What you should know about beer?

BEER: WHERE DO ALL THOSE FLAVOURS COME FROM?

There are thousands of different ways that yeast, malt, and hops that can be combined to make beer, and all those combinations can lead to lots of interesting outcomes. There are also a LOT of additives you can put in beer to give it different flavours, but I’m going to focus on the core ingredients: yeast, hops, and malt.

Yeast

Yeast is a fungus. Differences in the strain of yeast in a beer will impact the flavour and aroma of the beer. And beers don’t have to be limited to a single strain. One of my favourite beers from the Main Street Brewery, Saison No.7, originally had one type of yeast in it, and now has four!

All beers fall into the categories ales and lagers. The difference lies in the yeasts used to ferment them. Ale yeasts work at higher temperatures, and create a variety of flavour compounds called esters. Esters give many beers their characteristic fruity flavours. Lager yeasts work at lower temperatures, and produce far fewer flavour compounds. For lagers, the malts and hops will be at the center of your taste buds’ attention rather than esters.

Yeasts are also often categorized by their profile, which can be clean, fruity, or peppery/spicy.

Malt

To create beer, grain undergoes a process called malting, where it is moistened so it’ll begin to germinate, and then the grain is kilned to dry it. Once this is done, the grain has become a malt.

Both the grain that is used in a malt and the length of time it spends in the kiln during the malting process will have effects on the beer flavour. While rice, corn, sorghum, oats, millet, wheat and rye can all be used to make malt, the most popular grain choice is barley. The popularity of barley in beer is due (in part) to its neutral character, compared to other grains. Barley will create sweetness, but without any other distinctly overwhelming flavour.

The colour of beer comes from the malt. Lightly roasted malts will produce light-coloured beers and bready flavours. As the malt is roasted to a darker colour, the flavour profile will move to toffee and caramel. Lastly, darkly roasted malts will produce darker beers, with coffee and chocolate flavours. The flavour strengthens with the length of the kilning, so the darker the brew, the stronger the flavour.

Hops

Hops produce a huge amount of delightful aromas, flavours and a certain amount of bitterness. They can be thought of as the spice of the beer: you don’t want to overload your plate with them. Depending on the hop chosen for a beer, it may impart a bitterness that can be earthy, pithy, dry or something else in-between. This bitterness helps balance out the sweetness of the malt and creates a more complete flavour in the beer.

Hops are usually categorized as floral, fruity or zesty. The taste depends heavily on where they are grown. An American hop grown in Europe may have an entirely different flavour profile due to the change in settings.

A new trend in beer has been to use fresh hops, which actually takes a lot of effort since hops wilt off the vine very quickly. Typically, to prevent them from going bad, hops are dried and crushed into pellets, and those pellets are used in the beer. However, for fresh hop beers, the hops are taken off the plant and go straight to the brewery. At Main Street Brewery, Jack has driven to Chiliwack and started brewing with the hops he gathered on that same day, just to get the freshest taste. By skipping the drying process, he’s capturing all the essential acids and aromas, and their flavours are immersed in the beer.

Hops – Hops are the spice of beer. They provide bitterness to balance the sweetness of the malt, as well as flavors and aromas ranging from citrus and pine to earthy and spicy.

There are two types of hops: bittering hops (which do as much as the name implies) and aroma hops (which add more of a pungent citrusy flavor and are usually significantly less bitter). … In the case of beer, malt adds sugars for fermentation and generates most of the flavor, like nutty honey malts or spicy rye malts

Lager

Lager is beer which has been brewed and conditioned at low temperature. Lagers can be plae, amber or dark. Pale lager is the most widely consumed and commercially available style of beer. The term ’lager’ comes from the German for ‘storage’, as the beer was stored before drinking — traditionally in cool caves.

As well as maturation in cold storage, most lagers are distinguished by the use of Saccharomyces pastorianus, a “bottom-fermenting” yeast that ferments at relatively cold temperatures.

Czech beer

Czech beer is world renowned brand. Why is it so unique, and why is it not produced elsewhere? Answer: Czech raw materials, specific manufacturing process and original technology of Czech breweries.

History of Czech beer is tied to Pilsner and to a work of Bavarian brewmaster Josef Groll.

The cornerstone of Czech beer is raw materials for its production. Although water, malt, hops and brewer’s yeast are available in many other countries around the world, but not enough for making beer that tastes identical with the drink produced in the Czech Republic. This specific properties of materials are currently tied with the Czech environment. Hundreds of years of selctive breeding of cereals and hops, a unique strain of brewer’s yeast, soil compositon, climate, water chemistry, but also a way of growing, havesting and preparation of rew materials, all have a major impact on elsewhere unique characteristics of a typical Czech beer, a pale lager Pilsner type.

The unique techology of Czech breweries

In addition to the raw materials, the technology has significant effect to the final sensory properties of beer (color, taste, zest, foaming, clarity and smell). This can be divided into manufacturing equipment (brewery) and the technological process of beer production.

Dutch better

Amstel, Grolsch(格罗尔施) and Heineken – three popular Dutch brands.