Dark… without all hope of day ; mention dark beer to most people and the reaction you get is the same: fear. Dread. Horror. Apprehension. Panic. Trepidation - John Milton - Brief Article

Modern Brewery Age, May 13, 2002 by Gregg Glaser

Dark beer is unimaginable to most American beer drinkers. It's perceived as awful, heavy, bitter, fattening, strong, undrinkable sludge. Why, dark beer is so thick, you can stand a spoon upright in a glass of it! Or so I've been told by light beer fanciers. And they, of course, are the majority.

Across the globe, light colored lagers rule supreme. A cold glass of clear, golden lager--often, the lighter in color, the better--is real beer to most beer drinkers. Not that frightening dark stuff. That liquid will put hair on your chest (or take it off, depending on how you're currently predisposed, hirsutely-speaking.)

Yes, for most beer drinkers there are only two types of beer--light and dark--and never the twain shall meet in their degustatory experiences. Beer is either light (good) or dark (bad). Period. End of discussion. Now pour me another cold beer. A light one, please, if you don't mind.

Is all this true? Well, yes, but only if you also believe that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. The truth is, dark beers aren't all heavy, bitter, fattening and strong. Some are weak, wussy, watery things with just a touch of color to make them appear exotic.

True dark beers obtain their color from roasted and high-temperature-kilned malted barley. It's as simple as that. In the meanest examples, a brewer may add a touch of food coloring or dark sugar to darken a beer.

As to the purported heaviness of all dark beers, let's take the famous Guinness Stout as an example. Guinness Foreign Extra Stout brewed in Kenya is indeed a heavy beer. This beer fills one's mouth with its many rich, unfermented sugars. Draft Guinness, on the other hand, the one served in pubs from Dublin to London to New York to San Francisco and beyond, is a light (almost watery in some people's minds) beer. It's one that can be refreshingly quaffed pint after pint as a session beer, even though it's a dark beer.

Dark beers are not always more bitter than light beers. Beer becomes bitter either from hops or highly roasted malts. American craft beers, even those innocuous-looking golden ales, are often packed with hop bitterness, as is Pilsner Urquel, the famous golden lager from the Czech Republic. Some dark beers, such as Guinness, are often described as having a coffee-like roastiness, and that's entirely accurate, considering that Guinness uses unmalted, highly roasted barley in its recipe. Sweet stouts, however, such as Mackeson Stout or Sam Adams Cream Stout, mask a great deal of any malt bitterness with sweet, creamy flavors, often derived from lactose sugars.

Most beers, ales or lagers, light or dark, contain about 140-150 calories for every twelve ounces. A few are bigger in the calorie department, but these are usually the high alcohol specialties. German-style maibocks and helles bocks, such as those produced by Spaten, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Lowenbrau, Hofbrauhaus, Ayinger and others, are big, heavy, alcoholic--and fattening--blonde and golden lagers. Guinness Extra Stout, the bottled version available in the U.S., is only about 152 calories per bottle. Budweiser is just 10 calories lower.

To completely debunk the dark beer myths, a dark beer can be low in alcohol or high in alcohol or smack dab in the middle. The same is true of any light colored beer. Draft Guinness, just about as black as black can be, is about 4.2 percent alcohol by volume (abv). Budweiser is stronger at 4.5 percent abv. The heavy, golden Duvel from Belgium comes in at a whopping 8.2 percent. Many maibocks and helles bocks are six-seven percent abv. Boston Beer Co.'s Millennium Ale is honey-gold in color and hits 20 percent abv. Dogfish Head's World Wide Stout is deep black and 18 percent abv. There's no rhyme or reason, is there? Yes there is. It's the malt The more there is to begin with, the more alcohol can be produced, Light or dark, dark or light the story's the same.

Fear not the dark beer of your nightmares. There's a dark beer out there somewhere, without fail, for nearly every steadfast light beer drinker. heavy and light bitter and sweet caloric and not strong and weak.

Be brave, dear beer drinker. As Francois Rabelais wrote, take the following as your new mantra: "I am just going to leap into the dark."