Beer is one of the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drinks in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal grains—most commonly from malted barley, though wheat, maize (corn), rice, and oats are also used. During the brewing process, fermentation of the starch sugars in the wort produces ethanol and carbonation in the resulting beer. Most modern beer is brewed with hops, which add bitterness and other flavours and act as a natural preservative and stabilizing agent. Other flavouring agents such as gruit, herbs, or fruits may be included or used instead of hops. In commercial brewing, the natural carbonation effect is often removed during processing and replaced with forced carbonation.
A craft brewery or microbrewery is a brewery that produces small amounts of beer, typically less than large breweries, and is often independently owned. Such breweries are generally perceived and marketed as having an emphasis on enthusiasm, new flavours, and varied brewing techniques.
Sahti is a Finnish type of farmhouse ale made from malted and unmalted grains including barley and rye. Traditionally the beer is flavored with juniper in addition to, or instead of, hops; the mash is filtered through juniper twigs into a trough-shaped tun, called a kuurna in Finnish. Sahti is top-fermented and many have a banana flavor due to isoamyl acetate from the use of baking yeast, although ale yeast may also be used in fermenting.
Smoked beer is a type of beer with a distinctive smoke flavour imparted by using malted barley dried over an open flame.
Beer in Belgium varies from pale lager to amber ales, lambic beers, Flemish red ales, sour brown ales, strong ales and stouts. In 2018, there were approximately 304 active breweries in Belgium, including international companies, such as AB InBev, and traditional breweries including Trappist monasteries. On average, Belgians drink 68 liters of beer each year, down from around 200 each year in 1900. Most beers are bought or served in bottles, rather than cans, and almost every beer has its own branded, sometimes uniquely shaped, glass. In 2016, UNESCO inscribed Belgian beer culture on their list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
In brewing, adjuncts are unmalted grains or grain products used in brewing beer which supplement the main mash ingredient. This is often done with the intention of cutting costs, but sometimes also to create an additional feature, such as better foam retention, flavours or nutritional value or additives. Both solid and liquid adjuncts are commonly used.
Beer in Norway has a long history, stretching back more than a millennium. Until some 200 years ago, most farms where it was possible to grow grain south of the Arctic Circle, brewed their own beer. From the early 20th century brewing was industrialized and home brewing was restricted. Significant consolidation in the brewing sector reduced the number of major breweries to just a handful. With the exception of the farmhouse ales, most beer styles brewed in Norway trace their ancestry to central Europe.
Beer styles differentiate and categorise beers by colour, flavour, strength, ingredients, production method, recipe, history, or origin.
Beer is one of the oldest drinks humans have produced. The first chemically confirmed barley beer dates back to the 5th millennium BC in modern-day Iran, and was recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and spread throughout the world.
Saison is a pale ale that is highly carbonated, fruity, spicy, and often bottle conditioned. It was historically brewed with low alcohol levels, but modern productions of the style have moderate to high levels of alcohol. Along with several other varieties, it is generally classified as a farmhouse ale.
Mash ingredients, mash bill, mashbill, or grain bill are the materials that brewers use to produce the wort that they then ferment into alcohol. Mashing is the act of creating and extracting fermentable and non-fermentable sugars and flavor components from grain by steeping it in hot water, and then letting it rest at specific temperature ranges to activate naturally occurring enzymes in the grain that convert starches to sugars. The sugars separate from the mash ingredients, and then yeast in the brewing process converts them to alcohol and other fermentation products.
Finland has a long history of beer dating back to the Middle Ages. The oldest still-existing commercial brewery in Finland and Nordic countries is Sinebrychoff, founded in 1819. The Finnish Beer Day is celebrated on 13 October to commemorate the founding of the Sinebrychoff brewery and the birth of Finnish beer. The largest Finnish brewers are Hartwall, Olvi and Sinebrychoff. Most of the beers brewed in Finland are pale lagers. Finland's standing is 9th in per capita consumption of beer. Finnish people consume a total of 440 ML of beer annually and the trend is increasing by 11.7 633 mL bottles year-on-year per capita.
Dupont Brewery is a brewery in Tourpes (Leuze-en-Hainaut), in western Hainaut, Belgium. Founded in 1950, it is on a working farm which dates back to 1759 and has significant brewing history. In the 1990s, a bread bakery and cheese-making facility were added.
Brasserie Thiriez is a small craft brewery located in Esquelbecq, a town in the Arrondissement of Dunkirk in the Nord département, in the Hauts-de-France région of France, quite close to the Belgian border. It is situated on the grounds that formerly housed the Poitevin farm brewery, which was active and served the local area until 1945. The current brewery was founded in 1996 by Daniel Thiriez, who had become interested in homebrewing as a college student, and later left his career as a "human resources professional for a large supermarket chain" in the interest of reviving the tradition of the small village brewery. It exports beers in Europe, and the USA.
A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of beer has taken place since at least 2500 BC; in ancient Mesopotamia, brewers derived social sanction and divine protection from the goddess Ninkasi. Brewing was initially a cottage industry, with production taking place at home; by the ninth century, monasteries and farms would produce beer on a larger scale, selling the excess; and by the eleventh and twelfth centuries larger, dedicated breweries with eight to ten workers were being built.
A brewhouse is a building made for brewing beer and ale. This could be a part of a specialized brewery operation, but historically a brewhouse is a private building only meant for domestic production.
Gotlandsdricka is a traditional homebrewed alcoholic beverage made on the island of Gotland, Sweden. It is a kind of ale, closely related to the Finnish sahti, and Norwegian Maltøl with a smoky, bitter-sweet, spicy (juniper) flavor. It is similar to gruit.
Rogue Ales Beard Beer is an American wild ale brewed by Rogue Ales of Newport, Oregon using wild yeast originally cultured from nine beard hairs belonging to Rogue Ales' brewmaster, John Maier.
The beer brewing tradition in Lithuania tends to favor the northern part of the country and is centered around the towns of Pasvalys, Pakruojis, Kupiškis and Biržai. The farmhouse brews of the region are highly distinctive, using local ingredients and techniques from past generations. Lithuanian farmhouse beer has a soft, sweetish malty palate, with hops that do not dominate the flavor profile.
Kveik is a collective term for a family of strains of brewing yeast that has been used in Norwegian farmhouse brewing for generations.
