Beer is made from four things: Water, malted barley, hops and yeast. While a few beers are produced with other ingredients—fruits, other grains like wheat (yay!) and rice (onoes!), spices—chances are good that any beer selected from the shelf at random will contain just those four ingredients. 16th-century Bavarians went so far as to make “purity requirements,” or Reinheitsgebot, into law, requiring beer to be produced only with these four ingredients. ^* (Or, really, just barley, water, and hops—they didn’t quite know about yeast yet.)

Like the blues, beer is an endless riff on a very elementary set. And like the blues, sometimes you’ll find yourself thinking, “This is it?” Trust your tongue. (And your lead belly.)

So where do all those far out tastes come from? To grossly simplify to drive a point: the yeast. I say this to prevent you from making a fledgling beer explorer’s mistake: attributing strange flavors to something other than the standard brewing process. Yeasts can impart fruity, grassy, even metallic flavors to the beer. So feel free to start pithily commenting on the tastes popping around your mouth while you swish (”Blithely reminiscent of an upturned asshole”) but don’t start attributing it to anything fancy. Just make a note and keep moving.

But we’re getting nearly off track, talking about how to drink beer instead of the basics of beer itself. Let’s fix that quickly after the jump.

• Ales: Beers where the yeast sits on the top, turning sugar into delicious alcohol.
• Lagers: Beers where the yeast sits on the bottom, turning sugar into delicious alcohol.

That’s it!

…

Okay, fine. I’m simplifying again. But that’s close enough for government work and it’s enough to get you started on one of the hardest tricks of discovering new beers: Finding out what you like and identifying what it is.

Now if you are an adherent to Budweiser, Miller, Coors, or nearly any other of the beers available on tap not just in America but around the world, you’ve been drinking a lager. (In fact, you’ve likely been drinking a specific type of lager, called a “pilsner.”)

Lagers—especially pilsners—are brewed to be a light, clear color with a clean taste. You might expect me to start trashing lagers, saying they’re the vanilla tofu of beers (and I will—later) but there’s nothing wrong with knocking back a cold Bud after a hard day and don’t let anyone tell you any different. Even a bad beer, after all, is still beer.

Ales are pretty much everything else that aren’t lagers, and you’ll only typically find them available from regional and craft breweries. There are dozens of styles that sit under the umbrella of “ale,” but let’s ignore that for now.

If you want to start browsing the major types of beer you can, but I’d actually suggest you wait a bit. Trying to learn all the different styles is putting the cart before the horse. It’s far better to start finding beers you like and can enjoy today, then learning about what makes those specific beers appealing to you.

^{* A short rejoinder about becoming a Reinheitsgebot hardliner: Don’t. Much of the joy of brewing and drinking beer is in exploring new flavors, some of which come from non-standard adultruants. Hell, the first beers had no hops and probably weren’t even brewed with barley, so as long as it has water and yeast in it give it a chance, big shot.}