By Brian Yaeger
( article from issue 8 )

First and foremost, there is one primary way to discuss and grade a beer and that’s by how much you like it or don’t. Seriously, it’s either thumbs up, thumbs down, or if you’re wishy-washy, thumbs sideways.

But to really get down to the multifaceted ways of appreciating a beer, you can begin to smell for aromas ranging from earthy to spicy to toasty. You can size up its body based on a billowy head or the web-like lacing it leaves on the glass. You can turn into a math nerd and quantify numbers such as original or final gravity, which dictate its percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV) or how hoppy it is based on its international bitter units (IBU). But whereas all those factors build up to the beer’s overall character and, essentially, flavor, one characterization gets paid the shortest shrift.  Color.

We’re not talking styles that tell you roughly what shade the ale is such as Blondes, Reds, Pales, or Brown Ale, though it puts us on the right track. By this nomenclature, you’ll always know that, say, among wheat beers, a Witbier (white beer) will be way lighter than a Dunkelweizen (dark wheat). But that’s just the tip of the Eisbock.

Unless there are adjuncts that impart coloration such as red cherries or golden saffron or brown coffee, beer derives most of its color from the grains. Unmalted wheat makes a beer light such as a Hefeweizen. The higher temperature barley is kilned at, the darker the tone thereby resulting in beers from light lagers to pale and red ales that span all the colors of a setting sun. When you get into roasted barley, the results are darker and more opaque still, used in dark beers like porters and stouts.

Standard Reference Method (SRM) is the system that brewers use to measure how light or dark their brews are. It has generally replaced measuring color in degrees Lovibond (°L), at least used to describe the beer if not the malts that go into it. To get uber engineer-y, the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) define SRM thusly: “Beer color intensity on a sample free of turbidity and having the spectral characteristics of an average beer is 10 times the absorbance of the beer measured in a half-inch cell with monochromatic light at 430 nanometers.”

So let’s not go there.

In simple terms, a beer’s color using SRM can range from low to high and since it can never quite hit a watery zero, it will generally fall on the scale between 2 or 3 up to 40. Specifically, this puts Bud’s SRM at 2, Bass Pale Ale at 10, and Guinness at 40. Only drink local artisanal ales? Russian River’s Pliny the Elder Double IPA is approximately a 9 and Moonlight’s Death & Taxes Black Lager hits around 35.

For all the beer geekery out there, it is quite possible to overhear patrons at a craft-centric watering hole to discuss a beer’s ABV or IBU, but you’ll never ever overhear them utter “SRM.”  While we initially drink a pint in with our eyes, ultimately we don’t choose what to drink based on specific color (except for goobers who order “light” beer, who trend toward being the same numbskulls who shy away from “dark beer” misconstruing them as too heavy and caloric; newsflash—Death and Taxes and Guinness are comparatively light).

When we do discuss beer color, it tends to bring out the poets in us. We might describe a Reissdorf Kölsch as the color of straw spun into gold, or Duchesse de Bourgogne as auburn as a paramour’s silky locks, or Old Rasputin Stout as being jet black like the bottom of a coal mine. As we look at our freshly poured beer now filling up a tulip glass or chalice, it’s like spotting an attractive person across the room before we get to know if they are fun or hilarious or kind. Ultimately our favorite aspects of beer lie in the floral or citrus-y hop aroma of a favorite IPA or the fruity esters of a Belgian Dubbel or the coffee and chocolate-y kick of a robust Imperial Stout. As it goes with all objects of affection, appearances matter.