A tap list is a menu written in a different language, and once you can translate it the board stops being a wall of names. The three numbers that matter are alcohol by volume, which tells you how strong the beer is and how it will feel to drink, bitterness international bitterness units, which tell you how much hop bitterness was measured before the beer was ever poured, and the style name, which is a promise about the whole recipe and the single most useful thing on the board. Read them together rather than in isolation, and you can order with confidence in any BC pub without knowing anything about beer in advance.
Alcohol By Volume Is The Number That Sets The Pace
ABV is the percentage of the beer's volume that is pure alcohol, and on a tap list it tells you two things at once: how strong the beer is, and how long it will take to get into you. A session lager at four per cent and a double IPA at nine per cent differ by more than a factor of two, which means the nine percent beer reaches the same level of alcohol roughly twice as fast, no matter how small the pour is. The second thing ABV tells you is about weight, because a higher-alcohol beer carries more residual soluble solids, more body and more warmth, so a strong beer is generally fuller and a light one generally thinner. Neither rule is absolute, but both hold often enough to make the number worth reading before you decide anything.
Bitterness Is Measured, Not Tasted
IBU stands for international bitterness units, and it is a measurement of how much hop bitterness a beer contains, calculated from the hops used and the volume of the wort. It is the single most misunderstood number on a tap list, because IBU measures bitterness and nothing else. It does not measure hop aroma, so a beer can be extremely aromatic and low on IBU, and it does not measure sweetness or malt character, so a beer can be low on IBU and still taste sweet. Low IBU means a gentler, less bitter drink, and high IBU means a sharper one, but the perceived bitterness in the glass is always a mix of that measurement and everything else in the recipe.
A rough guide is worth having, since a lager or a pale ale usually sits under about 30 IBU, an amber or an English ale often falls between about 20 and 40, a standard pale ale or IPA commonly lands anywhere from 30 to 60, and a double or imperial IPA can run well past 80. Those are conventions rather than rules, and they exist so that when a tap list puts a number next to a name you can tell whether the number matches the style or whether something unusual is going on.
The Style Name Does The Most Work
If you take one thing from a tap list, take the style name, because it is the shortest description of the whole beer a brewer can give you. An IPA is built around hop aroma and bitterness, a stout is built around roast, a saison is built around a dry and peppery finish, a sour is built around acidity, and a lager is built around a clean, crisp malt core. These are style guidelines that brewers follow for good reasons, so a style name lets you predict the beer accurately before the first sip, which is more than the numbers alone can do. The exception to keep in mind is that breweries deliberately push styles, so an experimental IPA might be deliberately hazy, sour, or heavy, and a stout might be lighter than you expect.
How The Three Numbers Work Together
| What the board shows | What it tells you | What it does not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| High ABV, low IBU, IPA style | A strong, hop-aromatic beer that is probably not aggressively bitter, such as a hazy or double IPA | How much hop aroma you will actually smell, which depends on freshness |
| Low ABV, high IBU | A bitter session-strength beer, often a dry pale ale or a light pilsner pushed bitter | Whether the bitterness is clean or harsh |
| Moderate ABV, low IBU, stout style | A dark, malt-led drink, where the weight comes from the roast rather than the hops | How much the roast is coffee-like versus chocolate-like |
| High ABV, high IBU | A big, sharp beer, usually a strong ale or a barley wine | Whether it is balanced or whether the two strengths are fighting each other |
| Low ABV, low IBU, any style | A light, gentle drink | Whether the style has been brewed to a full-strength specification and then diluted |
The row worth slowing down on is the last one, because dilution is a real technique. A brewery can brew a full-strength beer, keep part of it for blending, and serve the rest at a lower alcohol while still calling it the same style, which is a legitimate method and one that many session-strength beers use. It is also how a careless bar can serve something thin. You cannot tell the difference from the board alone, so the honest advice is to read the numbers as a strong expectation rather than a guarantee, and to let the style name and the brewery's reputation do the rest of the work.
Freshness Is The Number That Is Not Printed
The one thing a tap list never tells you is how old the beer is, and for hop-forward beers it is the variable that matters most. Hop aroma decays quickly once beer is filled, because the volatile compounds in hops break down with time and with heat, so an IPA that left the brewery six weeks ago and sat in a warm tap room will taste much flatter than the same beer fresh, and the IBU number on the board will not have changed to reflect that. Darker styles are more forgiving, since roast and caramel flavours are stable and do not fade the way hop aroma does, which is why a stout keeps its character for weeks on a tap while a pale IPA is at its best in the first few. If you want the freshest pour, ask what came off the tank most recently, and if the answer is vague, order the stout.
What To Ask When The Board Does Not Help
When a tap list is unhelpful, which is often enough in a BC pub, the questions that get useful answers are short. Asking what is freshest, or what the bar would recommend if you had never had the style, gets you a specific answer, where asking for a recommendation gets you the beer the bartender likes. Asking whether a beer is on cask or kegged tells you about the pour rather than the recipe, and asking for a small taste of something is a normal thing to do and will resolve almost any remaining doubt. You do not need to know brewing to use a tap list well, you only need to know which of the three numbers to read first, and for almost every beer on any board in the province, that first number is the alcohol by volume.
