33 Bottles of Beer - Professional Edition

Fear No Beer

One of the first questions I was asked after launching my popular 33 Beers pocket paper notebook in 2009 was, "Is it beer proof?"

Until now, the answer to that question was, "No."

Today, the answer is, "Oui, oui, Monsieur Cousteau. Set depth to 33 cL."

One Word: Plastic.

33 Beers: Professional Edition is printed on a unique, American-made "paper" composed of HDPE, the same substance used to make gallon milk jugs. Because of that, it's easy recycled when you're through with it. Should you decide to keep your notes for posterity, fear not - the material is archival, too.

Use Your Favorite Pen or Pencil

Despite its water-resistant properties, you can write on the pages of 33 Beers: Pro Edition with just about any normal pen or pencil. Once dry, the ink doesn't run. Magic!

Beer is My Favorite Color

Try as I might, I've never been able to safely carry a hydrometer around, with which to evaluate a beer's terminal gravity, should the brewer not provide that information. But color? Color can be carried. The inside front cover of 33 Beers: Pro Edition includes a foldout swatch book you can use to evaluate your beer's color, and put a number to it.

In larger breweries, color is communicated in terms of SRM - Standard Reference Method. A small sample of beer is put into a small container, and light of a particular wavelength is shown through using a fairly expensive machine. The amount of light passing through (Called "Transmissive Color") is detected, and the machine spits out a number somewhere between 1 and 40-ish.

Your eyes see color a bit differently (called, "Reflective Color," because our eyes register the light which bounces off a beer glass), and since that's what you'll be using, I recommend a different methodology.

For lighter-colored beers (Pilsners, American Lagers, etc.), pour a sample about 2.5 inches deep, and compare it to the swatches inside the front cover of 33 Beers: Pro Edition. For darker beers (think Porters, Stouts, Barleywines), pour a shallow sample. This allows more light to penetrate darker, thicker beers, making comparison easier. By contrast, a "thicker" pour of lighter beers exaggerates color differences — at a half-inch depth, 2 and 4 SRM are pretty much identical. To aid in pouring accuracy, I've included a fill meter on the foldout front cover. In the image below, you can see a 17 SRM Vienna Lager on the left, and a 4 SRM American Lager on the right.

If you're wondering where your beer falls, the inside front cover includes a reference table that includes expected SRM (and ABV, IBU, OG, and TG) values for common beer styles, according to 2015 Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines.

Designed for Speed