beer [ bi(ə)r ] NOUN an alcoholic drink made from yeast-fermented malt flavored with hops:
“a pint of beer.”
synonyms: ale · brew · brewski · suds · pint
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There is a lot of interesting technical information out there, both from books and the Internet, however, we need to grasp the fundamental ideas of brewing to get started. Then as we continue to brew, we fill in any gaps in our education by continuing our learning with the technical information.
What I will attempt to provide with the website is just that, the fundamental ideas of brewing. I will get into some of the technical info later. I also want to be able to provide you with sources for some of the equipment, ingredients, videos, and books that are a need or useful to be a successful brewer. All of the links provided on this site are for suppliers I use on a regular basis, and I have agreements with them and will earn a commission paid for sales produced from the links. All links to outside websites will be in blue and open the web site in a new window of your browser.
Beer: a Fermented beverage made from one or more of the following malted cereal grains; barley, corn, oats, rice, rye, wheat, plus other adjuncts.
Contents
Four main ingredients
Water, Malt, Hops, and Yeast equals BEER.
Malt – What is it?
Malted Grain
Malted cereal grains are the source of the starches and saccharification enzymes. Saccharification of starch (conversion of starch into sugar) the malted cereal grains and fermentation of the resulting sugar produces an alcoholic beverage we call beer.
To prevent the resulting concoction to be nothing more than a cloying sweet drink that no one would want to drink, brewers add hops during the boiling process to add bitterness to the beer. Hops also give the beer aroma and flavor plus they are a natural preservative.
Other flavors might be part of the beer characteristics through the use of herbs or fruit. This complete process is brewing.
Some brewers produce beer with an alcohol content in the 20%-40% range. However, this is not the norm. The alcohol by volume (ABV) is usually between 4% – 6% ad could be as low as .5%.
Malting process. What is the process that converts cereal grains into brewing malt?
- Steeping. Moistening the grain and holding at a temperature suitable for germination. Starting the putting out of little sprouts (germination); this tiny plant begins to grow using some of the grains’ starch reserve. However, leaving some starch to be converted into sugar by the enzymes during the mashing process. These chemical triggers enzymes) are produced during the malting process.
- Drying. It grows until the malster stops it from growing anymore by drying the germinating cereal grain at a predetermined time or length of the sprout that was growing
- Kilning. The drying of green malt in a kiln at different temperatures. The temperature in the kiln determines the number of enzymes allowed to survive for use in the mashing process and the malt color. If the desired result of kilning is malt with high enzymatic (diastatic), then a low temperature is used. Pale Ale and Pilsner malts, both are low in coloring and flavoring. However, high diastatic power is available. Different kilning temperatures levels produce malts of different colors, flavors, and diastatic power, and these malts are Specialty malts. Additional discussion about specialty malts later (see more).Extract Brewers. If you are using malt extract, the manufacturer has been done the conversion for you. By draining the sweet liquid off from the husks, then concentrate, and packaged for your brewing use, either as a syrup or powder. When using malted cereal grain, the brewer must go through a malting process that converts starch left within grain by the malting process to be used by brewers. These remaining starches converts to fermentable sugars with any one of many mashing techniques utilized by the brewer.All Grain Brewers extract sugar from the remaining starches in the malt by soaking in water; this is called mashing. The resulting sweet, flavorful wort is boiled. Bittering hops are added during the boil, to balance the flavor. After boiling for the required time per the recipe, we have unfermented wort. Brewers add yeast to ferment this wort.I welcome any comments or questions you may have concerning this post.
Homebrewing for the beginner can sometimes seem very complicated. However, it is not. So where do you start? First, get an understanding of the five methods of brewing. Then tackle the endless processes and techniques that are used by all brewers.
Five basic brewing methods (techniques) used by home brewers.
- Extract Brewing
- Partial Brewing
- All-Grain Brewing
- Brew in a Bag (BIAB)
- Parti-gyle brewing used with the all-grain method of brewing.
These methods may not make any sense and may seem confusing to you right now. However, brewing options are not complicated, and many of the above have techniques and processes within them are very similar to each method.
Two of these brewing methods include the following steps; all-grain and brew-in-a-bag. With extract brewing the brewer uses either liquid malt extract (LME) or dry malt extract (DME). Therefore, Step 1 is not required.
- Mashing – Extracting sugar from grains to make the wort (unfermented beer).
- Boiling (the wort with hops) & possible adjuncts.
- Cooling ( the wort to yeast pitching temperature).
- Pitching the yeast (adding yeast to cooled wort).
- Fermentation.
- Secondary fermentation (conditioning).
- Bottling or kegging.
- Carbonation.
- Drinking ( The Good part).
The method you choose is deciding what approach you are taking to have the Wort available to proceed to the next process. Wort production is the only difference between the brewing steps in the four methods listed. Why do home brewers go through the extra time and cost of additional equipment (it does require more equipment) to produce their Wort if we can buy it (extract) ready for the boiling process?The primary reason for creating their own is to control the aroma, flavor, and quality of their finished beer. If the brewer is in a hurry, then beer kits are quick and easy. However, brewing with this method can limit the flavor and even the beer style.
On future pages/posts, we are going to discuss malt types, hops, yeast, water and other misc. Ingredients, Then we get into some of the processes and techniques used. Since I am just starting this website, I am not sure what form it is going to take, probably more weekly posts then pages after the foundation is in place. A brief discussion of Beer Styles at this time, which I will go into more detail about on other pages. (See more detail)
Beer Styles.
Pale Ale – Top fermenting yeast is used to brew this style beer that has become one of the world’s major styles of beer.
Dark Beer – Porter and Stouts are made using roasted malts (from cereal grains) with yeast that ferment slowly.
Variations of Porter include; Brown Porter a style of dark brown beer that was very popular among the street and river porters of London around 1721, thus its name. Other variations of Porter are Baltic Porter and Robust Porter, both usually a little darker, more roast and alcohol than the Brown Porter.
Another beer known as Stout was inter-weaved with the development of dark ales as far back as 1677. Getting into the connection between the two styles is beyond the scope of this post, maybe in the future. Today’s variations of stouts are Dry Stout, Sweet Stout, Oatmeal Stout, Foreign Extra Stout, American Stout and Russian Imperial Stout.
Mild Ale – This is beer style with malty palate, usually dark in color, 3% to 3.6% ABV. Some mild ales are not as dark and maybe have a higher ABV with some examples up to 6%. Mild variety Mild include Mild, Southern English Brown and Northern English Brown.
Wheat – Beer brewed with a large amount of wheat and usually a smaller proportion of malted barley naturally is Wheat beer. This style fermented with top-fermenting yeasts and considerable flavor difference, depending upon the particular style. Wheat beer variants include Weizen/Weissbier, Dunkelweizen, and Weizenbock. Also, a part of this form is the variant – Roggenbier (German Rye)
Lager – “Lager” derived from the German word “lagern” meaning “to store.” These are cool fermenting beers of Central Europe. Lagers are usually very clear pale beers. The clearness is the result of storing these beers in caves or cellars during the warm summer months that allowed the yeast to continue to ferment over a longer time frame than ales do.
Remember we mention that ales fermented with top-fermenting yeast that is entirely different from the cool bottom-fermenting yeast used in lager brewing. Top fermenting yeast do their work at 50° and above, some in the high 70° range. While bottom-fermenting yeasts continue to convert sugar into alcohol from 45° to 54° in the fermentation phase and the lagering stage at temperatures from 32° to 39°
There are over 20 variations of this style beer.
Lambic – Beer fermented with yeasts, unlike the cultivated yeast we use with Lagers and Ales. These are Belgium styles of beer brewed that have differences of aroma and sourness, some of them with sufficient differences, depending upon which yeast was used. In future posts here I may get into the different yeasts used and the resultant style of each.Also, here is a reference you can use to understand beer styles and categories as given by the BJCP.