Ordering a beer by referring to its brewing style is not particularly common in Spain yet. If we forget about the specialist craft beer establishments with their wide choice of craft beers and ales, average beer enthusiasts are rather limited in their choice of beer. If we move away from the omnipresent lager, one of them, perhaps the most widely demanded, has to be roasted malt beer.
Nevertheless, when we order a roasted malt beer, we are referring to a much wider field than we probably imagine, and in an establishment with a large choice of beer, we could be served anything from a 4% alcohol beer to a doubly fermented beer, a high fermentation ale or a low fermentation lager, one made from barley malt or another with a high percentage of wheat malt.
Roasted malt beer is nothing more than a beer containing a significant percentage of roasted malt, which is what gives it its characteristic dark golden colour (caramel, amber, light brown, etc.) and roasted malt flavour, reminiscent of crusty bread, bakeries or nuts. Apart from that similarity, the resulting beer can be very different in terms of the rest of the ingredients and the brewing process, and they are therefore very different from each other on our palates.
The truth of the matter is that we use the term fairly restrictively in Spain and when customers ask for a roasted malt beer, they usually expect an amber coloured lager with alcohol content of around 7%, with a stronger malty flavour than a standard lager beer. That is because the brewing market has developed in a specific way over the last few decades, and a commercial category has been created featuring those characteristic features of roasted malt beer; but with the appearance of new beers and styles, the term is now much less precise.
For example, Turia Märzen is definitely a roasted malt beer due to its colour, smell and taste, but its alcohol content of 5.4% is a far cry from the 7.2% of Voll Damm, an emblematic beer in this category. Not to mention Mahou 0.0 Tostada, which has the characteristic features of roasted malt beer, but is alcohol-free.
In short, talking about “roasted malt beer” as a category made sense some time ago in the market because of the limited number of beers that were actually available. Today, the term is more generic in a market where the growing diversity of examples of this type of beer mean we have to be more specific when we ask for a beer, just as we would when ordering red or white wine, where we often mention the designation of origin, the grape variety or if we prefer a dry, sweet or fruity wine.
Julio Cerezo - Beer Sommelier
Director of Sabeer Beer Academy
Cheers!
