What Beer Are We Drinking This Summer?

[Pangloss62]

are these secondary fermentation type beers considered "high gravity" ???

You got it flint. That lambic you mentioned is probably one. Widikepikia or whatever that site is, can have bad info, but the below seems correct.

My beer-making buddy tells me its beer with an original gravity of 1.064 or higher.

Have a lambic for me.



gravity (beer)
Original gravity (OG) usually refers to the density of wort, unfermented beer, usually expressed as a ratio to the density of water (thus for instance 1.050, occasionally expressed 1050). The density is closely related to the amount of fermentable sugar dissolved in the wort, and thus predicts the likely strength of the finished beer.

Final gravity (FG) is the density of the beer once the fermentation has finished. The difference between OG and FG is a measure of the amount of sugar consumed in the fermentation, and therefore of the alcohol evolved. Different yeasts have different powers of attenuation (ability to consume wort sugars), and different worts may have higher or lower proportions of non-fermentable sugars, so final gravity is not a simple function of original gravity.

The main reason the density drops during fermentation is that the process breaks down sugar molecules into ethanol and carbon dioxide, the majority of the latter escaping as gas.