Beer, the bubbly drink which always makes you feel lighter and funnier. While some of the hard drinks like Whiskey and Rum are taken in all moods, usually Beer is always associated with fun and happier times. So I guess we have more then enough reasons to have a small post on its preparation. The other big reason is that I am personally a great fan of Beer and prefer it over most of the other drinks.
Its one of the olderst known drinks and some googling tells me that it has roots in ancient Egypt, China and Europe. Beer is made from water, yeast , hops and grains. Grains could be oats, wheat, rice but mostly its barley. Wheat is also used in some places. Apart from these basic things you may add adjuncts, herbs etc. Yeast converts sugar into alcohol, corn sugar for the yeast, hops create the bitterness.
Steps in the beer-making process:
Step 1
Malting: Grain is soaked in water so it can sprout. Its fairly simple and straight forward step.
Step2
Mashing/sparging:
The malt is heated and rotated to convert its starch into sugar. Straining yields the “wort”.
Step3
Boiling and hopping: The wort is boiled with hops in a copper or stainless steel vessel. Add the malt extract and sugar. Boil the wort, stirring regularly. After boiling add hops pellets for aroma. While wort is boiling, stir the yeast powder into a cup of warm tap water and cover with foil. When the wort is finished boiling, put the funnel in the top of the fermenter and pour the wort into the fermenter, finish filling the fermenter to within 8 inches from the top with cold water. Cap the fermenter, when the wort has cooled to just room temperature, open the fermenter
Step4
Fermentation: Yeast is added, converting the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide. When it’s removed, the resulting product is beer. (There may be a second fermentation or carbon dioxide may be added.)
Step5
Filtering: The beer is put in cold storage and filtered before it’s kegged.
Beer usually contains between 3% – 6% alcohol. The other small note is about Lager Beer. Lager is fermented slowly at a low temperature with yeast that sinks, and it’s aged longer.