Learn About Beer
ABV (ALCOHOL BY VOLUME)
Alcohol by volume (ABV) is a measurement used to determine the alcohol content in an alcoholic beverage.
It is used to show what percentage of the beverage’s total volume is pure alcohol. To measure how much alcohol is in a beverage, you can multiply a drink’s ABV by the drink’s total volume. For example, a 12 oz. beer with 5% ABV contains 0.6 oz. of alcohol. While a 5 oz. glass of 12% ABV wine also contains 0.6 oz. of alcohol.
Since higher ABV beverages have more alcohol in them, they are often served in smaller sizes. This is why glasses of wine are usually served in smaller 5 oz. servings, and some of our higher ABV beers are served in 10 oz. servings.
Also a note on balance with ABV. Beers with a higher ABV (> 8%) can often taste strong or “hot” as it is often called. But not all high ABV beers taste overly hot or “alcoholic”. Read on for more about balancing, but in short, other factors of beer such as sweetness can help a strong beer taste more balanced.
IBU (INTERNATIONAL BITTERNESS UNIT
International Bitterness Unit (IBU) is a measurement used to determine how bitter a beer is. The IBU scale typically ranges from 0 to 120.
In scientific terms, IBUs measure how much isohumulone is present in a beer, which is a compound that comes from the hops used during brewing and is primarily what gives beer its bitterness.
While IBU’s can give you an idea of the bitterness of a beer, the perceived bitterness of a beer may be very different. Some styles are intentionally quite bitter, but others may taste less bitter despite having a high IBU. This is because various other flavors can balance out or change your perception of bitterness when drinking beer. For example, sweetness tends to balance bitterness pretty well, so a high-IBU beer may taste more balanced or not bitter at all if sweetness exists to counter it. Conversely, bitterness can also dial back the sweetness of beers. Since making beer is all about balance, understanding the dance between bitterness and sweetness can be very useful! See the section on final gravity (FG) below to learn more about the sweetness perceived in beer.
FG (FINAL GRAVITY)
Final Gravity (FG) can be used as a measurement to approximate the amount of sugars remaining in a beverage, giving a rough idea of its sweetness. For reference, water has a gravity of 1.000 and has no perceived sweetness, while our pastry stout, Twice Removed has a final gravity of 1.045 and is considered fairly sweet.
More specifically, final gravity is a measure of the specific gravity of a beer at the end of fermentation. Specific gravity is the density of unfermented sugars compared to the density of water remaining in a liquid. During the fermentation process, sugars in beer are converted into alcohol, but not all sugars will be or can be converted. This leaves some in the beer after it is fermented and being served, giving us an idea of how sweet it may taste.
As was mentioned in the section about IBUs with perceived bitterness, the sweetness of a beer can not be solely determined by its final gravity and may have a different perceived sweetness than its final gravity implies. And similarly to bitterness balancing sweetness, sweetness tends to balance bitterness!
BALANCE
Beer is all about balance, which is why we felt it was important to display these 3 measures when presenting our beer. While ABV, IBU, and FG alone can’t always give you the full picture of how a beer will taste, understanding those fundamentals can help you make decisions on what beers you’ll enjoy more!
As mentioned in the other sections, bitterness balances sweetness and sweetness balances bitterness. To connect some dots even further, fermenting sugars is what provides ABV in a beer, so providing more sugars for the yeast to convert tends to increase the ABV, and may also increase the remaining unfermented sugars (depending on fermentation). Because of this, we can imagine that higher ABV beers may have more potential sweetness.
Taking all of this into account, we can start to see how balance is formed in certain beers and how these 3 measures are useful. Let’s say we have a higher ABV beer clocking in at 9%. With that information alone we can determine that it might be pretty strong, but not much else! But because we know it is a higher ABV beer, we can assume more sugars had to be provided in order to get that higher ABV. More sugar = more sweetness… right? So let’s take a look at our final gravity next!
Looking to the final gravity we can see how much of that higher sugar content provided is actually left in the beer at the time of drinking and how much got converted into alcohol! Let’s say our 9% ABV beer finished with a pretty high final gravity of 1.045. At this point we can reasonably conclude that this beer has a lot of alcohol in it and is going to taste very sweet. Conversely, if the final gravity was more like 1.010 we could conclude that it will be a very strong beer with a dryer taste with little sweetness. Now we’re getting somewhere, but as mentioned before, final gravity isn’t always the smoking gun to show how sweet a beer will actually taste.
Lastly we take a look at IBU to round things out! Because bitterness balances sweetness, a beer with a high final gravity (like our 1.045 example) may not be perceived as sweet if it’s bitterness is also high. For our example beer, let’s say our IBUs are measured at 64. Remembering IBUs tend to range from 0 to 120, 64 is smack dab in the middle, and 64 IBU is typically considered moderately bitter.
So mixing it allll together, we have a 9% ABV beer that may have a strong taste to it, but with a final gravity of 1.045 it has some balancing sweetness, paired with an IBU of 64 to tie it all together and keep that sweetness from being overbearing. A.k.a. we have our delectable pastry stout.. Twice Removed 😉
Cheers!