Help sort and critique this beer menu

[mookow]

A little background: My boss is a pretty cool guy, who owns/operates a tavern. I work for him as a bartender there. We have a pretty good selection of beers, and I have been suggesting to him that he draw up a formal beer menu in order to showcase them to the public better. He's been saying he wants to do it, and will get around to it eventually. I told him I'd just do it. After all, he is the guy that lets me drink anything I want at the bar for free while I am on shift.

As you will see, we do carry a number of BMC piss beers, but we also carry some very good beer in the bar. This beer menu does not include either our bottled seasonal beers or the draft beers, as those change pretty often. My challenge here is to make the list fairly compact and accessible to beer newbies (ie, I'm not going to break it down into American Brown Ale, Southern English, and Northern English Brown Ale) while also making it informative enough to be useful to people that know beer.

My biggest problem is in where to categorize most of the lagers. I dont want to just dump them all in a big "Lager" category after having broken down the ales to a much greater extent, however I just do not know what style most of them are.

[mookow]

Ales
Pale Ales:
Coopers Pale Ale
Great Lakes Burning River
Samuel Smith’s Pale Ale
Whitbread Pale Ale

India Pale Ales:
Samuel Smith’s India Ale
Avery’s IPA
Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA
Stone IPA

Stouts:
Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout
Mackeson’s XXX stout
Bell’s Kalamazoo stout

Porters:
Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter
Hoogstraten’s Porter
Bell’s Porter

Brown Ales:
Avery Ellie’s Brown Ale
Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown
Hobgoblin

Hefeweizens:
Erdinger Hefeweizen
Anyinger Ur-Weisse
Moosbacker Hefeweizen

Trappist Ales:
Orval

Eisbocks and Weizenbocks:
Aventinus
EKU 28°

Strong Ales:
Arrogant Bastard Ale

Fruit Beers:
Blue Creek Bar Harbor????????????????????????????
Melbourn Bros. Strawberry
Melbourn Bros. Cherry

Irish Red Ales:
Murphy’s Red
Smithwicks

Belgian-style Ales:
Hoogstraten Golden Ale
Corsendonk Pale Ale
Corsendonk Abbey Brown Ale
Piraat
Sterkens White Ale
Hoegarden (sic)

Lambics (I've considered putting these in their own entire seperate section, and yeah I know they are p-lambics...):
Lindemans Kriek
Lindemans Framboise

[mookow]

Lagers:

Generic Lager category (help me sort them to something more specific)
Harp
Great Lakes Eliot Ness
Oranjeboom
Steinlager
Bavik
Yinpu
Beck’s
Beck’s Dark
Baltika
Tusker
Carib
Cristal
Corona
Amstel Light
Xingu
Ayinger Jahrhundert-Beir


Pilsners:
Pilsner Urquell
Bitburger

Dortmunder:
Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold


Non-Alcoholic beers
Kaliber
Molson Excel

[mookow]

Orphans (ie, I cant decide where to put them):
Layla (I forget if this is a lager or ale)
Old Speckled Hen (?)
Old Peculiar
Skullsplitter
Redbach


BMC Piss (yeah, I’ll retitle this “Domestics” for the menu, be we all know it’s true)

Bud
Bud Light
Miller Lite
Michelob Light
Michelob Ultra
Coors Light
MGD
Rolling Rock

[stronk]

I'm sorry not to give a fully informative post, but it's very late and I'm about to go to bed.

First off, I would categorise all the beers into national and international (or domestic and imported, whichever terminology you would expect people to use generally). Now:

Orphans:

Old Speckled Hen is a trad english ale
Old Peculier (note the olde worlde spellinge) calls itself a strong ale, but I would classify it as an old ale. Whichever fits better, really.
Skullsplitter could be called a strong ale, a scottish ale or a barleywine.
I don't know Redbach, but if you meant Rodenbach, then it's a lambic.

I would then lump porters and stouts into one category, for simplicity (just call it porters and stouts). I would also group wheat beers together and take Hoegaarden from the belgian ale group and add it to the wheat category.
Hobgoblin describes itself as a 'strong dark ale', but it satisfies all my criteria for an ESB.
I'd put Orval in the belgian ale category (maybe a label next to it in brackets saying 'trappist').

As for the lagers, I don't know enough about most of them to split them into categories. My only suggestion would be to take all the non-descript ones and group them into an 'other' section (e.g. Becks, Carib, Cristal, Corona, Amstel, Harp, etc.). What Baltika have you got, as I don't think they're all lagers?

[mookow]

Originally posted by stronk

First off, I would categorise all the beers into national and international (or domestic and imported, whichever terminology you would expect people to use generally).

Personally, as a beer drinker, I prefer beer menus that group the beers by style rather than country of origin. Telling me that a beer is made in the USA is nowhere near as useful as telling me whether it is a IPA, amber lager, weizenbock, etc. That's one thing that I always hated about the beer menus at my former favorite watering hole; they grouped the beers by state or country of origin on the beer menu, and gave you no useful information about how the beer would taste, which meant you had to waste the bartenders time asking "what style of beer is a Skullsplitter?" We may put the state or country of origin in a slightly smaller font following the beer entry. Example:
-Great Lakes Burning River (Ohio )
or
-Smithwicks (Ireland)

Now:
Orphans:

Old Speckled Hen is a trad english ale
Old Peculier (note the olde worlde spellinge) calls itself a strong ale, but I would classify it as an old ale. Whichever fits better, really.
Skullsplitter could be called a strong ale, a scottish ale or a barleywine.
I don't know Redbach, but if you meant Rodenbach, then it's a lambic.

I would then lump porters and stouts into one category, for simplicity (just call it porters and stouts). I would also group wheat beers together and take Hoegaarden from the belgian ale group and add it to the wheat category.
Hobgoblin describes itself as a 'strong dark ale', but it satisfies all my criteria for an ESB.
I'd put Orval in the belgian ale category (maybe a label next to it in brackets saying 'trappist').

As for the lagers, I don't know enough about most of them to split them into categories. My only suggestion would be to take all the non-descript ones and group them into an 'other' section (e.g. Becks, Carib, Cristal, Corona, Amstel, Harp, etc.). What Baltika have you got, as I don't think they're all lagers?

The Baltika is #9, their 8% ABV lager. I think Redbach is a Flemish Sour, but I'm not too sure. I'll take your suggestions on a couple of those (such as the Orval). I'm really trying to avoid having a generalized "lager" category for the ho-hum beers on the menu. I've already got a "crap beer" section ("domestics").

[Goban]

Well, I don’t know much about lagers, but I’m sure you can categorize them according to style via the BA ‘beer style’ guide, but it appears to be mainly regional. It will just take a little time to research on your part.

I definitely like the ale grouping. Maybe add origin/region to the side in brackets.

And definitely keep the BMC at the bottom ‘o the list…in smaller font…in a color that blends with the background… :)

American Lagers:
American All-Malt Lager
American Amber / Red Lager
American Double Pilsner
American Macro Lager
American Malt Liquor
California Common / Steam Beer
Light Lager
Low Alcohol Beer

Czech Lagers:
Czech Pilsener

European Lagers:
Euro Dark Lager
Euro Pale Lager
Euro Strong Lager

German Lagers:
Bock
Doppelbock
Dortmunder / Export Lager
Eisbock
German Pilsener
Keller Bier / Zwickel Bier
Maibock / Helles Bock
Munich Dunkel Lager
Munich Helles Lager
Märzen / Oktoberfest
Rauchbier
Schwarzbier
Vienna Lager

Japanese Lagers:
Happoshu
Japanese Rice Lager

[HarkJohnny]

here's a sample of a local scottish pub's menu: http://www.deshas.com/html/body_spiritsnick.html
PDF link is at the bottom.

i think it's as simple as writing (or stealing from brewers website) a description of the beer. Organizing it in a nice fashion, by style or brewery, is the trick though. A well designed and layed out menu makes the offerings more interesting. Find a local designer to help you (or I'd be happy to as well)

[beerboogie]

I have noticed that people like to read menus, so I would add a description of what to look for in a particular style. When you order a pale ale you at least know what to expect in taste and color and judge the other styles to it as well.

A glossory of beer if thats right to call it.