Beer Flashcards
What is the oldest fermented beverage in history? What is the second-oldest?
Mead Beer is the second-oldest
At the heart of beer fermentation what conversion must take place in a grain before fermentation?
conversion of starching fermentable sugars
What is the name of the sugar-rich liquid that is fermented into beer?
wort
What do the hops provide to a beer?
adds flavor and bitterness, and has both preservative and antiseptic qualities that prohibit bacterial growth.
When was the Bavarian Purity Law passed into legislation? What is its German name? What did it codify?
1516 - Reinheitsgebot
codified the three ingredients for beer production as barley, hops, and water
What is the cereal grain of choice for most beer production? What other grains are used?
barley is the most used for beer production
wheat is also used
What is “green malt” and how is it created? What enzyme is created during the process of creation and what does it do? What are the two sugars created?
green malt is the product of barley that has germinated creating the enzyme amylase which converts the starches of the grain into fermentable sugars maltose and dextrin.
How is the green malt processed prior to the mashing process?
The green malt is roasted with hot air in a kiln to halt further growth.
What does the mashing process consist of? What is sparging? What’s the product of this process?
The mashing process involves combining the grist with hot water for the purpose of converting and extracting fermentable sugars from the malt.
Sparging is an additional rinse of the rinsed grist for additional sugar extraction. The product of this entire process is the derivation of the wort, the sugar-rich liquid that will serve as the source of fermentable sugars for alcoholic fermentation.
How does roasting the green malt affect the style of the beer?
A lightly-roasted malt will produce a very pale beer. Deeply roasted malts produce dark or black beers.
What is the grist?
The product of grinding or cracking the roasted malt
Following derivation of the wort, the wort is boiled. Why?
To stabilize and sterilize the brew
flavour, color, and aroma of the beer are made at this time
How do the hops influence the flavor and aromatics of the wort? When are they added? What happens to this affect on taste and aromas of the hops during the boiling process? How is this adjusted?
Hops contribute bitterness to the flavor and add aromatics
They are added when the wort is boiled
The longer they’re present in the boiling wort the more bitterness they contribute and the more the contributed aromatics fade
Aromas are retained by passing the boiling wort through a hopback chamber with fresh hops prior to chilling, contributing fresh aromas.
Yeast for ale fermentation is ____-fermenting. Yeast for a lager is ____-fermenting?
What are the yeast strains most commonly used
(top/bottom)
Ale is top fermenting - Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Lager is bottom fermenting -Saccharomyces pastorianus
(formerly called Saccharomyces carlsbergensis)
What does “bottle-conditioned” indicate?
Beers are unfiltered and undergo partial fermentation in the bottle.
