Ingredients

4 Essential Ingredients of Beer

Beer an alcoholic beverage produced by extracting raw materials with water, boiling (usually with hops), and fermenting from cereals, usually malted barley, flavored with hops and the like for a slightly bitter taste.

In some countries beer is defined by law — as in Germany (the Reinheitsgebot), where the allowed ingredients are defined: water, malt (kiln-dried germinated barley), hops, and yeast.

To make beer you need those four main basic ingredients. You can use all sorts of adjunct ingredients throughout the process to create unique specialty beers.

1. Malt

The making of any alcoholic beverage starts with a source of sugar. In wine, the sugar comes from grapes. In cider, it’s from apples. In mead, from honey. The sugar source for beer is grain.

Wheat, rye, rice, sorghum and other grains have been used, but the preferred grain for beer is barley.

When the barley is harvested, the starch inside is not ready for fermentation. It has to go through the malting process. This means, they’ll soak the barley and apply a little heat, which starts germination – a process of converting all the starchy carbohydrates into simple sugars.

(We have to have simple sugars, b/c that’s what yeast eats…more on that later.)

Before these things start to sprout, the germination process is stopped with heat. They’ll roast the barley (now called “malt”) to varying degrees. The length of the roast will help determine the color of the beer and the backbone of the beer’s flavor.

Malt that is lightly roasted will be used to make lighter styles (ex: kolsch, pale ale, pilsner). Roast it a little longer and you’ll use it for amber ales or marzens. Keep roasting it and you’ll use it for dunkels, brown ales. On the extreme dark end of the spectrum you have your porters and stouts. The malt used for these

has been very heavily roasted and will usually give the beer a distinct coffee/chocolatey flavor.

2. Water

This is the ingredient needed to make beer that is most often overlooked.

Beer is typically about 90% water. If you have bad water, you’re not going to have good beer. We won’t get too in depth here, but it’s important to know that there are tons of variables that can affect the taste of the water and therefore the quality of the beer. We’re talking about pH levels, hardness/softness, chlorine and

sulfate levels, mineral content and more.

Water content/quality are so important that it’s a point of emphasis for any brewery that’s looking to open a new production facility in a different part of the country. While evaluating various locations’ laws, taxes, access to highways, etc., they’re also testing the water.

Obviously, they want to produce a consistent product, no matter where it was made. For example, Sierra Nevada wants their pale ale to taste exactly the same whether made in California or just up the road in Asheville. A certain city may not be an ideal fit if it takes significant effort to adjust the water to meet the levels and quality of the original brewery’s location.

3. Hops

Everybody likes to talk about hops these days. Hopped up IPA’s have become the clear favorite beer style of the American public. We have beers with names like “Death by Hops,” “Hopsecutioner,” and “Vehopciraptor.” For some, it’s getting a little out of hand, but devout “hopheads” can’t get enough of them.

Hops are a small, green, cone-shaped flower that grows on a bine (similar to a vine.) These little cones are filled with resins that, when added to the wort during the boiling process, lend flavors, aromas and a bitterness that balances out the sweetness of the malt.

These hop additions happen at varying times. When used earlier on in brewing, they add bitterness. When used

later, they provide distinct flavors and aromas. There are dozens of varietals of hops, each offering beer its own qualities and tastes.

They can range from flowery to citrusy to piney or grassy. Breweries will use varying amounts of different hops in any individual beer to achieve the precise flavor profile they’re looking for.

4. Yeast

Just because it’s the last to be added, doesn’t mean it’s not important. Without yeast, there is no beer. Many brewers will even tell you that they do not make beer. Yeast makes beer. They just exist to keep the yeast happy.

Yeast is a single-cell micro-organism. It eats simple sugars (from the malt) and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. After a week or two of gorging itself and reproducing, the environment becomes toxic for the yeast. It goes dormant.

At this point, most breweries will draw off some of it off and save it for the next batch of beer. If handled with care, it’s possible to use the same yeast strain for years. It’s not common though, as it will develop slightly off flavors over time.

It’s still perfectly fine to drink the finished product, but brewers want to put out a consistent product, so they’ll use a fresh batch of yeast after a handful of generations. There are quite a few distinct yeast strains used in brewing.

Just like hops or malt, they can have a dramatic effect on the final product, resulting in flavors like apple, bananas or cloves. Some lend very little flavor to the beer, allowing the malt, water and hops shine through instead.

For something so small that it’s invisible to the naked eye, it has a huge role to play in the making of beer.

The Reinheitsgebot

Literally "purity order", is a series of regulations limiting the ingredients in beer in Germany and the states of the former Holy Roman Empire. The best known version of the law was adopted in Bavaria in 1516, but similar regulations predate the Bavarian order, and modern regulations also significantly differ from the 1516 Bavarian version.

1516 Bavarian law

The most influential predecessor of the modern Reinheitsgebot was a law first adopted in the duchy of Munich in 1487. After Bavaria was reunited, the Munich law was adopted across the entirety of Bavaria on 23 April 1516. As Germany unified, Bavaria pushed for adoption of this law on a national basis.

Ingredients permitted

According to the 1516 Bavarian law, the only ingredients that could be used in the production of beer were water, barley and hops. The text does not mention yeast as an ingredient, although yeast was at the time knowingly used in the brewing process. It is likely that brewers of the time preferred to see yeast as a fixture of the brewing process. Yeast produced in one batch was commonly transferred to a subsequent batch, thus giving yeast a more permanent character in the brewing process. A full understanding of chemical basis of yeast and the fermentation process did not come until much later.

Other regulations

The 1516 Bavarian law set the price of beer (depending on the time of year and type of beer), limited the profits made by innkeepers, and made confiscation the penalty for making impure beer.

The text (translated) of the 1516 Bavarian law is as follows:

We hereby proclaim and decree, by Authority of our Province, that henceforth in the Duchy of Bavaria, in the country as well as in the cities and marketplaces, the following rules apply to the sale of beer:

From Michaelmas to Georgi, the price for one Mass [1,069ml] or one Kopf [bowl-shaped container for fluids, not quite one Mass], is not to exceed one Pfennig Munich value, and

From Georgi to Michaelmas, the Mass shall not be sold for more than two Pfennig of the same value, the Kopf not more than three Heller [Heller usually equals one-half Pfennig].

If this not be adhered to, the punishment stated below shall be administered.

Should any person brew, or otherwise have, other beer than March beer, it is not to be sold any higher than one Pfennig per Mass.

Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that in future in all cities, market-towns and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities' confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail.

Should, however, an innkeeper in the country, city or market-towns buy two or three pails of beer (containing 60 Mass) and sell it again to the common peasantry, he alone shall be permitted to charge one Heller more for the Mass or the Kopf, than mentioned above. Furthermore, should there arise a scarcity and subsequent price increase of the barley (also considering that the times of harvest differ, due to location), We, the Bavarian Duchy, shall have the right to order curtailments for the good of all concerned.

Bavarian Reinheitsgebot of 1516 (emphasis added), Eden, Karl J. (1993).

"History of German Brewing"

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