Category:Beer

Revision as of 15:27, 27 January 2008

A glass of amber ale

Beer is many things to many people, but fundamentally it is a fermented beverage made from grains. Most often, beer contains four basic ingredients: malt from various grains, hops, yeast, and water. In fact, these are the only four ingredients allowed by the Reinheitsgebot. There are also occasions when one might desire to use certain adjuncts, but they are generally not required.

Main Articles

Click on one of the beer links below to begin your journey of discovery into the wonderful world of home brewing.

• Beer Brewing Process
• Beer equipment
• Ingredients
• Storing your beer
• Serving and Consumption
• Styles of beer
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• External Resources
• Local Home Brew Stores

Commercial Brewing

{{ #if: | Main article: [[Commercial Brewing|]] | Main article: Commercial Brewing }}

Commercial brewing is used to describe everything from the small-scale microbreweries and brewpubs to the gigantic multinational brewers. However, the difference between them lies primarily in the amount of resources they have available and not in the technique. The process is as follows:

1. Mashing
2. Lautering
3. Boiling
4. Fermenting
5. Conditioning
6. Filtering
7. Storing

Home Brewing

Two carboys full of fermenting beer.

People today have an unprecedented ability to brew almost anything they can imagine at home, and homebrewing has seen a surge in popularity in the last couple decades. Many Homebrewers aspire to the level of brewing achieved by the brewing industry, but in many ways homebrewers can brew better beer than the commercial breweries due to slacker cost constraints. Homebrewers can also use techniques not available to larger brewers to achieve better results. More and more people are learning to brew, and becoming rather skilled at it. In fact, many microbreweries in operation today, such as Stone and Dogfish Head, to name just a couple, were started by former or current homebrewers.

History of Home Brewing

Through its evolution, beer has taken many forms, and drawn its character from a variety of grains and adjuncts. For centuries its production was cloaked in mystery, brewed by priests, called a gift from the gods. Even yeast, before it was understood, was called "godisgood" in old English. The ancient Egyptians were proficient brewers, though the earliest known production of fermented grains was by the Sumerians as early as 4000BC. Ancient beers were quite different from modern brews, however. Sumerian beer, as reconstructed from the Hymn to Ninkasi, had a more lemonade-like flavor; it seems the Sumerians may have used sour flavor (from the action of bacteria) to balance the sweetness of the malt, rather than the bitter flavor we use today. Ancient Egyptian beer may have had a closer resemblance to beer as we know it. The Romans used hops as a summer vegetable and used it with other things to flavor the beer. Through most of the Middle Ages, beer was bittered with gruit, a mixture of herbs and/or spices which differed substantially from place to place and was often a trade secret. Widespread use of hops in beer started around the 1300s in the Low Countries, and gradually spread. By 1500 it was replacing gruit as the dominant bittering agent in England.

History of Home Brewing in the UK

The drink that we call "beer" today was originally called "ale". At first ale was made by fermenting an extract from cereals or grains. Herbs of one kind or another were used for bittering and flavoring; ground ivy and the stinging nettle were popular. Families made their own ale, though in town it was often made by professional brewers, who were very often widows (brewing being one of the few career paths open to widows). Estate workers received ale as part of their wages. As communications developed and taverns came into existence each one brewed their own ale and put a fresh bush outside to indicate that a fresh brew was available.

By the beginning of the 15th Century there was a distinction between Ale and Beer, beer being the hopped beverage introduced from Belgium. The first commercial breweries were to be seen in monasteries.

Throughout the country ale and beer was the drink of the common people, prior to the introduction of tea, coffee and cocoa and so on in the eighteenth century.

One of the earliest attempts to control home production was the Inland Revenue Act of 1880 which required a 5 shilling licence. The popularity hit an all time low in the years after the second world war. In 1963 the Chancellor removed the need for a licence and paved the way for the popularity to rise. The first real surge of home brewers came from within the ranks of the home wine makers. C.J.J .Berry helped to generate an interest in the first home wine making boom by producing the Amateur Winemaker magazine. After Dave line wrote for Amateur Winemaker he wrote The Big Book of Brewing in 1974. Over the next 20 or so years the popularity peaked with major chain stores and chemists stocking equipment and ingredients. This meant that everybody had easy availability in their locality.

Today the local homebrew shop scene is a shadow of its former self. The dominance of a few larger Mail Order firms means it's easy to order standard Items from a few main distributors. Thankfully there are a few firms that are willing and able to supply imports from the USA where the range of ingredients and equipment is vastly superior to the UK. CAMRA, who campaigns for real ale, is doing a good job in educating the population and helping generate a new generation of home brewers.

History of Home brewing in the USA

• 1920s Prohibition
• 1978 Congress passed a bill repealing Federal restrictions on the home Brewing of small amounts of beer. Jimmy Carter signed the bill into law in February 1979
• 1978 Charlie Papazian founded the Association of Brewers.
• 1984 Charlie Papazian published The Complete Joy of Homebrewing which is now in its 3rd edition.

Today's Beer

The beer that we know today and the process that we use were really matured from the period of 1750 onwards. With the birth of the Industrial Revolution, things like the thermometer and hydrometer, along with changes in the malting industry, allowed for more efficient and repeatable brewing methods. The hydrometer probably did more to form modern brewing methods and styles than any other piece of equipment. Previously, beer was generally brewed from one malt: light, brown, dark, etc. But with the hydrometer breweries found that the paler the malt, the more efficient it was. So the base malt was switched to a pale barley malt and smaller amounts of "specialty" malts were included for their various unique characteristics, much the same as it still done today.

External Links

• Beer Advocate Homepage
• Ancient Egyptian Brewing