History and Information About Beer

Beer

Is an alcoholic beverage that's fermented and brewed from barley, hops, water, and yeast (along with corn and rice in some recipes). Beer has been brewed for thousand of years, and today drinkers the world over enjoy thousand of different varieties of beer. United State has more than 1200 microbrews (made by small, independent brewers) alone. Germany brags of having nearly 1300 breweries.

 

Photo : Pilsener Beer .

History of Beer

Like wine, beer has a long history, one that’s longer than we’ll ever be able to trace. Residue of the first known barley beer was found in a jar at the Godin Tepe excavation site in modern day Iran, presumably sitting there since someone took his or her last sip around 3400 B.C. But chances are, the first beer had been “cracked” millennia before that.

So while an exact date or time for the first chug, or keg stand, or even hiccup, is not known, what is known is that beer, like bread, developed best in farm-based, agrarian societies where there was an enough grain and time for fermentation. One thing we definitely know is that ancient man loved beer as much as if not more than we do: the Babylonians had about 20 recipes for beer, Egyptian Pharaohs were buried with vats of the stuff, even the workers who built the pyramids were essentially paid in beer.

One of the first written recipes for beer actually comes from a poem, a 3800 year-old ode to brewing that was etched into clay tablets. Found in ancient Sumer (modern day Iraq), the “Hymn to Ninkasi” celebrates the Sumerian goddess of beer and also conveniently outlines steps for brewing (lines like “The filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound, you place appropriately on a large collector vat” could give Shakespeare a run for his money).

However it began, beer rapidly took hold as one of civilization’s favorite and safest ways to drink. Historically speaking, water wasn’t always reliably potable for most cultures, and alcoholic drinks like beer (also sanitized by the application of heat) would have been safer. Of course, the appearance of beer was changing as brewing methods evolved. Babylonians drank their beer with a straw it was thicker, full of grain. But by the 16^th Century, Germany’s “Reinheitsgebot” beer purity law had essentially removed everything but water, hops, and barley from acceptable brewing ingredients (yeast, a slight oversight, was added back to the list a few centuries later).

Even hops weren’t always as ubiquitous. Ancient Egyptians would have had a beer stabilized and flavored with things like wild herbs, dates, olive oil, and meadow sweet. And for centuries, beer cultivation in Europe relied on a mixture of herbs and spices called gruit. Only around the turn of the first millennium A.D. were hops regularly finding their way to beer, with Germany exporting hops for brewing around the 13^th century.

How Beer is Made

Beer is made from four basic ingredients: Barley, water, hops and yeast. The basic idea is to extract the sugars from grains (usually barley) so that the yeast can turn it into alcohol and CO2, creating beer.

The brewing process starts with grains, usually barley (although sometimes wheat, rye or other such things.) The grains are harvested and processed through a process of heating, drying out and cracking. The main goal of malting is to isolate the enzymes needed for brewing so that it’s ready for the next step.

The grains then go through a process known as mashing, in which they are steeped in hot, but not boiling, water for about an hour, sort of like making tea. This activates enzymes in the grains that cause it to break down and release its sugars. Once this is all done you drain the water from the mash which is now full of sugar from the grains. This sticky, sweet liquid is called wort. It’s basically unmade beer, sort of like how dough is unmade bread.

The wort is boiled for about an hour while hops and other spices are added several times.
What are hops? Hops are the small, green cone-like fruit of a vine plant. They provide bitterness to balance out all the sugar in the wort and provide flavor. They also act as a natural preservative, which is what they were first used for.

Once the hour long boil is over the wort is cooled, strained and filtered. It’s then put in a fermenting vessel and yeast is added to it. At this point the brewing is complete and the fermentation begins. The beer is stored for a couple of weeks at room temperature (in the case of ales) or many many weeks at cold temperatures (in the case of lagers) while the yeast works its fermentation magic. Basically the yeast eats up all that sugar in the wort and spits out CO2 and alcohol as waste products.

You’ve now got alcoholic beer, however it is still flat and uncarbonated. The flat beer is bottled, at which time it is either artificially carbonated like a soda, or if it’s going to be ‘bottle conditioned’ it’s allowed to naturally carbonate via the CO2 the yeast produces. After allowing it to age for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months you drink the beer, and it’s delicious!

 

 That's all for now, see you on the next post.

Barman Steve