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Drinks Food & Drink

Toronto Beer Week

Toronto Beer Week gets tapped this week and for those new to drinking the Imperial Stouts, Saisons or Bocks, here’s a short glossary of essential terms.

Hops: The flowers of the hop plant are one of the four central ingredients of a traditional pint and is half of the flavouring duo (along with malted barley). The bitterness hops bring is the most tangible effect for the drinker, particular strains have other flavours associated with them as well, which is where that citrusy note might come from in a Saison. Also, hops provides lots of puns, like the Monarch Tavern’s Hoppy Hour or Hopera Tertius at Habits Gastropub.

IPA: One of the most popular craft brew styles is the Indian Pale Ale, or IPA. No doubt you’ve heard of Alexander Keith’s, but most IPAs are much more bitter, like Amsterdam’s Boneshaker. A holdover from England’s colonial days, brewers used excessive amounts of hops to allow their product to survive a long shipment to India now it’s a popular niche style style aimed squarely at hops fans.

Cask Night: A cask night, like the ones from Granite Brewery, is when cask-conditioned ale is tapped and available. Cask conditioning is a process that creates a more “natural” beer. Instead of pasteurization and carbonization (though there may be bubbles from the continued fermentation), the beer is left in a cask – generally a sealed, metal container – after its initial fermentation its yeast remains and the beer ferments until the cask night. In the end, it’s a beer that’s continued changing until you drink it.

IBU: When looking at a beer label there are a few numbers and measurements listed. Amount and alcohol content are generally easy to suss out, but IBU, which isn’t always listed, isn’t as well-known. The International Bittering Units system is a way to measure how bitter a beer may be. The measurement goes up to around 100, though it’s always being pushed. Generally beers with a higher IBU will be bitter. However, brewmasters may balance the bitterness with lots of sweeter flavours from malt, so it isn’t always a certainty.

Barrel Aged: While this might be obvious – the beer is kept in a wooden barrel for a period of time – it’s important because in general, beer isn’t in contact with wood much these days. Modern brewing involves a lot of metal. However, some beers soak in the flavours in wood some are even being aged in barrels formally home to bourbons, scathes or wine. The Sacred Oak event promises only barrel aged beers, to test your tastes out, and Great Lakes Brewery has a a porter which spent time in a bourbon barrel.

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