FanPost

The (Sorta) Abridged Guide to Beer Part 1: What is Beer?

Terp fans, in the midst of this quarantine we are being denied one of the greatest joys we share in common, Maryland sports, and all the heart tearing losses that accompany them. However, there is one thing that is an essential part of sports fandom that has not been denied to us. You drink a cold one before a game, during a game, and after a game. Ok, maybe three or four after the game. We get it.

He Who Must Not Be Named

We drank a lot of beer after this moment

But have you ever stopped to think what beer actually is? Why have so many different types of breweries and beers seemingly come out of nowhere the past twenty years? How different are they really? Well, my bored, statewide-quarantined self felt like learning more about beer, and found it to be quite interesting. Most of the craft beers you are seeing today are simply a renaissance of recipes that were invented centuries ago in Europe. This renaissance took off shortly after the restaurant revolution we saw here in the US in the 1990s. A lot of states saw their first modern microbreweries open in 1994-1995. By 1996 there were 1000 different breweries in the United States, and that number has grown to over 7500 today. That's a lot of beer, and to be honest, there isn't that much that separates how beer is made today from back in the 1700s. Realistically, the process is exactly the same for me as it is for Rudi Ghequire.

So, beer. Ignore all the branches of beer, from White Stouts to Triple IPAs. There are actually only two categories of beer: Lagers and Ales. Even then, there is only one difference in one ingredient that separates those two. I'll explain why when I get to that ingredient. Beer, in its purest essence, can be boiled down to four types of ingredients that are added in different stages of the brewing process. The type and amount of those four ingredients can vary (which is why there are many types of beers), but every beer can be boiled down to those four ingredients. Those ingredients are water, grains, hops, and yeast.

Gua Gua

Ingredient 1: Water

Consider if beer were a human body. Water would be the blood of that body, and for obvious reasons. Like blood, beer is a suspension, just one that is more socially acceptable to drink. Like milk. On the surface, water is water. However, one thing to keep in mind is that any minerals dissolved into water can interact with the ingredients of your homebrew and affect the taste of the beer. Typically any tap water that is potable is safe to use for brewing. Still, if your water has high amounts of chlorine it may be unsuitable. The best water to use is either bottled water, or Reverse Osmosis Water. Avoid using either distilled water or rain water.

image_12_2048x.0.jpeg

Ingredient 2: Grains

Everyone remembers the commercials that Bud Light put out about using rice instead of corn in their beer, and how they thought that was such a big deal. Bud Light was basing that off of the perception that corn=corn syrup, and that adding corn syrup would sweeten the beer and make it unhealthy. This is compared to what Bud Light used instead, rice. While that notion is complete nonsense (yeast consumes the sugar leftover to produce alcohol so there would be no corn syrup left), they both would be considered the grains of the beer. Grains are the bones of the beer, and are pretty broad in terms of selection. All cereal grains fall into this category, and as such the grain of a beer is any combination and amount of grains such as barley, wheat, rice, corn, or oats. The typical type of grain that is used is a barley malt. Malting is a process, where the grains are soaked in water and then quickly dried with hot air. This process develops the grains by forming enzymes that will turn into sugars during the brewing process (which is where the alcohol eventually comes from).

The actual selection and criteria for choosing the right grains is actually extremely complex. There are ways to measure the color (called Lovibund Rating, usually abbreviated as L), and the sweetness of the grain (called Diastatic Power, or DP, it is usually given in degrees). It seems like a lot, but the long and short of it is, higher L is a darker beer, higher DP has more sugar.

Also, the DP of Rice and Corn is very low. Hence why Bud Light and Miller Light are such weak beers. Quantity over Quality.

2115wh_1.0.jpg

Ingredient 3: Hops

People who go to enough breweries will eventually run across stickers and logos that look like they have an upside down pine cone on them, and will wonder just what those things are. Those, my fellow Terp fans, are hops. Hops are the brain and organs of the beer. They get most of the attention when it comes to the beer that you are drinking, and for good reason. Hops are what drive a significant amount of the flavor in the beer. You don't NEED hops in your beer, but without it beer is kinda like Penn State's uniform: boring, dull, and kinda makes you sick when you consume it. Other ingredients, such as cinnamon and gruit, can be added in at the same time as hops.

When hop plants are picked they are usually compressed into pellets before shipping, and need to be kept refrigerated until use. Hops are added at the last stage of brewing on the stove top, when the grains have been removed and the water is boiling. There are two times that hops are usually added: when the boil starts and right before the boil ends. I'll explain more about the process next week, but this distinction is important because the earlier the hops are added, the more they contribute to the flavor. Hops that are added at the end of the boil are usually for aromatic purposes.

Beyond adding for flavor, hops are added to beer for a second reason, they preserve the life of the beer by preventing the growth of bacteria. Hops are rated by how much alpha acid they contain in their resin, with higher alpha acid percentages creating a more bitter, or "hoppy" beer.

Budding-yeast-cells.0.jpg

Ingredient 4: Yeast

Remember when I said there was one ingredient that separated ales from lagers? Of course not, you are probably in the comments arguing about the jabs I took at Penn State and Bud Light. Well, for the two members who are determined enough to get to this point, yeast is that ingredient. Yeast is the muscle of the beer. Yeast is what gives the beer its strength by converting those sugars extracted from the grains into alcohol. It's a very sensitive, but effective little fungus (as anyone who has brewed beer or made bread can tell you) that is one of the foundations of civilization. I mean that quite literally, five thousand years ago laborers were paid in beer (and even today, here's looking at you guy at the auto store I shall not name who gave me a free fuel system cleanup for a case of Coors).

But all yeast is the same, right? Nothing could be further from the truth. What separates lagers from ales is the functional temperature for their strains of yeast. Ale yeast ferments at room temperature (~65 degrees F), whereas lager yeast strains ferment at a colder temperature (~50 degrees which requires special refrigeration). Even then, it gets more complicated, with yeast strains being crossbred over generations to get the right characteristics to brew beer. When Chimay Monastery (a Trappist brewery in Europe) got taken over by Nazis and was eventually destroyed, the biggest casualty was the yeast, as there was no way to cultivate a new batch there. The monks had to send one brother over to a University to attempt to create a new yeast from scratch, which they have cultivated since 1948!

evolutioncraftbrewing-Instagram-2703-ig-1845781793593330399_1.0.jpeg

In Conclusion, You want one of these after reading all of this

I know I just threw a lot at you, and there are probably a ton of people that didn't understand anything I just wrote, and that's cool. The big takeaway is that while beer making is complex, it really can be boiled down to a simple concept. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try my hand at making an abbey ale, and I'll explain what that is in that time span as well. Drink beer, and Go Terps

Drink to the Terrapin!

Week 1: What is Beer? (You Are Here)

Week 2: Brewing Your Beer

Week 3: An Abridged History of Beer

Week 4: Bottling Your Beer

Week 5: Trappists and their Abbey Ales

Week 6: Drinking Your Beer

FanPosts are content created by and for fans. They do not necessarily represent the views of Testudo Times or its staff, and anything deemed inappropriate will be removed by site administrators.