Beer/Brewing 101 – Ingredients
So this is where we start with brewing 101. Please comment or contact me if you find any errors in this. I know brewing reasonably well but I’m not a brewing scientist and I’m certainly not infallible. I’m going to do a summary of the main brewing ingredients. There are lots of variants and they won’t all be covered here, hopefully I will cover most variations over this course of these posts.
The primary ingredient is water. Kind of obvious but still very important. Water can have a much bigger impact than you would expect on finished beer. Water is the reason pilsener came from the Czech Republic and porters came out of London. Without going into specifics at this time the mineral make up in water affect the expression of different flavours and mouthfeel. You actually want some minerals in all brewing water for the yeast and for some styles you want pretty hard water. I will go into this in more detail when I do a post on water later on.
The next major ingredient is malt or malted grain. This is mostly barley but wheat is also common. Other grains are used but are rare in comparison to barley and wheat. Barley is the most common as it has a husk which makes it bad for bread and many other products but the husk is an asset for the mashing process in making beer. The mash will be covered soon. Malted grains are grains that have been heated in a moist environment until they just start to sprout. This releases starchy sugars from the grain. Once it starts to sprout it is roasted at high temperatures to stop the sprouting and to change flavour. The grain can be roasted to different levels to add colour and flavour. The malt provides the fermentable sugar that the yeast will turn into alcohol and C02.
The third of the four main ingredients is hops. Hops primary purpose is to provide bitterness to the beer. Without hops beer would be very sweet and not very drinkable. Historically many things have been used to provide bitterness but hops are used almost exclusively now days. Hops also provides flavour and aroma to the beer. There are infinite varieties of hops that are suited to different uses. Some hops can provide lots of bitterness but are low in flavour and aroma an some will do the reverse. They can do any and all combinations of these things.
Next we have the last of the main ingredients, yeast. The yeast is what eats the sugars and turns it into alcohol and C02. There are many varieties of yeast that will give distinctly different flavours to your beer. However, they can be roughly grouped into two basic types. There is ale yeast and lager yeast. Ale yeast works at higher temperatures, typically 18-22C, and produces more esters and fruity flavours. Lager yeast typically works at lower temperatures, typically 8-12C, and produces cleaner crisper flavours.
There are many other ingredient that are used in beer. Just malt wise there are many varieties with different levels of roasting, caramelised and even smoked malts. Various sugars are also used. This is often seen as a bad thing but in the right beer and used properly it can have a great impact on beer. Honey and fruit are becoming more common. I’m not a fan of them in general but they seem to be becoming popular. There is even a brewery in the USA using cedar tips for bittering so the possibilities are endless.
I was going to make this post an overall summary but it’s getting a little long so I will leave at an ingredients summary and get into the brewing process in the next post. My main reference is How To Brew by John Palmer. It’s a great book for free online or buy the updated dead tree edition.
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Good intro – simple and straightforward! Thanks.
I'm Here For The Hops » Beer/Brewing 101 – The Brewing Process posted on July 8, 2010:
[...] of brewing 101 I am going to go over the entire brewing process. You can see the previous post here. We will go from water, malt, hops and yeast and make some beer. This will, once again, be an [...]
I'm Here For The Hops » Beer/Brewing 101 – Malt and Mashing posted on July 18, 2010:
[...] The Brewing Process Ingredients [...]