If you’re just a casual beer drinker who simply enjoys sipping a nice pilsner or an IPA from time to time, you might not think about what beer is. You probably know that at its core, this alcoholic beverage is made up of water, barley (or other grains), yeast, and hops. But that’s an oversimplification. Beer is so much more complex than that.
Contemporary beer is much more than the yellow, fizzy, mass-produced beer that your grandpa drank. There are currently more than 100 different beer styles, including lagers, ales, stouts, porters, wheat beers, IPAs, and so many more. Add to that, over 9,000 breweries are operating in the US alone with many brewers innovating and creating new and exciting beer styles every year. That’s an awful lot of beer.
What is beer?
As we mentioned earlier, at its most basic level, beer is a fermented, often carbonated alcoholic beverage made up of water, a malted cereal grain (barley, corn, wheat, or other grains), yeast, and hops. It’s created by extracting the sugar from the cereal grain which is then turned into alcohol using yeast. The result is beer. But that’s a simplified definition.
What are the main ingredients?
Beer might seem complicated, but there are only four ingredients that are needed to brew this popular alcoholic beverage. They are water, malts, yeast, and hops. That’s it. Keep scrolling to learn a little bit about the importance of each ingredient.
Water
There’s no beer without water. This is because beer is mostly water. The water brewers use is important as well. Depending on where the beer is produced, the differing water used (mineral, spring water, city water) will impact the flavor. It might seem subtle, but this is why beer made in different parts of the world tastes slightly different. An extreme example of the difference water makes is the traditional Gose-style beers made in Goslar, Germany. Today, brewers add sea salt to the beer. But originally, the beer was slightly salty because of the high salinity of the city’s water.
Malt
After the water, the most important ingredient is malt. The cereal grain used is often barley, but can also be corn, oats, rice, wheat, or other grains. The gain is roasted or tasted, dried, and milled before it’s ready to be used.
Hops
Your favorite beer would be a malty, rich, fairly unpalatable drink if not for the addition of hops. Countless hop varieties add bitterness, aroma, and flavor to your beer. These flavors include the dank, resinous pine aromas and flavors in your favorite IPA as well as citrus and tropical fruits in your go-to hazy IPA. Hops also add the subtle floral, earthy element to your favorite pilsner.
Yeast
All the ingredients work in perfect unison. There’s also no beer without yeast. This is because without yeast turning the cereal grain sugar into alcohol, there’s no beer. Without yeast, you’d have a beer-flavored, alcohol-free beverage you’d probably steer clear of.
How is beer made?
To make beer, you need to mill roasted malts and then mix the grain with hot water to let it steep and create a mash. The steeping breaks down the malt and creates sugar. This is referred to as the wort. The wort is then put into a kettle with hops and begins boiling. The hops add the bitterness, pine, and floral flavors beer drinkers expect. After it has time to cool, it’s added to another vessel where yeast is added. The yeast turns the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This creates the alcohol and bubbles beer drinkers crave.
What are some of the different types of beer?
As we briefly touched on, there are well over 100 different beer styles with more being created every day. A great example is the New England-style IPA. This version of the
While we don’t have time to list every beer style currently available, some of the most popular include stouts, porters, pale ales, lagers, wheat beers, IPA, sour beer, pilsner, barleywine, and seemingly countless more.
Bottom line
While it might seem complicated. At its core, beer is simply a fermented drink made from water, yeast, malts, and hops. That’s it. There are additional ingredients and steps (barrel-aging or maturing in oak foeders, for example) depending on the beer style.
There are over a hundred styles, but they all follow the basic format with only a few deviations to create a seemingly completely different beverage. Whether or not you decided to brew your own beer after reading this, at the very least, you should have a little better understanding of your favorite crisp, refreshing lager (and every other beer style).
