry, thin and crisp	2.4
Baltic Porter	6.5-9.5%	Chocolate and dark fruit, smooth, and strong	2.11
Doppelbock	7-10%	Neither. Bread, raisin and toffee, with no roast at all	2.9
Eisbock	9-14%	A Doppelbock that was frozen and had the ice taken out	2.C

Why Doppelbock does not taste roasted

It is as dark as a stout and tastes of bread and raisin instead of coffee. The grain was kilned long and gently rather than roasted hard, so the sugars caramelised without ever burning.

That is a decision, not a property, and it transfers. Any dark beer that tastes of toffee rather than ash was built the same way.

Covered in Module F2, How beer is made

Kilned against roasted. The same barley, two treatments. A long gentle kiln caramelises the sugars. A hard roast burns them, and that is where coffee and ash come from.

The dark ale next door

If you are holding	The ale it gets confused with	What tells them apart	Class
Schwarzbier	Irish Stout	The stout is creamier and drier with a thicker head. The Schwarzbier is fizzier, thinner and crisper	2.4, 6.3
Munich Dunkel	English Brown Ale	The brown ale carries a light fruitiness from the yeast. The Dunkel is clean underneath the chocolate	2.3, 5.4
Doppelbock	Wee Heavy	Both are strong, dark and sweet. The Wee Heavy is an ale and often has a faint smoky or earthy edge	2.9, 5.10
Baltic Porter	Imperial Stout	The stout is more bitter and more burnt. The Baltic Porter is smoother, and it is a lager	2.11, 6.10

The tell that works across the whole branch

Lagers in this branch feel cleaner and livelier, with more carbonation and less weight in the mouth than their colour promises. The ales feel fuller and softer. If a black beer feels thin and fizzy it is probably a lager, and if it feels creamy and coats the glass it is probably a stout.

Covered in Module F3, How to taste

The tasting drill. Four steps, in order, for getting something useful out of a glass. Taught once, in Module F3.

Check yourself

Two dark lagers under 5.5%. One tastes of chocolate and bread crust, the other of light coffee and finishes dry. Which is which?
Answer: Chocolate is Munich Dunkel, coffee is Schwarzbier
Dunkel is brown and reads as chocolate. Schwarzbier is black and reads as light coffee, and it is thinner and crisper than it looks. This is the single most useful pair in the branch, because between them they cover most of the dark lager anyone will meet.
Doppelbock is dark, so it tastes roasted.
Answer: False
False. Doppelbock is as dark as many stouts and tastes of bread, raisin and toffee, with no roast at all. The grain was kilned gently rather than roasted hard. It is the best example in the course of colour and flavour coming apart, since two beers of identical darkness can taste like caramel and like ash.
Sort these dark beers by how the malt reads.
Answer: Munich Dunkel goes in Chocolate and bread crust · Czech Dark Lager goes in Chocolate and bread crust · Baltic Porter goes in Chocolate and bread crust · Schwarzbier goes in Coffee and dry ash · Irish Stout goes in Coffee and dry ash · American Stout goes in Coffee and dry ash
Chocolate comes from a kiln and coffee comes from a roaster, and the two are separated by how hot the grain got and for how long. Baltic Porter is the interesting one. The name says porter, which sounds like the coffee side, and it drinks smooth and chocolatey because it is a lager built around dark fruit.
Pair each dark lager with its strength.
Answer: Schwarzbier with 4.4-5.4% · Munich Dunkel with 4.5-5.6% · Baltic Porter with 6.5-9.5% · Doppelbock with 7-10%
Four beers, one colour band, and a strength range that runs from a session beer to a sipper. Nothing in the glass tells you which is which, and the menu tells you instantly. This row is why the tree asks about strength as its own question rather than folding it into colour.
Before you read on. Monks drank Doppelbock during fasts instead of eating. Guess its strength.
Answer: 8.5%. It is a lager, it is dark brown, and it was brewed to be a meal rather than a drink.
7% to 10%. It is the strongest thing most people will meet that is still recognisably a lager, and it does not taste it, because the sweetness covers the alcohol. Guessing near 5% is normal, and it is how people end up having three of them.
Doppelbock is as dark as a stout. Why does it taste of toffee rather than coffee?
Answer: The grain was kilned long and gently, so the sugars caramelised instead of burning
One decision at the kiln explains the whole beer. Caramelised sugar tastes of toffee and raisin, and burnt sugar tastes of coffee and ash, and both grains end up the same colour. The ageing answer is tempting because these beers are stored for months, and storage softens a beer without ever removing a flavour that is built into the grain.
One question splits the whole dark lager branch. What is it?
Answer: chocolate or coffee
Chocolate or coffee, which is really the question of whether the grain was kilned or roasted. Sweet against dry is the tempting bank entry because it sounds like the same question, and it is not: a Schwarzbier is dry and roasty while a Dunkel is dry and chocolatey.
A bartender says the black beer in front of you is a Schwarzbier. Which of these would make you doubt it?
Answer: It is creamy and it coats the glass · It tastes of espresso and burnt toast · It is 8%
Schwarzbier is black, thin, crisp and under 5.5%, with a light coffee note rather than a burnt one. Creamy and coating points at a stout, heavy espresso points at an American Stout, and 8% points somewhere else entirely. The third option is the only one that matches, and it is the one that sounds least like a black beer.
You liked Munich Dunkel and want the same direction but stronger. Doppelbock is a sensible next step.
Answer: True
True. Both are dark lagers built on kilned rather than roasted grain, so both taste of bread crust, chocolate and dried fruit, and the Doppelbock simply has more of everything. Ordering an Imperial Stout instead would double the strength and change the flavour completely, because that one is built on hard roasted grain.
What do you say to land in the dark lager branch rather than among the stouts?
Answer: Something dark and malty, but a lager
Naming the family is the one place where a piece of jargon earns its keep, because dark and malty on its own will get you a stout in most American bars. The third sentence describes roasted grain and will land you in Module 6 every time.

Module F5 done

Three questions, a tree that covers all 105 styles in the course, and two branches worked out in detail.

What you now have

Colour, weight, lead. Eyes, then menu, then nose.
Every row on the tree ends with the class that teaches it.
In the amber lagers, strength names the beer. In the dark lagers, chocolate against coffee does.
Five groups sit off the tree: additions, smoke, low alcohol, wild yeast, and the historical rarities.