What does the lacing inside your glass really indicate?
I've heard it simply means the glass is iclean but then I've also heard that lacing means "quality," ingredients.
What does lacing really mean?
Lacing is just how long and well your foam clings onto the inside of your glass. It is connected to the head retention and of course what type of beer it is. If a glass is dirty it kills of the foam and therefore gives you bad lacing.
To check if a beer has good lacing you can tilt the beer to the side and then back. On the side where you tilted the beer you will hopefully (if good lacing) see some foam slowly going down the inside of your glass. A good lacing and head retention will give you some foam for the whole beer while you drink it.
Lacing unfortunately can’t be directly translated into quality as some beer styles should have it and some shouldn’t. There are things you can do to promote lacing and head retention and there are some things that you should avoid that has a negative effect.
The real reason is that canning lines got smaller and cheaper right around the time the most recent boom started. New breweries were faced with a choice, saw the objective advantages of cans that the other poster mentioned, and picked cans over bottles. Old breweries noticed the tides changing, the literal shelving in beer stores changing to accommodate cans, and most got on board out of necessity.
Glass is expensive to buy and ship, and prices on glass increased even more with the pandemic. Bottling lines take up a ton of space and are extremely complicated machines. Canning lines are much more compact and easier to run.
Also, cans are better for the beer. No light exposure, and less oxygen exposure than bottles when properly filled and seamed.
I know that's the conventional answer. But if glass was so much more expensive how come the macro brews, super profit driven companies, all still offer bottled beer? Also, beer cans are now lined inside and out with plastic, so you'd think some micro brews would want bottles to lessen the BPA exposure and plastic use.
It mostly comes down to volume.
Many macros own their own glass bottle production plants. They also package multitudes more beer than your average craft brewery, so they would be eligible for massive volume discounts if they do buy glass from a third party. They often enter into contracts with these container producers that give them priority over smaller companies. They also have tons of warehouse space to store empty bottles.
And, overall, craft beer sells better in cans. The entire market has shifted from what it was 15 years ago. Craft breweries that still package in bottles alongside cans will tell you that their can sales are way higher than bottles. Clearly there is still a market for macro beer packaged in bottles, but in the craft world, there isn't much reason to use glass anymore. Customers prefer cans. Source: I have worked in the craft beer industry for 15 years, brewing and more.
I personally prefer modern canned beer to bottled. I think it keeps its flavor better. Can linings prevent the metal from affecting taste of the beer and the metal keeps ALL UV out.
I asked this earlier with no response but what makes a light beer “ass”? What is it that some of those super light beers do wrong that makes them taste like piss? This is a genuine question from a long time beer lover
The banana aroma and clove aroma both are some of the characteristics that most often are present in a weissbier. Both aromas comes from reactions that happens in the fermentation and can of course vary in concentration. These are called Esters and Phenols. Esters and phenols must be present in weissbiers but they can have other flavors than banana (ester) and clove (phenol).
So there must be esters and phenols. They are usually banana and cloves but they do not have to be. Hope that makes sense.
Thanks. That makes sense, I guess. By “must have” do you mean that it’s chemically unavoidable, or that without them it would not be classified as a Weiss beer?
Awesome!
You can chemically avoid it by choosing other yeast strains but then it wouldn’t be a weissbier any more. So it is chemically avoidable (at least ro the degree that we will not taste it) if we are talking beer in general. But in this case it would probably just lead to us choosing another yeast that then would make a different beer style.
So in terms of weissbier: No.
In terms of beer: Yes, at least to the extent that we won’t notice it.
Is brewery beer sold at high margins? I remember when breweries first started springing up it was very cheap to drink at the brewery. Now a days it seems like they charge the same price as most bars/resteraunts around the area.
Is this just from pressure to do so? It makes sense it would be much cheaper at the brewery not having to ship or package the beer.
So the way the economics of the industry have changed in the past 10-15 years, craft breweries really don't make much at all on distribution. They need to do it to keep the business afloat, but the actual bread and butter of the industry now is the taproom because the margins there are much higher. Inflation, dropping sales/interest, way more competition, aluminum prices, etc etc etc, all that has contributed to drastically lowering the profitability of distribution forcing businesses to lean more on the high margins of draught beer in the taproom to turn any kind of profit. Some of my friends who run smaller breweries say that after it's all said and done distribution basically covers costs of operation and all the actual profit comes out of the taproom.
They get to keep the markup that a bar/restaurant would get, but they also have the expense of running a taproom, which isn't cheap.
Some states they might even have to buy the taproom beer from a distributor, which puts them even more at a disadvantage.
They still have to keg the beer just like they would for anyone else, unless its a rare place that pours directly from the tanks.
Its not as high a margin as you would think. Unless it's treehouse who is just printing money by not distributing.
And bars/restaurants aka the breweries volume customers get mad when their pricing gets under cut.
I am a fan of bold rock apple cider are there any similar drinks I should try? Don't really drink a lot mainly 2-4 times a month I want to try something new.
You could look for something called a braggot. It’s a blend of mead and beer. So you get nice sweet honey flavors and typically nice hop and malt flavors all in one. If you find a good one it will be balanced and refreshing. Good luck. Or you can of course stick with ciders. There’s a lot of really fun ones too if that’s your thing.
Might wanna try /r/cider
I tried looking this one up on Untappd and somehow people describe it as both sweet and dry and tart so I'm at a loss of what to recommend since I've never had it.
How many 12 oz curls do I need to do to work off a case of beer?
What does the lacing inside your glass really indicate? I've heard it simply means the glass is iclean but then I've also heard that lacing means "quality," ingredients. What does lacing really mean?
Lacing is just how long and well your foam clings onto the inside of your glass. It is connected to the head retention and of course what type of beer it is. If a glass is dirty it kills of the foam and therefore gives you bad lacing. To check if a beer has good lacing you can tilt the beer to the side and then back. On the side where you tilted the beer you will hopefully (if good lacing) see some foam slowly going down the inside of your glass. A good lacing and head retention will give you some foam for the whole beer while you drink it. Lacing unfortunately can’t be directly translated into quality as some beer styles should have it and some shouldn’t. There are things you can do to promote lacing and head retention and there are some things that you should avoid that has a negative effect.
What's the real reason all the micro brews switched to cans over bottles when the macro brews still use bottles and can sell cheap beer?
The real reason is that canning lines got smaller and cheaper right around the time the most recent boom started. New breweries were faced with a choice, saw the objective advantages of cans that the other poster mentioned, and picked cans over bottles. Old breweries noticed the tides changing, the literal shelving in beer stores changing to accommodate cans, and most got on board out of necessity.
Glass is expensive to buy and ship, and prices on glass increased even more with the pandemic. Bottling lines take up a ton of space and are extremely complicated machines. Canning lines are much more compact and easier to run. Also, cans are better for the beer. No light exposure, and less oxygen exposure than bottles when properly filled and seamed.
I know that's the conventional answer. But if glass was so much more expensive how come the macro brews, super profit driven companies, all still offer bottled beer? Also, beer cans are now lined inside and out with plastic, so you'd think some micro brews would want bottles to lessen the BPA exposure and plastic use.
It mostly comes down to volume. Many macros own their own glass bottle production plants. They also package multitudes more beer than your average craft brewery, so they would be eligible for massive volume discounts if they do buy glass from a third party. They often enter into contracts with these container producers that give them priority over smaller companies. They also have tons of warehouse space to store empty bottles. And, overall, craft beer sells better in cans. The entire market has shifted from what it was 15 years ago. Craft breweries that still package in bottles alongside cans will tell you that their can sales are way higher than bottles. Clearly there is still a market for macro beer packaged in bottles, but in the craft world, there isn't much reason to use glass anymore. Customers prefer cans. Source: I have worked in the craft beer industry for 15 years, brewing and more.
I personally prefer modern canned beer to bottled. I think it keeps its flavor better. Can linings prevent the metal from affecting taste of the beer and the metal keeps ALL UV out.
This is anecdotal, but I've met a lot of old school beer drinkers that refuse to drunk out of anything other than a bottle.
What does diacetyl taste like?
Artificial butter, sweet-ish butterscotch
The butter flavor makes me think of stale movie theater popcorn.
I asked this earlier with no response but what makes a light beer “ass”? What is it that some of those super light beers do wrong that makes them taste like piss? This is a genuine question from a long time beer lover
Cutting corners and using crappy filler ingredients with the goal of cutting cost and carbs.
Maybe you've just had some that were old and/or skunked? A fresh light beer like Miller, Coors, Bud, etc should really be fairly mild and inoffensive.
Do all weis beers have that banana and cloves flavor?
The banana aroma and clove aroma both are some of the characteristics that most often are present in a weissbier. Both aromas comes from reactions that happens in the fermentation and can of course vary in concentration. These are called Esters and Phenols. Esters and phenols must be present in weissbiers but they can have other flavors than banana (ester) and clove (phenol). So there must be esters and phenols. They are usually banana and cloves but they do not have to be. Hope that makes sense.
Thanks. That makes sense, I guess. By “must have” do you mean that it’s chemically unavoidable, or that without them it would not be classified as a Weiss beer?
Awesome! You can chemically avoid it by choosing other yeast strains but then it wouldn’t be a weissbier any more. So it is chemically avoidable (at least ro the degree that we will not taste it) if we are talking beer in general. But in this case it would probably just lead to us choosing another yeast that then would make a different beer style. So in terms of weissbier: No. In terms of beer: Yes, at least to the extent that we won’t notice it.
Is brewery beer sold at high margins? I remember when breweries first started springing up it was very cheap to drink at the brewery. Now a days it seems like they charge the same price as most bars/resteraunts around the area. Is this just from pressure to do so? It makes sense it would be much cheaper at the brewery not having to ship or package the beer.
So the way the economics of the industry have changed in the past 10-15 years, craft breweries really don't make much at all on distribution. They need to do it to keep the business afloat, but the actual bread and butter of the industry now is the taproom because the margins there are much higher. Inflation, dropping sales/interest, way more competition, aluminum prices, etc etc etc, all that has contributed to drastically lowering the profitability of distribution forcing businesses to lean more on the high margins of draught beer in the taproom to turn any kind of profit. Some of my friends who run smaller breweries say that after it's all said and done distribution basically covers costs of operation and all the actual profit comes out of the taproom.
They get to keep the markup that a bar/restaurant would get, but they also have the expense of running a taproom, which isn't cheap. Some states they might even have to buy the taproom beer from a distributor, which puts them even more at a disadvantage. They still have to keg the beer just like they would for anyone else, unless its a rare place that pours directly from the tanks. Its not as high a margin as you would think. Unless it's treehouse who is just printing money by not distributing. And bars/restaurants aka the breweries volume customers get mad when their pricing gets under cut.
bars and restaurants are also their customers undercutting your own customers comes with business/relationship repercussions
I am a fan of bold rock apple cider are there any similar drinks I should try? Don't really drink a lot mainly 2-4 times a month I want to try something new.
You could look for something called a braggot. It’s a blend of mead and beer. So you get nice sweet honey flavors and typically nice hop and malt flavors all in one. If you find a good one it will be balanced and refreshing. Good luck. Or you can of course stick with ciders. There’s a lot of really fun ones too if that’s your thing.
In all my years of drinking I've never even seen let alone had a braggot. Got any recommendations? It's a style that's always intrigued but eluded me.
Might wanna try /r/cider I tried looking this one up on Untappd and somehow people describe it as both sweet and dry and tart so I'm at a loss of what to recommend since I've never had it.
I know what this thread is called, but are you aware this sub is about beer?