When a Bud Man ventures out, he's a T-Rex on the stomp; there are no worries that when he walks into a bar, he'll find The King or King Light (or do they call it Prince?).

 

Likewise, a Miller Lite loyalist, buoyed by the ad-planted notion that he can actually taste his beer, walks confidently, hand already poised to grip the familiar brown bottle. Coronans ask only a beach and a slice of lime, and they get it. Everywhere. Even the silver suds surfers, the Coors Light crowd, are cool with the knowledge that their cold-train commute will be right on schedule.

 

Close-minded? Never. Bring on your beer, they'll give it a shot – after telling you before they sip that it's never going to be as good as their beer. These guys will try a Heineken, a Bitburger, a Pilsner Urquell ... they might even try a Brooklyn Lager. But there's one thing that strikes fear into the heart of any of these otherwise unflappable chuggers. Scared to order it, scared to try it, scared to even consider it. The thing that sends them running is ... dark beer!

 

Are you scared of the dark? We talked about this a little bit two weeks ago, where I explained that it doesn't take much dark malt to make a beer dark, and how dark malt was roasted a bit ...

 

Oh, what the hell do you care? You already know everything you need to know about dark beer, right? It's heavy, it's going to bloat you, it's stronger, and it's going to give you bitter beer face.

 

Haven't you learned yet that this site is about facts, not opinions? And nothing in my realm is more misunderstood than dark beer. Let's flatten these myths with a stainless steel beer keg pumped full of frothy truth that I call the Cold, Hard Beer Facts. (By the way, that's me there in the picture, drinking, yes, a dark beer.)

 

Everyone knows there is a direct link between darkness and weight; just ask physics whiz Stephen Hawking about "dark mass." (You better take a beer along, though. That forehead-keyboard thing he uses makes "You're not really getting any of this, are you?" take forever, believe me.) Look at how heavy all dark things are: Diet Coke, crow feathers, black nylon thongs, Beyoncé.

 

Stupid enough for you? Color has nothing to do with the "weight" of a beer. The weight of a beer in your mouth depends on how much sugar is still in the beer, what brewers refer to as the degree of attenuation. It's the sugar, not the color. But psychologically, your brain looks at a dark beer and thinks "Chocolate cake. Heavy." If you look at that dark beer and think "Coffee," it ain't heavy. It's your brother.

 

Hey, it's Guinness Stout, not Goodyear Stout. I have no idea where this whole "bloat" thing comes from, anyway. Dark beers don't have more or less fizz in them than lighter beers; actually, light beers – as in "low calorie" – usually are fizzier than normal. And dude, if you're feeling bloated, let one rip, belch. Bloat's gone, have another beer.

 

Stronger than what? "Regular beer?" Budweiser is see-through yellow and carries a solid 5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). Guinness Stout is an opaque black and rings in at a welterweight 4.12 percent ABV. Are there stronger dark beers? Sure, all the way up to Dogfish Head World Wide Stout, which ranges between 18 percent and 22 percent ABV. There's also the coppery transparent Sam Adams Utopias, the current Strongest Beer in the World, at 25 percent. Yeah, really – 50 proof. And it's about as dark as Coors Extra Gold. Dark beer is as strong as the brewer makes it ... just like any other beer.

 

Leaving aside the aversion so many Americans have for bitter beer (it's got hops in it; it's supposed to be bitter!), where did this idea come from?

 

Bitterness is very important in beer, so it's not surprising that brewing chemists have come up with a way to measure it objectively: International Bittering Units (IBU). The IBUs in a beer are determined through a process that involves mixing beer and aviation-grade gasoline (I'm not making this shit up). The gas absorbs the bittering compounds out of the beer (it's chemical, trust me) and then it's placed in a spectrophotometer, where a specific wavelength of light is shone through it. The amount of light absorbed by the bittering compounds in the gasoline is measured to produce the IBU value. Technical, but accurate.

 

Which is why I'm kicking this one to shreds on the numbers. Sierra Nevada makes a pretty well-known pale ale, sometimes called the classic American pale ale. The bitterness on that one comes out at 32 IBUs. But they also make a porter, a dark beer: 34 IBUs, which is pretty much identical as far as the average palate is concerned. Dark beer is as bitter as the brewer makes it ... just like any other beer.

 

Okay, I'm flimflamming you a little on that one. The very dark beers, the black ones, like stout, pick up a certain amount of burnt bitterness that doesn't come from the hops. It comes from the roasted grains, particularly in stouts, which use roasted barley for an added burnt touch. But double bocks are dark, and they taste like candy! It's all in what kind of beer you're brewing.

 

That's what we're coming to. Dark beers can't really be stuffed into one pigeonhole any more than light beers. They range from light and quaffable to heavy and brain-breaking.

 

Come to think of it, maybe the "light" vs. "dark" thing is part of the problem. Light is the opposite of dark, but it's also the opposite of heavy. Our brains are funny things, and they have a hard time with three-way paired opposites like that. Just putting it in words is hard enough: dark is dark, but light's not always light, sometimes it's heavy. And light. And so is dark. Sometimes.

 

Got all that? Good. Now go out and try a porter. Close your eyes, and imagine it's a nice yellow glass of beer. Sip it. Pretty smooth, isn't it? Not very heavy, this yellow beer. No bloat, either. Wow, that's pretty – NOW! Open your eyes! Surprise, it's dark beer! And you didn't even know. You're ready to start drinking without a night light, because you're not afraid of the dark anymore.