Brewing

Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast. It may be done in a brewery by a commercial brewer, at home by a homebrewer, or by a variety of traditional methods.

A 16th-century brewery

Quotation

• [C]ultured yeasts have only been in the winemaking picture within the last century. For thousands of years previously, all wine was fermented on wild (indigenous) yeast. Some old world wineries in France still ferment high-end wines on the local yeast.
  • Jeff Chorniak, "Wild Yeast: The Pros and Cons of Spontaneous Fermentation", Winemaker magazine (Sep 28, 2005)

• The trouble with being descended from a brewer, no matter how long ago he brewered, or whatever you call it, you're supposed to know all about something you don't give a hoot about.
  • Charles Pike in the film The Lady Eve (1941), interpreted by Henry Fonda and written by Preston Sturges.

• Much good beer has doubtless been made from very inferior malt, also vast quantities of so-called good beer are made by men who never even saw a proper mash; but neither of these facts can upset or affect the assertion that it is necessary to pay strict and careful attention to the drying of malt to produce a wort of uniform quality and absolute soundness. By careful working, inferior barley can be made into fairly sound and useful malt. By the employment of considerable skill... a brewer can make very good beer from indifferent malt, but his efforts, if carried back to the malt-house, are much more certain and reliable in their effects.
  No brewer needs to be told how much easier is his work, and more certain in its results, if he has malt well made and soundly dried.
  • Henry Stopes, Malt and Malting, an Historical, Scientific, and Practical Treatise (1885) p. 361.

• The brewer, who does not untie his belt in warm weather, whose hands do not dry the clay.
  • Sumerian disputation, Debate between Silver and Copper (middle to late 3rd millennium BCE), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, source.

See also

• Beer
• Malt
• Malting process
• Fermentation in food processing
• Alcoholic beverages
• Drunkenness

External links

Wikibooks

Wikibooks has more on the topic of

Brewing

• An overview of the microbiology behind beer brewing from the Science Creative Quarterly
• Hyfoma on beer brewing
• A pictorial overview of the brewing process at the Heriot-Watt University Pilot Brewery