yeast: a beer ingredient?

Hey, I was just thinking about how people talk about the 4 main ingredients of beer being Barley malt, hops, water and yeast, and I started to think, hey, yeast isn't really an ingredient in beer. Yeast turns the sugar to alcohol and kicks out other flavor components to the beer, but its role in the brewing process seems more like a filter that the beer goes through and is changed by, rather than a proper ingredient. What do you guys think?

ingredient...It adds something. It adds its strain characteristics to the beer. If you change and ingredient (ie. different malt) then you change the beer. Now if you change the yeast strain, you change the beer.

unless you filter beer through a very fine filter and force carbonate it yeast always remains in the beer and changes the flavor. beers with a lot of suspended yeast taste different.

With that logic, then barley isn't really an ingredient either. During the mash, enzymes convert the starch into sugars which are rinsed from the grains.

There is no barley in beer, but rather the byproducts of an enzymatic process.

i think

kenche said:

With that logic, then barley isn't really an ingredient either. During the mash, enzymes convert the starch into sugars which are rinsed from the grains.

There is no barley in beer, but rather the byproducts of an enzymatic process.

i think

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Shoot, by html's definition, the only real ingredient in beer is water since everything else is processed and a majority of the ingredient is discarded. When you think about it, yeast is more of an ingredient than hops or malt since it remains in the final product more definitely.

I'm gonna buck the trend here and (partially) agree with the OP. Water, barley, and hops are all ingredients because compounds from all three of these are in the finished product; some have undergone chemical changes, some haven't.

Yeast isn't an ingredient because it simply facilitates the reaction of sugars to alcohol while producing flavors. Different strains produce different flavors because they produce different by-products from the same initial composition. Think of it as a catalyst in a chemical reaction: Catalysts are necessary to the reaction in a lot of cases, but they aren't considered a reactant (ingredient).

To put it biologically, saying yeast is an ingredient in beer could be similar to saying that cows are an ingredient in grass........They consume an initial ingredient -- grass or hay in this case -- digest it, take a crap on the ground, and more grass grows. This grass is different than that which the cow consumed, and it couldn't have been made this way without the cow, but the cow's not an ingredient. The cow's a catalyst for grass growth.

BTW, I said at the top that I partially agree for this reason........As one of the other posters mentioned above, yeast is always going to be left in your beer. As long as you're consuming the yeast, you could certainly argue that it's an ingredient.

If yeast didn't add to the flavor, then theoretically, there would only be one kind of yeast used by brewers.

Oooh, I jest LOVES me some inane debates on semantics...

Without yeast, you're just drinking wort, and that would suck. If you don't add yeast (ignoring wild fermentation because that's still "adding yeast"), then you can't make beer, so it seems pretty clear that it's an ingredient in beer, if perhaps not a component of the final product.

Semantics? What? I'm a theologian. I have no idea what you're talking about.

elkdog said:

Without yeast, you're just drinking wort

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German kids do it all the time.

There are 7 ingredients in beer.

Malt, Hops, Water, Yeast, Fermcap, Whirlflock, & Gelatin.

Evan! said:

Oooh, I jest LOVES me some inane debates on semantics...

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Oh, that was pretty much the point

But my whole point was that the other ingredients contribute some component of the beer, whereas the yeast alters the beer. And just because some yeast remains in the beer at the end doesnt make it an ingredient in the same way as the other three. Now if you get into the more yeast driven beers like Hefe-weizens, welllllll then my argument loses some ground, but I would still argue that if yeast is an ingredient, it is in a different way than hops and barley malt.

I dunno I guess the inane debate should end pretty quick here unless someone has something new to add.

html034 said:

Oh, that was pretty much the point

But my whole point was that the other ingredients contribute some component of the beer, whereas the yeast alters the beer. And just because some yeast remains in the beer at the end doesnt make it an ingredient in the same way as the other three. Now if you get into the more yeast driven beers like Hefe-weizens, welllllll then my argument loses some ground, but I would still argue that if yeast is an ingredient, it is in a different way than hops and barley malt.

I dunno I guess the inane debate should end pretty quick here unless someone has something new to add.

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none of the ingredients are the same, by your standards. Barley gives starches and enzymes; water gives the medium on which the beer is created. Hops impart humulones/cohumulones/alpha acids/flavor compounds. Yeast change sugar to alcohol, and impart esters, phenols, and flavor compounds. Each ingredient is unique in how it adds to the beer, but they're all still "ingredients".

EdWort said:

German kids do it all the time.

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Ugh, that stuff is vile. Must be why German kids transition to the real thing somewhere around age 12-14, give or take a couple.

Evan! said:

none of the ingredients are the same, by your standards. Barley gives starches and enzymes; water gives the medium on which the beer is created. Hops impart humulones/cohumulones/alpha acids/flavor compounds. Yeast change sugar to alcohol, and impart esters, phenols, and flavor compounds. Each ingredient is unique in how it adds to the beer, but they're all still "ingredients".

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point taken

You're forgetting the 5 lbs of corn sugar I add to each batch to make it kick ass!

EDIT - you can say ass! It's just like FOX.

EdWort said:

German kids do it all the time.

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Mexican kids do to!



Didja know a lot of people use it to make yeast starters? Someone mentioned it on here awhile back so I googled teh internetz and it's all over the various homebrew boards....go figure.

FWIW the original German beer purity law (Reinheitsgebot) did only list water, barley and hops. It wasn't until yeast were discovered in the 1800's that yeast was added to the list.

GT