Beer is an ancient beverage made by extracting sugar from barley seeds, making it into a malt-flavored soup with hops, then fermenting it with yeast to provide flavor, carbonation and alcohol.
Once the barley seeds are harvested they are seeped, germinated and kilned into malted barley, or malt. The roasting can be done to varying degrees, simular to coffee. Lightly roasted barley malt produces pale beers like Bud and Coors. Medium roasted barley malt has more caramel, toffee flavors and is used to make brown beers such as Pales and Ambers. Finally, dark roasted barley produces dark, coffee-like beers such as Porters and Stouts.
The Brewer starts with a recipe and mixes the appropriate malts. He then adds hot water to the malt, which extracts the color, original flavor and the sugars. This process is called mashing. The resulting sweet liquid is transfered to the kettle where it is boiled from 1 to 2 hours and given more flavor by the addition of flowers from varities of the hop plant. This gives the bitterness that counterbalances the malt sweetnes and the spicy and floral aromas that are characteristic of fresh, well made beers.
The boiled "barley soup" called wort is then cooled and transfered to the fermitter. Yeast is added and does its magic transforming the sugar into flavor, carbonation and alcohol. After the beer has matured for two to three weeks, the beer is either bottled or put into kegs for serving.
Flavorful beer, a combination of the brewer's skill in mixing malt and hops, along with the magic of the yeast produces an ancient beverage to be savored today the way it was centuries ago. Fresh handmade with care, from all natural ingredients, with no artificial additives or preservatives.
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