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Beers & Lagers
6000 year old documentation provides the first “official” record of brewing beer although it is likely that beer was enjoyed in Neolithic times, when cereal harvesting began.
Beer is produced using only natural ingredients, malt, barley, hops, water and yeast. Barley is the main ingredient in beer and is low in fat and protein but rich in starch. In nature this would feed the growing plant but in brewing it is hijacked to make the beer.
Malting starts the process of releasing the sugar and making it available for brewing, some barleys are particularly suitable for this process and are specially selected for making top quality beer. Here in the United Kingdom our climate is very good for growing malting barley making British malt some of the best in the world.
Hops are not the main ingredient of beer contrary to popular belief. For every barrel of beer 20kg of malt will be used and only 150g of hops. Hops are used rather like a spice in beer making and its closest botanical relative is cannabis!
Pure water is essential to the brewing process and 6-7 litres of water are needed to produce 1 litre of beer. Breweries are sometimes located where the quality of the local water supply is good for example Burton on Trent and even Denver Colorado for the pure water that runs down from the Rocky Mountains.
Yeast produces the fermentation process and also provides much of the subtlety of beer flavour. Brewers jealously guard their yeast strains which produce the distinctive flavours of their beer brands.
Today, a drinker can choose from a dazzling array of beer styles: pilsners, pale ales, milds, stouts, barley wines lambric beers to name a few. The list may seem intimidating, but generally beer falls into a few simple categories, which helps to narrow down the diverse range of tastes and flavours.
One of the great things about beer is the lack of snobbery! There’s no right or wrong: people simply prefer different beer styles. Try a variety and discover which ones appeal most to you. Different beers suit different occasions: a larger “stubby” might be just the thing for a summer barbecue, while a bottle of cask conditioned ale is great with a warming meal on a winters evening.
Go ahead try them all out.
Cheers!!
Lager
The world’s most popular beer style, lagers are normally light in colour, served cold at 6 degrees Celsius, and vary widely in flavour and strength. American lagers e.g. Coors Light tend to be low in bitterness and subtle in flavour. British lagers such as Carling have a fuller flavour, followed by robust continentals such as Belgium’s Stella Artois, Grolsch from Holland and Beck’s from Germany.
Ale
Ale is an English word for the traditional warm fermented beers served at cellar temperature, 10-12 degrees c.
They are generally darker than larger, from golden (such as Boddingtons or Stones from the north of England) to the deep brown of Worthington from Burton upon Trent.
Dark Beers
Dark milds, stouts and porters are brewed with dark malts producing beers that are dark brown almost black in colour. The most famous dark beer is Guinness.
Speciality Beers
This is rather a catch all term that includes a diverse range of beers and fascinating flavours. Weisse beer brewed with a mixture of barley, malt and wheat originated in Belgium and Germany. Brewed in the town of the same name Hoefaarden is a good example of a Weisse beer. Still in Belgium, fruit beers are matured in casks with fruits such as cherries or raspberries, while many British brewers now brew beers with flavours such as heather, chocolate or honey (e.g. Young’s Waggle Dance)
Click here to view a selection of our speciality beers
Interesting Factoids
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Old English drinkers had whistles baked into the rims of ceramic drinking vessels, which they blew to order a refill, hence the phrase “wet your whistle”
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4,000 years ago in Babylon, a new bride’s father gave his son in law a months supply of honey beer. Calendars were lunar based, so this was known as the “honey month” or what we now call “honeymoon”
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1,500 grains of barley are used to make 1 pint of beer.
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UK drinkers pay over half the EU beer tax bill – but drink just a fifth of the beer. |
Measurements
Butt = 108 gallons
Hogshead = 54 gallons
Barrel = 36 gallons
Half Hogshead = 27 gallons
Kilderkin = 18 gallons
Firkin = 9 gallons
Pin = 4.5 gallons
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