Almost as a thought experiment, I came up with these descriptions, which blend the abstract and concrete. It allows you to compare beers on the menu with each other, apples to apples. Have a look:

Alworth's Best (4.1%)

A malt-driven beer

Alworth's Best is our intepretation of an English pub ale. It uses English malts to create slightly sweet, richly bready flavors (think scone). A fruity note comes from the yeast strain we use, and this is enhanced by Goldings hops, which add their own marmalade signature. It has a light body and light effervescence. It's a great beer to drink in clusters of twos and threes.

Flavor intensity: moderate-low

Spring Sunset (5.5%)

A yeast-driven beer

Spring Sunset is our interpretation of the 19th century ales made in the farmlands of Belgium and France. We included wheat and oats to give it a grainy, breakfast-cereal flavor and a touch of haze in the glass. Most of the flavor comes from a yeast strain famous for creating peppery and herbal flavors along with bright lemongrass fruity notes. Most of the flavor and aroma in this beer comes from the yeast. We finished it off with French hops, which add a tiny bit of bitterness and a wildflower aroma. It is light-bodied and highly effervescent.

Flavor intensity: moderate



Portland Pride (6.2%)

A hop-driven beer

Portland Pride is our effort to create the perfect Oregon IPA. We used a touch of honey malt to give the beer some sweetness, and then infused it with four varieties of hops to create a rich, aromatic ale. Nearly all of the flavors and aromas of Portland Pride come from the hops, and we gave it a moderate level of bitterness for balance. The very floral nose comes from the Cascade hops we used to dry-hop the beer. The flavors are fruitier (we taste peach and white wine grape) and more citrusy (lemon and orange); these come from the Amarillo and Galaxy hops. It has a medium body and light carbonation.

Flavor intensity: high

I have no doubt they could be improved upon. In fact, I think it would be great to hear ideas. The biggest challenge--and one I'm not sure I have cleared--is characterizing hops. Reducing them to bitterness is not adequate, but that's an important detail. IBUs are fatally flawed as a measure (even when you know how to interpret it, you can't be sure the brewery measured it accurately), but I would like a sense of how bitter a beer is going to taste. With the dominance of IPAs in the US, we also need a sense of the intensity of flavor and aroma, too. How "juicy" is the beer? That's a special area of improvement I need to tackle.

I do think the numbers game is a blind alley. Except for ABV, none seem to get us any closer to understanding a beer, and some actually confuse matters. So I leave the final word to you. I've given you my best rough-draft effort. If we dump numbers and start from scratch, how would you create a uniform system of beer descriptions?