HOW TO COMPARE BEER TYPES
There are two major players in the beer flavour game. ABV and IBU – AKA the flavour-makers of any good beer.
ABV stands for “alcohol by volume” and basically tells you how alcoholic a beer is. Alcohol can affect the taste of a beer – a higher ABV can make a beer taste more bitter and neutralise the flavour.
IBU stands for “international bitterness unit” – basically a fancy measurement for the number of bitter flavours in a beer. The scale starts at zero and has no end limit. Humans can’t taste IBU above 120, so most beers fall somewhere between a 5 and 120.
Most kinds of beer can be classed as either a lager or an ale. Basically, the physical difference is that lager is made with yeast that ferments at the bottom of the mixture, while ales ferment at the top.