Exploring The Science Of Beer Making


If you’re like many people, you enjoy sipping on a cold iced beer. Beer is one of the most popular beverages throughout history. If you’ve had limited exposure to beer, you are probably familiar with the essential ingredients that go into making it. But how do these ingredients combine to create this great beverage we love? Let’s take a brief look at the actual science of beer making.

Beer brewing is a relatively natural and necessary process that has been around for thousands of years. The essential ingredients of beer have remained the same throughout time. They include water, yeast, grain, and hops. With so few components involved, it’s easy to think brewing beer is a simple process. However, how these ingredients react makes the science of beer-making quite fascinating.

Water 

Out of all the ingredients used to make beer, obviously, water is what you’ll need the most. You’re probably wondering what else needs to be said; it’s just water. In the science of beer making, some consideration must be given to the type of water you will use. The water from your tap can adversely affect the quality and taste of your beer due to the filtration and treatment it receives before reaching your home. Boiling the water before you use it for brewing is recommended. This can remove the massive amounts of chlorine and other impurities in it.

Malted 

Barley Malted barley is the next ingredient to consider in the science of beer making. Different types of grain are used to make various kinds of beer. The barley is soaked in water for brewing purposes until it begins to sprout. It is then dried by one of some other methods. This process allows the grain to create fermentable sugars that will come into play later with another ingredient. The malted barley then undergoes a process called mashing, basically grinding the malted barley into smaller grain-sized pieces. It is then mixed with water to dissolve the sugars and starches. This creates a syrup-like sweet liquid called malt extract, a crucial ingredient for beer making.

Hops 

Hops are small flowers that resemble tiny green pine cones. In the science of beer making, trips give the beer its distinctive bitter taste and aroma. These are typically added to the mixture of water and malt extract toward the end of the boiling cycle. Hops are available in several forms, such as powder and pellets.

Yeast 

In the science of beer making, there’s no ingredient as essential as yeast. Yeast is a living organism necessary to making beer what it is. Yeast will feed on the fermenting sugars and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process is what gives the beer its alcohol content, as well as its foamy head. Yeasts used for beer making are either top-fermenting or bottom-fermenting yeasts. The top-fermenting yeast is used for ale-type beers, and bottom-fermenting yeast has handled the production of lagers.

As you can see, despite very few ingredients, a lot is happening in the beer brewing process.

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