Beer is made primarily from water, barley grains and hops. Different combinations of these ingredients lead to many different styles of beer.
The brewing process starts with mashing – crushing the malted grain and mixing it with hot water. This activates enzymes to break down the grains’ starches into sugars.
Barley
Barley is the key ingredient in beer, but it’s more than just a grain. It’s soaked, sprouted, and then dried in a process known as malting, which alters the starches it contains into sugars that yeast can consume during fermentation. The type of barley used can also impact how a beer will taste. For example, two-row barley produces a more grainy flavor than the six-row variety.
Once the malt has been kilned, it’s mixed with hot water in a process called mashing, which releases enzymes that break down the grain’s starches into simple sugars. The sweet liquid that is drained off the grain is called wort, and it’s what gives beer its sweetness and body. It’s then boiled with hops (a perennial, viny plant that adds bitterness and acts as a preservative), which makes it into alcohol. Yeast then ferments the wort, turning the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The finished product is then cooled, filtered, and bottled.
Water
The most basic ingredients in beer are barley, water, yeast and hops. Yet by making small changes in the process and recipe brewers can create a wide array of unique styles. Water accounts for most of the volume in a beer and is used to steep the grains, extract the sugars, and boil the wort. The quality of the water has a significant impact on the finished product.
In brewing, malted barley is soaked in water (or mash) to convert its starches into sugars that the yeast will later turn into alcohol. Other grain, called adjuncts, can also be added to the mix.
The mash is then cooked (or boiled) in a large pot. This is known as lautering. The hot wort is then pumped into a vessel called a coolship (also spelled koelschip) to quickly cool the liquid. This is done to prevent the wort from overheating and ruining its flavor. The wort is then transferred into a fermenter to begin fermentation.
Yeast
Beer is made with four ingredients — barley, water, hops and yeast. These elements are combined in a process called mashing, where the milled grains are steeped (think porridge) in hot water at a controlled temperature to activate enzymes that break down starches into sugars that can be fermented by yeast.
The result is a sweet liquid, known as wort, that gets transferred to a giant metal pot to be boiled for about 90 minutes. During this time, the brewmaster adds different amounts of hops for flavor, aroma and bitterness.
The wort is then cooled, and yeast is added. The yeast consume almost all the sugars in wort, turning them into effervescent carbon dioxide and alcohol. The yeast also produce a variety of other organic compounds that contribute to the unique flavors of each beer, including esters such as isoamyl acetate and ethyl hexanoate, higher alcohols, and acids such as butyric, acetic, and isovaleric. Yeast are polyploid, meaning they cannot easily exchange genetic material with wild yeast ancestors, which allows them to resist contamination and maintain a pure lineage.
Fermentation
Yeast consume the sugar in beer and turn it into alcohol, which gives the drink its fizz. The fermentation process can take a matter of days for some ales or it might go on for weeks for lagers. At the end of fermentation the yeast is flushed out and the beer gets filtered and then sent to a bright beer tank, where it gets another dose of carbon dioxide.
The wort is now called beer and it’s ready to be consumed. It is also sometimes bottled and left to mature in the bottle for a while, which produces even more complex flavours. This is known as secondary fermentation and the result is very similar to wine or sherry. Fermented drinks have been part of human culture for millennia and many breweries around the world still use traditional techniques to make these classics. In some cases a little additional sugar is added to the beer at this stage, which stimulates another round of fermentation that creates even more alcohol and extra carbonation in the bottle.
