Ingredients

     I want to brew a great beer. To brew a great beer, I need great ingredients. Back in 1516, Germany passed one of the oldest still-enforced food regulations, The Reinhetsgebot. Also known as the 'purity law', this states that beer shall only have four ingredients: water, barley, hops and yeast ¹.  Beers have changes quite a bit in the last 600 years and today, commercial beers have many other ingredients but for our purposes, we are going to focus on these four main ones. For this week, I researched each of the ingredients and then went to my local homebrew shop to get advice and gathered everything that I needed to brew a great beer. 

Water

Beer Connoisseur (2021)

This ingredient is very obvious. Beer is mostly water so you need to add a lot of it to make beer. What Ididn't realize is that the water can turn a good beer into a great beer. Specific locations around the world are known for their beer mainly due to their water sources. The water in North Eastern United States has a high sulfate-to-chloride ratio which adds the popular haze to their IPAs. The Pilsen region of Czechia, know for their (you guess it) Pilsners, have very low alkalinity in their water². Luckily, Hamilton, and most cities who get their water from Lake Ontario, have excellent brewing water. I spoke with Joe, one of the owners of Grain and Grit in Hamilton. At their brewery, they don't use any special water or filtering. Their beer water comes right from the tap.

Barley

Beer Grain. Ustrzycki ©(2023)

The next main ingredient in beer is a grain called barley, specially malted barley. The malting process is fairly complex and involves steeping the grain, waiting until it germinates and then carefully drying it out again and low temperatures. The process of malting the barley allows the brewer to access the grain's enzyme in the process of making amazing beer³. Barley is the main source of sugar in a beer. These sugars are essential for the yeast (more on that later). There are lots of different types of malt that add different flavour and colour to the beer. A light beer would use a lot of Pilsner malt whereas a stout like Guinness has a lot of roasted barley which gives it it's black colour.

Hops

Hop Pellets. Ustrzycki ©(2023)

Hop are cone-shaped bulbs that grown on long, climbing vines. These vines grown in temperate climates (like Ontario) and grow high into the air; 20 feet or more. In the early 1900s, there were about a dozen varieties of hops. Today, there are over one hundred varieties³. For homebrewers, hops are usually compressed into small pellets which, in my opinion, look like rabbit food. This plant has a huge number of uses in brewing. It can add bitterness, flavour or aroma depending on when the hop is added. Furthermore, each variety of hop contributes differently to the beer. Hops on typically added to the wort (unfermented beer) while it is boiling. To utilize the bitterness component of hops, you boil hops for 60 minutes. To extract the hop flavour, you boil them for 30 minutes. If you want all of the hop aroma but none of the flavour or bitterness, you add them right at the end of the boil. You can even add hops after fermentation to get maximum aroma. Each variety of hop can contribute uniquely to the brew. Hop varieties like Citra or Mosaic add amazing tropical fruit aromas. For a full list of hop varieties and how they contribute to a beer, check out a website called hopslist. I played around and researched hops for far too long 😆.

Yeast

Dried Yeast. Ustrzycki ©(2023)

Yeast is the magic ingredient in beer. It is a single cell organism that turns wort into beer. The yeast eats the sugar and creates carbon-dioxide and ethyl alcohol. The ethyl alcohol is the chemical that makes you drunk. For centuries, nobody knew that importance of yeast in brewing. I love the story of Viking families passing down a sacred brewing stick from generation to generation. In order to make beer, it needed to be stirred with the special stick. Little did they know but this stick was covered in yeast microbes that would act as the magic ingredient to turn their wort into beer³.

Recipe

    To gather these ingredients, I headed to my (not-so) local homebrew store, KJ Urban Winery in Guelph, Ontario. This store isn't very close to me but they were super knowledgeable and had a massive selection of ingredients. They also have an entire book of ready-to-go kits to help you choose your beer style from a list of great recipes. I knew the type of beer that I wanted to brew; an IPA which had a nice fruity aroma but a strong hop bitterness that would scare away your grandmother. Their resident expert, Connor, helped me create my perfect recipe. It has a nice balanced selection of malts and a bunch of different hops added at various stages to bring take advantage of the versatility of this ingredient. I've named it my 'Kitchen Sink IPA' because it has a bunch of different hop varieties thrown into it; everything but the kitchen sink 😜. Below you can find a copy of my full recipe that I will use to brew my beer. My next step is learning how to take these ingredients and turning them into a great beer.

1. https://www.beercartel.com.au/blog/the-reinhetsgebot-german-purity-law/#:~:text=Reinheitsgebot%2C%20also%20known%20as%20the,be%20used%20to%20produce%20beer.

2. Koebel, T. (2020, October 6). Where in the world is the best water for brewing? The Beer Connoisseur. Retrieved January 18, 2023, from https://beerconnoisseur.com/articles/earth-best-water-brewing

3. Palmer, J. J. (2017). How to brew: Everything you need to know to brew great beer every time. Brewers Publications, a division of the Brewers Association.