What makes a "world-class" beer?

I'm not sure what make certain beers better than others as I'm don't think I'm qualified to but I do want to offer my sympathy for what happened at you local beer store. That sucks.

 

It's all about what you like more. I consider a beer world class if it blows me away.

 

Breweries spend time inYakima selecting hops. The same variety varies from farm to farm, field to field on the same farm.

Breweries test the malt, and can reject if there is a problem.

Water is tested and adjusted.

Yeast is either bought from a supplier and reused several times, or grown up in house in propagators at larger breweries.

You could sen d the same ingredients to two breweries, give them the "recipe", and you will get two different beers. Equipment and process differences cause that. Well that and the Brewers attention to details. That is why it takes a while to match the beers when new equipment is installed (much bigger brew house and fermenters), or locations change (new brewery on the east coast).

 

To me its a beer regardless of style that has been around for a small while and still stands the "wow" taste test.
Thus i would say something like Fullers London Porter is a top notch world class beer of its style..though its not that popular with beer geeks

 

An absence of off flavors is one distinguishing characteristic. No dimethyl sulfide (creamed corn) and no diacetyl (butter) -- though some people like those flavors, I'd say they don't exist in anything I've had that's considered "world class."

I'd also say truly great beers have very sharp, distinct flavors without allowing a single flavor to dominate the others. Rochefort 10, for example, is very sweet like most abbey ales, but there's a lot of other flavors in that beer to dance around the general sweetness. Weihenstephaner's hefeweizen is like that ... big banana flavor and plenty of sweetness, but there's just enough grain flavor to give it some balance and keep it from being too sweet (or too banana-y).

And no medicinal flavor, which I'd call the absence of flavor. Some great beers do have a bit of alcohol warmth/flavor but never that dull earthy rubbing alcohol note that tastes like unflavored mouthwash.

 

Your question looks at virtually identical 'everything' in the brewing except the process itself. One brewer could mash or ferment at a slightly different temp, so the 'process' itself has to be the same too. So if you bar the brewer from any modifications to the ingredients, and if the identical same process is used, then all else being equal, you'd get virtually identical beers.

 

In a word, yes. With tools and training most of us can build a table but few will rise to be a Master Carpenter. Line cooks can be very skilled yet never become the chef. Many talented musicians never make it to first chair in an orchestra.

To achieve Master level in your craft one must not only acquire the knowledge and experience but also posses the ability to bring the whole set of skills together in a way that makes us say wow. A master brewer is one who makes a wow beer consistently.

 

For a novice..this is from when i was a novice..the beers i tried first were very familiar to those on here..yet i still partake in them when i can..over a decade late..in no particular order or style.
Fullers London Porter
Chimay Red, White and Blue
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Zywiec Porter..or Boss Porter its more available
Arrogant Bastard
Paulaner Hefe
Andescher Dopplebock
Ayinger Jahrhundertbier
Pilsner Urquell ( yes its a good beer)
Guinness Foreign Stout
i was never into sours.
But this was were i cut my teeth on good beer..and like i said they still stand out today

 

World class means that it hits every point of the style with distinction. It means it can stand as a representation of the style against any other beer .

 

Add to this the difference in shape/geometry of the brewhouse equipt.and tanks from one brewery to another, and the differences in speeds of heating/cooling of product.

 

When Young's moved from London to Bedford they took 6 months to replicate the exact flavour profiles of their beers. That is using exactly the same ingredients from the same sources and the same brewers doing the work.
Very often merely changing the fermenter type or size makes a significant difference to the product.

 

There's some phenol or the other that I'm particularly sensitive to that (as best I can describe it) tastes like smoldering insulated wires which I - admittedly, for no particularly well-educated reason - attribute to water supply or excessive or improper use of sanitizers. There are a few well-regarded breweries in NH and at least one in MA which consistently brew beer that I find utterly undrinkable. Conversely, I find an incredibly pleasant mineral tang in everything brewed at Hill Farmstead that's like catnip to me, that I assume must be from the well water.

Aside from the brewer's experience and ability to source quality ingredients, objectively, all competently brewed beers of the same style must be very similar. Subjectively, after we've tasted and critically reviewed enough different beers, our palates become sensitized to otherwise minor variations in local water, equipment maintenance, airborne yeast, cats in the brewery, or whatever.

Or, at least, that's my theory until someone tells me different.

 

That depends on what you actually count as a "style". There are many "traditional" native european "styles" that are not really strictly defined. Look at how many vastly different beers are sold as "biere de gardes" in france. look at the huge differences between beers called "Dunkles" or simply "Vollbier" in franconia.. And even within styles that are narrowly defined by laws such as Kölsch in the EU, the native examples can vary greatly.. It's like with regional foods, every cook does it a little different,sometimes a lot different, and it is not only dependent on what ingredients he can get!

As for the original question:I'd say the internationally highly regarded world class beers are mostly just hyped. Sure,they are good, but.....
Hype plays a big part in making them "world class"........not so much the beer quality and taste itself.

 

Craftsmanship and caring. The brewery has to be unwilling to release any beer that is not perfect.

 

Outside of hype, and the internet effect.
The actual pedigree that competition bestows on brewers come from a lot of factors that pivot between high art and very hard science. It could be the grain choices. Just because they say for the clone recipe that you need 8# 2 row. 2.2# Vienna malt, and .5# Crystal Malt doesn't mean you can go to the homebrew store and get it from the same suppliers they do. They also might not say what they did to their water in addition to using a whole bunch of it to make your world class beer.
It could be what sort of hop was used where in the process. Was it a mash hop. Were they whole cone hops? How long was the mash actually? Was it decocted? Or it could be other process choices like what kind of boil is it. What kind of heat creates it? How intense a boil is it. How deep is the kettle. How wide is it? How much surface area to volume is there for that 90 minute boil?
Or it could be the terribly benign things. Did the brewery cat present a dead and beheaded mouse to the brewer that day. How cold was the kettle when sparge began? DId someone misread the box when weighing out the hops and grabbed the wrong kind. Is hype involved? What kind of music was playing when the brewer pitched the yeast? Was a dick joke involved?
Or it could be just more practical things.. What yeast strain is it. Is it more than one? Temperature they got pitched at. Was it fermented high. Was it fermented low. Was it force changed. What was the angle of the vessels cone.

 

Interesting, since I'd say the opposite. The internationally highly regarded world class beers get lots of attention because mostly they are high quality rather than "the in thing." For me, Duvel is a perfect example. It was good/great before there was "hype."

 

A lot of people in this thread are really misunderstanding the OP's question.

The question is not "how do you define a world class beer?", its "why are some brewers able to produce world class beers while others aren't?".

As a few people have said, there is much more to brewing than just combining ingredients, the process is what makes the difference in the end. We could list countless examples of how changing the process will change the end result, but the best way for you to understand is probably to read up on brewing, maybe check out the homebrew forum. When you understand exactly how beer is made it will probably make a lot more sense to you how there can be so much variability in products with the same ingredients.

 

Ok there are off course nuances. Belgium beers are kind of different to german brews because they travel way better. still, think of Westy. To me, Westvleteren beers are pretty much on the same level of quality as the St Bernardus beers, yet the former are regarded way more highly, mainly because they are rare,probably. Which causes them to be considered the iconic classic.
Perhaps we should define world-class beers first. When I thought about the category, I thought about stuff like Dark Lord or Heady, not so much about the likes of Duvel, Augustiner or Schlenkerla...