Beer 101 – One Of America’s Favorite Drinks

There’s nothing more synonymous than a cold beer and a hot day, your favorite brew with ribs, burgers or hot dogs at a barbeque, or an ice-cold draft watching your favorite team at the local sports bar. As we expand our blog material in the Food and Drink category, we decided that an industry that provides one of the top national products, contributes over $76 billion dollars to the U.S. economy and employs over half-a-million jobs, and well, just tastes great, we better cover it. (Source)

And Americans drink a lot, with the 2017 overall beer market totaling over $111 billion and domestic markets producing over 136 million barrels last year alone. Of the top three domestics, Bud Light, Coors Light and Budweiser led sales, respectively.

History

Beer is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks in the world and the third most consumed beverage after water and tea. Evidence shows beer may have been made during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic which dates between 8500 to 5500 BCE and produced in western Iran back to about 3500 to 3100 BC. Even workers building the Great Pyramids were paid in liters of beer. (Source)

American beer got its start as far back as the European settlers, who brought ales and table beers as they settled in the new world. The first known U.S. brewery was established in New Amsterdam (Manhattan) in 1612 by Adrian Block and Hans Christiansen. Like whiskey, beer is considered a part of military rations in the Revolutionary War, with each soldier receiving one quart a day. Other notables in American beer history; David Yuengling establishes his brewery in 1829, the forerunner to the Pabst line is opened in 1844, the beginnings of Schlitz starts in 1849 and Anheuser-Busch in 1852. (Source)

Production 101

Whereas creating whiskey is distilling, making beer is brewing. The basic ingredients are water; a starch source, usually malted barley; brewer’s yeast and a flavoring such as hops. Adjunct grains such as corn and rice can be used as well. There are numerous strains of yeast with the majority being either top or bottom fermenting yeast strains; Saccharomyces cerevisiae (top-fermenting) and Saccharomyces pastoianus (bottom-fermenting). Lambics and other sours use Brettanomyces and Bavarian weissbiers use Torulaspora delbrueckii

In a straightforward sense, top fermenting means the yeasts offer thick, foamy layer (or head) at the top of the glass where bottom fermenting (most often in lagers) do not. Beers can also be filtered or unfiltered, the latter having a noticeable haziness to them.

Ale vs Lager – Yeast strain will be the determining factor whether a beer is an ale or a lager.

Ale

Ale is a top-fermenting style of beer. It uses a warm fermentation method and brewed between 60F and 75F. Ale color can be pale, amber or dark and produces a full-bodied style with fruity notes and some sweetness.

Ale styles:

India Pale Ale, Pale Ale, Stout, Porter, Golden Ale, Scotch Ale, Barley Wine, Mild Ale, Old Ale, Belgian Ale, Wheat Beer.

Lager

Lager, German for storeroom or warehouse, is the most consumed style of beer in the world. The term derived from the word “lagering” which involved cold storage of the beer, usually in caves. It is a bottom-fermenting, lighter and crisper style of beer with the color ranging from pale, golden, amber to dark with grassy, earthy, bready and malty flavors.

Lager styles:

• Pale Lager
  • Helles, Pilsner, Marzen, Bock

• Dark Lager
  • Dunkel
  • Doppelbock
  • Schwarzbier
  • Baltic Porter

• Kolsch – Kolsch is a unique beer style as it is a top-fermenting beer that goes through a lager period of about 2 months

Spontaneous Fermentation

This is beer that’s exposed to natural yeast rather than cultures. (Brettanomyces is a typical yeast seen in spontaneous fermentation.) Beers produced in this method are sour and non-filtered.

• Spontaneously Fermented styles
  • Lambics
    • Unblended Lambics, Gueuze, Mars, Faro, Kriek, Fruit lambics
  • Flanders Ales
    • Flanders Oud Bruin, Flanders Red Ale

Bottle Conditioning

A process in which beer naturally carbonates rather than being artificially carbonated. Following fermentation and bottling there is extra yeast and extra sugar added. Belgian and Belgian style ales see more bottle conditioning than most other styles but any beer can be bottle conditioned.

We hope you find this information useful, we’ll be covering more brands, brews and bottles in the near future. Don’t forget to check out our Whiskey 101 – A guide to Distilled Spirits. Need some beer accessories? Please use our affiliate links below, we appreciate your support!