How is beer made?
One of the world’s oldest known alcoholic beverages, beer was brewed as early as 4,000 years ago in ancient Egypt and Babylon. According to Egyptian legend, Osiris, the god of agriculture, taught humans to prepare beer. It has been a commercial product since the late middle ages. Today, beer is legally defined in some countries, as in Germany, where the standard ingredients, apart from water, are germinated barley, hops, and yeast. Beer is essentially fermented, hop-flavored, malt sugar tea. There are four basic building blocks needed to make beer: water, malted barley, and hops. Yeast is used to ferment the tea into an effervescent liquid with an average of between three and seven percent ethyl alcohol by weight. Water – More than 90 per cent of beer is water, and therefore has a great effect on the taste of the final product. Brewers can, and do, chemically adjust any water to create the exact “style” of beer desired. Malted Barley – Barley, a basic grain, must be “malted” before it
