Sunday, February 3, 2013

Where to Find Good Beer


In many places in the world, you can just head anywhere that sells beer and buy it. In Northern America, brew pubs and micro-breweries are the best hang outs to enjoy freshly brewed, greatly crafted beer. However, they are not found everywhere, yet.

A lot of restaurants and bars are starting to sell high quality beers in bottles and on tap. If you want to drink a great beer, never ask for an "import!" Today, the market can make you very disappointed while missing a really awesome domestic. Always ask for a beer list. It's not all the time that the servers are educated when it comes to beer lore and might misinterpret what you want in a good beer.

Plenty of liquor stores offer an amazing selection of bottled beers. Major groceries are also starting to carry popular selections.

Measuring Alcohol Strength


Usually, alcohol is measured by percent of volume (abv). In America, the alcohol content in beer is measured by weight (abw). Because alcohol weighs about 20% less compared to water, abw measures seem 20% less than the abv measures for the similar alcohol amount. In Europe, the strength of beer is measured by the fermentables in the wort.

But just recently, Britain made use of OG (original gravity) -- 1000 times the ratio of the wort gravity to that of water. So a beer that has an OG of 1040 is 4% denser compared to water, due to dissolved sugars. Generally, you can take 1/10 of the last 2 digits to approximate the alcohol percentage by volume when dissolved sugars become fermented. In this example, the abv will be around 4% (40/10 = 4%) Right now, British beer is taxed based on the actual % ABV instead of the older OG so you can find both of them displayed.