EPTBrewing beer:
+ Show Spoiler +
[NB: don’t try to make beer by freestyling off of this description – it uses a lot of simplifications, skipping important but not very interesting steps, and makes not-entirely accurate generalizations for brevity’s sake]
To understand beer, you really should understand how it is made. All alcoholic beverages (also yogurt, kefir, and many other delicious things) are created by fermentation, which is a process of anaerobic cellular respiration; specifically in alcoholic beverages, yeast is used to break down fermentable sugars into alcohol, carbon dioxide, and energy for the yeast to multiply. In a traditionally produced beer, fermentation is used to both carbonate and make the beer alcoholic; however, in a lot of mass produced beers carbonation is directly added in a process similar to making carbonated water.
TL;DR: Yeast eat certain types of sugar producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The difference between most alcoholic beverages is largely in what is used to provide the base to ferment (the yeasts are also different, but you can make beer with wine yeast and vice versa). In beer, the source of the fermentable sugar is a substance called barley malt. Barley malt is basically toasted sprouting barley (sometimes smoked also) and varies primarily in how long it is toasted [this isn’t technically accurate, but it’s close enough]. The malt is then crushed and steeped in water extract the flavour (like tea or coffee) and fermentable sugars from the barley. This liquid is called now called the wort. The wort is then boiled, cooled and fermented to make beer.
TL;DR: Barley is toasted to make malt. Malt is then steeped to make a barley “tea” called wort which is fermented to make beer.
A pure malt beer would probably be pretty boring, so other ingredients are used to add more flavours to the mix. Foremost among these are hops, which are the flowers of a certain plant. Hops are largely classified into bittering and aroma hops, with aroma hops providing more of that “hoppy” flavour, and bittering hops serving, unsurprisingly, to bitter the beer. [There are other reasons hops are added, but they aren’t really that important to beer drinkers]
TL;DR: Hops are a flower added to the wort to flavour and bitter it.
A basic beer of the modern variety contains just water, barley malt, hops, and yeast (the old German purity law mandated this composition). However, there are lots of other ingredients added called adjuncts. Most of these are used for flavour altering so will be discussed later.
To understand beer, you really should understand how it is made. All alcoholic beverages (also yogurt, kefir, and many other delicious things) are created by fermentation, which is a process of anaerobic cellular respiration; specifically in alcoholic beverages, yeast is used to break down fermentable sugars into alcohol, carbon dioxide, and energy for the yeast to multiply. In a traditionally produced beer, fermentation is used to both carbonate and make the beer alcoholic; however, in a lot of mass produced beers carbonation is directly added in a process similar to making carbonated water.
TL;DR: Yeast eat certain types of sugar producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The difference between most alcoholic beverages is largely in what is used to provide the base to ferment (the yeasts are also different, but you can make beer with wine yeast and vice versa). In beer, the source of the fermentable sugar is a substance called barley malt. Barley malt is basically toasted sprouting barley (sometimes smoked also) and varies primarily in how long it is toasted [this isn’t technically accurate, but it’s close enough]. The malt is then crushed and steeped in water extract the flavour (like tea or coffee) and fermentable sugars from the barley. This liquid is called now called the wort. The wort is then boiled, cooled and fermented to make beer.
TL;DR: Barley is toasted to make malt. Malt is then steeped to make a barley “tea” called wort which is fermented to make beer.
A pure malt beer would probably be pretty boring, so other ingredients are used to add more flavours to the mix. Foremost among these are hops, which are the flowers of a certain plant. Hops are largely classified into bittering and aroma hops, with aroma hops providing more of that “hoppy” flavour, and bittering hops serving, unsurprisingly, to bitter the beer. [There are other reasons hops are added, but they aren’t really that important to beer drinkers]
TL;DR: Hops are a flower added to the wort to flavour and bitter it.
A basic beer of the modern variety contains just water, barley malt, hops, and yeast (the old German purity law mandated this composition). However, there are lots of other ingredients added called adjuncts. Most of these are used for flavour altering so will be discussed later.
What ingredients do to flavour
+ Show Spoiler +
Beers can be broadly categorized by discussing their yeast, malt, hops, and any added adjuncts (brewing and bottling processes and a few other factors can play in, but when you’re talking base flavours those are usually less important).
Hops: + Show Spoiler +
Hops make a beer more bitter, as well as adding citrusy or floral notes. When someone says a beer is ‘hoppy’ it usually means it is quite bitter and has powerful citrus notes. The exact flavour profile depends on what varieties of hops are used and how they are added to the wort. As an aside, skunking is caused by a specific compound in hops breaking down when exposed to light. Dark brown bottles help reduce the risk of skunking, but you should still keep your beer out of light if you don’t want your beer to skunk.
Malt: + Show Spoiler +
From a flavour perspective, the malt adds the low earthy tones that are often described as rich, nutty, chocolatey. Exactly how this tastes depends on the malt mixture in question, but a ‘malty’ beer is usually very rich in these sort of flavours. Most obviously, malt is what gives beer its colour (unless one is using a weird adjunct) – dark malts give dark beer, pale malts give paler beer. The colour can be an indicator of the malt’s (and thusly the beer’s) flavour profile, but this is an inexact science and I wouldn’t trust it entirely (also I suspect some breweries dye their beer).
Yeast:+ Show Spoiler +
Beers can be broadly categorized into three groups based on their yeast – ales, lagers, and wild. Ales use higher temperature top fermenting yeast, and lagers use a lower temperature bottom fermenting yeast. While they both have characteristic flavours, in the market, lagers are usually lighter easier drinking beers and ales are heavier more flavourful beers; however, that is by no means a rule. In fact, you can find some doppelbocks and eisbocks that will blow you away with power as well as some pretty light session ales. Wild ales are a more unusual in their yeast selection as they are kind of the sourdough of beers. Basically, make your wort and open the window (there are more controlled methods than that, but that’s the gist of it). Traditional wild ales are exceedingly unpredictable, have large year-to-year variation and tend to be sour [some breweries keep a single originally wild starter going and don’t leave it up to chance to reduce variation]. The yeast can also impact the ABV depending on how high you want to go (you have to use special yeasts to get really high alcohol contents).
Adjuncts:+ Show Spoiler +
This is a catchall of beer ingredients. If it isn’t malt, barley, water, yeast, or hops then it is an adjunct. A lot of styles are defined by their adjuncts. On the negative side, adjunct lagers for instance use corn and rice to make the beer taste like piss cheaper to produce. However, adjuncts are not always bad things as, for instance, wheat beers unsurprisingly use wheat as an adjunct to give their characteristic taste. Belgian-style strong ales get their characteristic astronomical ABV by having candi sugar added to the wort. Lots of chocolate stouts use chocolate as an ingredient (it’s possible to make a chocolate stout without adjuncts, but you have to be really good with malt mixtures). The list goes on and on for adjuncts and can get pretty wild with things like spruce, anise, and hibiscus flowers. Usually if you are familiar with the flavour of an adjunct outside of a beer, you can guess how it will affect flavour inside of one.
From varying these ingredients and the brewing process, an insane number of styles can and have been produced, far more than I could possibly talk about in one post. I’ve been in the mood for wild ale lately, so my next blog post is probably going to be just about lambics.
