Beer ยท Styles and brewing
Beer styles and brewing basics
Four ingredients and a handful of choices produce hundreds of styles.
The four ingredients
- Water: the biggest part of beer, with mineral content that can shape style.
- Malted barley: supplies sugar for fermentation and gives colour, body and flavour. Roasting the malt more makes darker beers.
- Hops: add bitterness to balance sweetness, plus aroma and some preservation.
- Yeast: ferments sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide and creates flavour.
The brewing process
- Malting: barley is germinated, then dried or kilned.
- Mashing: crushed malt is soaked in hot water to release sugars.
- Lautering: the sweet liquid (wort) is separated from the grain.
- Boiling: wort is boiled with hops.
- Fermentation: the cooled wort is fermented with yeast.
- Conditioning and packaging: beer is matured, carbonated and put in a keg, can or bottle.
Ales and lagers
- Ales use top-fermenting yeast at warmer temperatures, giving fruity, estery flavours.
- Lagers use bottom-fermenting yeast at cooler temperatures and longer conditioning, giving clean, crisp flavours.
A short tour of styles
- Pilsner: pale, crisp lager with noticeable hop bitterness.
- Pale ale and IPA: hop-forward ales; IPAs are stronger and more bitter.
- Wheat beer (such as hefeweizen): cloudy, with banana and clove notes from the yeast.
- Stout and porter: dark beers with roasted notes of coffee and chocolate.
- Belgian styles: dubbel, tripel and saison, with spicy, fruity yeast character.
- Sour beers: acidity from lactic bacteria or wild fermentation.
Serving
Use a clean glass, pour at an angle to control the foam, and serve lagers colder than strong dark ales.
Note: this is a general study guide written in our own words, not WSET's syllabus. For what is examined, always check WSET's published specification and your course provider.
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