Take two beers… one that tastes sweet and has that sweetness linger through the aftertaste… the kind that makes you feel like you can lick it off your palate a couple minutes after you drink it… maybe even makes you want to drink water to wash it off… and then there is the one that tastes sweet initially, but finishes dry… like it teases you with amazing flavor and bam! it disappears… the thirst quencher!
That is the difference between a sweet and a malty beer… and understanding this difference can be the difference between brewing a well balanced beer and an overwhelming one…
A beer can be sweet without being malty and it can be malty without being sweet or it can be both… malty refers to the malt flavor, while sweetness refers more to the residual sugar… when you drink a beer and you taste the malty-sweetness and dries up, you are drinking a malty beer… you are tasting the malt… if that sweetness lingers, it is a sweet beer…
The problem with sweetness is that it can come from various different sources… sometimes fruity esters can enhance apparent sweetness…
So the best way I’ve been able to describe sweetness is to think of it as the opposite of dry… almost like a mouthfeel more than the actual taste of sweet…
When you brew a malty beer that finishes dry, you want to tone down your bitterness, which can become harsh with the dryness… not necessarily astringent, just overpowering…
Bitterness and astringency is a similar distinction few brewers make… bitterness is the flavor and astringency is the mouthfeel… you can have a highly bitter beer that is smooth and a low bitter beer that is astringent…
Bitterness is used to balance the sweetness of beer… so when you brew a sweet beer, you may want to up the bitterness a bit to balance that out and avoid a cloying sweet beer…
Sweetness can also be balanced by souring the beer… I am personally not into sour beers, but that is a way sweetness is balanced…
Another way to balance sweetness in a beer is through carbonation… high carbonation can give beer an acidic ‘bite’… and aside from making the beer feel lighter it also seems to lower apparent sweetness…
Last… one way to balance sweetness is by serving temperature alone… when you lower your beer’s serving temperature your sweet flavors and malt flavors become undetectable by your taste buds which increases the perceived bitterness in your beer…
These are small details to pay attention to that can make the difference to brew and taste a nicely balanced beer…
