Beer

I

Introduction

Beer, term for an alcoholic drink made by the fermentation of solutions derived from cereals and other starchy grains. Most beer is made from malted barley and flavoured with hops. In Japan, China, and Korea, rice is used to make beer (called sake,samshu, and suk respectively); millet, sorghum and other seeds are used in Africa; while Russian kvass is made from fermented rye bread.

II

Production

Since starch is itself unfermentable, the preparatory stage for all beer-making is to convert starch to fermentable sugar. This occurs naturally as barley is malted (germinated, then roasted to stop the germination process). Rice for sake-making is infected with koji mould, which has a similar effect. A combination of grains is often used, some of which may be malted and some unmalted, since pure-malt brews are expensive to produce. Hot water is added to the ground grain which, after rousing, or stirring, produces a sugary infusion, or wort. Any flavouring components (such as hops, herbs or spices) may now be added, and the wort boiled with these. Brewing sugars may also be added to wort to increase the final alcohol level of the beer. Next, yeast is added to the cooled wort, and fermentation takes place. Many beers then undergo specific storage periods before being bottled, canned, kegged, or served from unpressured casks. Most beers are made to between 4 and 5 per cent alcohol by volume (abv), though they may also be as low as 2 per cent abv or as high as 14 per cent abv.

III

Beer Types

In Europe, beers are enormously diverse in colour, flavour, and strength, and every stage of the brewing process is subject to alteration, modification, and creative intervention. Nonetheless, one basic distinction divides the beer family, founded on yeast type. Beers made with top-fermenting yeasts (that is, yeasts which float on top of the fermenting wort) are called ales; beers made with bottom-fermenting yeasts are called lagers. Ales are fermented comparatively quickly at between 15°C and 25°C, whereas lagers are fermented more slowly at 5°C to 9°C. Ale may be served within days after the completion of fermentation; lagers, however, must be stored at 0°C for between three weeks and three months (it is this process which gives lager its name: Lager means “storehouse” in German, and Lagerbier originally signified beer for storing). Ale is customarily served warmer (12°C to 18°C) than is lager (7°C to 10°C).

Ale pre-dated lager by many centuries. Notwithstanding this, mildly flavoured lager is now the preponderant international style for beer, while other beer types of more challenging flavour command smaller markets. Among these other types of beer are bitter, the English term for often heavily hopped ale; India pale ale, a term used in the United Kingdom and among America's small regional breweries to signify very heavily hopped, high-alcohol beer (though the term is often debased in the United Kingdom); mild ale, a lightly hopped, dark, low-alcohol (around 3 per cent abv) beer; stout, dark beer made from heavily roasted malts, sometimes sweet and low in alcohol, but more commonly dry, bitter, and between 4 and 10 per cent abv; porter, a light stout; Scotch ale, a predominantly malty, sometimes sweet ale with low hop levels; and barley wine, a very strong ale, usually bottled. Cask ale or real ale are terms used in Britain to describe beers which undergo a secondary fermentation or maturation on the yeast lees, or sediment, the beers being served directly from these lees. Trappist beers are strong ales produced by one of six Trappist monasteries, five in Belgium and one in Holland, often bottled with residual sugar and yeast, and therefore undergoing a second fermentation in bottle (this process is known as bottle conditioning and is also used for other beer types, particularly in Belgium and France).

Ale is known as altbier in German. Bock is a German term signifying strong, often dark-coloured lager types, designed for winter drinking; doppelbock is stronger still. Rauchbier, from Germany, is prepared using smoked malts.

A number of cities have given their names to beer styles. The most famous of these is Pilsen in the Czech republic, whose name (as Pilsener, Pilsner, or Pils) should signify a golden lager witb a hoppy aroma and dry finish. Münchener (from Munich in Bavaria, Germany) signifies a dark brown lager, and Vienna an amber-red lager; Burton ales (from Burton-upon-Trent in Staffordshire, England) were the prototypes of modern hoppy English bitters (originally called pale ales), whose flavour was marked by the gypsum-rich waters of the town.

Beer can also be made from malted or unmalted wheat in combination with malted barley, and these brews are also known as white beers,weissbier, or weizenbier. These have a lighter, fruitier, slightly sourer flavour than barley malt beer, a frothier head, and are generally, though not uniformly, pale in colour. Despite these features, top-fermenting yeasts are generally used for wheat beers, making them, technically speaking, ales rather than lagers. Berliner Weisse (Berlin wheat beer) is low in alcohol and, like many wheat beers, served with its sediment. Lambic is a style of wheat beer made using wild yeasts in Belgium, and gueuze a blend of old and young lambic beers. Belgian fruit beers, such as kriek (cherry) and framboise (raspberry), are based on lambic rather than malt beer.

Brewing in the United States is divided between a few heavily industrialized major brewers producing mildly flavoured lager-style beers, and a large number of small, regional breweries (known as microbrewers) producing a huge variety of characterful, distinctively flavoured beers often modelled on classic European styles.

IV

History

Egyptian myth holds that it was Osiris, the god of agriculture, who taught humankind the art of brewing beer. Egyptian beer was produced by the burial of barley in pots for germination; the malt mash was fermented by wild yeasts. The use of hops is thought to date from the 7th century bc. Brewing was widely practised in northern Europe by the early Christian era, and today almost all non-Muslim industrialized countries have brewing industries, usually producing lager-style beers of unexceptional flavour. The three largest present-day brewing nations are the United States, Germany, and the UK.