It seems like a fairly simple question, but when you walk down the beer aisle it seems like there are an endless array of different beers. Keep in mind, all of these beers start out the exact same way. The key ingredients to making beer is:
- Water
- Starch
- Yeast
- Hops
Beer Ingredients
-WATER-
Seems straightforward enough. Beer is mostly water. It is interesting to think about how water influences beer. Hard water is better suited for making stouts, while soft water is ideal for making a pale lager.
-STARCH-
In order for the brewing process to begin, we need some sort of starch. The reason is that starch, such as barley, is full of sugar when it is roasted. We will need that sugar later on in the fermentation process. After being roasted, the starch is now called MALT . Most beers are made with malted barley, due to the fact that barley creates a whole lot of sugar when it is roasted. Again, the sugars in the malt will be very important during the fermentation process of our beer. Like I said, the starch is usually barley, but can be rice, wheat, etc. You just need a starch source that will produce a good amount of sugar after it is roasted. If you happen to be at a bar and are confronted with the question "Do you like dark or light beers?". Don't think that a "dark" beer is anymore 'heavier' than a "light" colored beer. The only difference between the two is how long the starch was roasted. A dark colored beer has a malt that was roasted for a longer time, while a light colored beer has a starch that underwent a shorter roasting time. The malt is what give beer it's light or dark color. If you have seen 'gluten free' beer in the grocery store, this means that they didn't use barley for the starch. They used sorghum as the starch source. Gluten free beers can have an interesting taste to them, which some may not enjoy.
-YEAST-
We now have a big bowl of roasted starch or MALT. When combined with water, we essentially have a big bowl of sugar water. In brewing terms, this is called WORT. In order to get alcohol, we need yeast. Yeast are one cell organisms that really enjoy eating sugars, multiplying and releasing bi products. We put some yeast into our delicious bowl of WORT and they start eating up the sugars and reproduce, this is a very good thing. Very convenient for us, they release carbon dioxide and alcohol as bi products! This process is known as FERMENTATION. So, the yeast provide the alcohol to the beer. If you want your beer to be very high in alcohol, you would just create a very high concentration of sugar in your WORT. The type of yeast that you use can also influence the beers flavor and character. In order to make beer really stand out, you can add fruits or herbs to the beer during the fermentation process. Adding fruits is also adding sugars, which the yeast love. You can pretty much add any type of food, even candy, to beer during the brewing and/or fermentation process to give it a distinct flavor.
-HOPS-
In order to give our beer it's taste, HOPS are added during the brewing and fermentation process. The cone-like flower of the hop plant is used.Hops give a distinct bitter flavoring, which counteracts the sweetness of the malt, and are also used as a natural preservative. Hops are added to the Wort and to create a very pronounced bitter taste, the hops will just stay in the wort for a longer period of time. This takes anywhere from 1-2 hours.
Well, there you have it!
So, when you are going down that beer aisle and see all the different types of beer, just remember that they just differ in the type of starch, hops and/or yeast.
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