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.
Foster's Lager is an internationally-distributed brand of lager. It is owned by the international brewing group Asahi Group Holdings., and is brewed under licence in a number of countries, including its biggest market, the UK, where the European rights to the brand are owned by Heineken International.
John Smith's Brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England, produces beers including John Smith's, the highest selling bitter in the United Kingdom since the mid-1990s.
Holsten Brewery is a brewing company founded in 1879 in what is now Hamburg's Altona-Nord quarter. The group now has seven breweries in Germany. Its nationally distributed premium brand is the pale lager Holsten Pilsener. The company was acquired by the Carlsberg Group in 2004.
Rainier Brewing Company (1878–1999) was a Seattle, Washington, company that brewed Rainier Beer, a popular brand in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Although Rainier was founded in 1884, the Seattle site had been brewing beer since 1878. The beer is no longer brewed in Seattle, nor is the company owned locally. In the late 1990s, the company was sold to Stroh's, then to Pabst Brewing Company, though Miller contract brews most of Pabst's beers. The brewery was closed by Pabst in 1999 and sold.
Steam beer is a highly effervescent beer made by fermenting lager yeasts at warmer ale yeast fermentation temperatures. It has two distinct but related meanings:
St. James's Gate Brewery is a brewery founded in 1759 in Dublin, Ireland, by Arthur Guinness. The company is now a part of Diageo, a company formed from the merger of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1997. The main product of the brewery is Guinness Draught.
Spoetzl Brewery is a brewery located in Shiner, Texas, U.S. It produces a diverse line of Shiner Beers, including their flagship Shiner Bock, a dark lager that is now distributed countrywide. The brewery is owned by the Gambrinus Company, a family-owned company based in San Antonio, which also owns Trumer Brewery in Berkeley, California.
Beer arrived in Australia at the beginning of British colonisation. In 2004 Australia was ranked fourth internationally in per capita beer consumption, at around 110 litres per year; although, the nation ranked considerably lower in a World Health Organization report of alcohol consumption per capita of 12.2 litres. Lager is by far the most popular type of beer consumed in Australia.
Beer in the United States is manufactured by more than 7,000 breweries, which range in size from industry giants to brew pubs and microbreweries. The United States produced 196 million barrels (23.0 GL) of beer in 2012, and consumes roughly 28 US gallons (110 L) of beer per capita annually. In 2011, the United States was ranked fifteenth in the world in per capita consumption, while total consumption was second only to China.
Lucky Lager is an American lager with U.S. brewing and distribution rights held by the Pabst Brewing Company. Originally launched in 1934 by the San Francisco-based General Brewing Company, Lucky Lager grew to be one of the prominent beers of the Western United States during the 1950s and 1960s. In 2019, Pabst announced that the beer brand would be revived and would be brewed by 21st Amendment Brewery, a brewery based in San Leandro.
The Christian Heurich Brewing Company was a Washington, D.C., brewery founded in 1872 and incorporated by Christian Heurich in 1890. First located near Dupont Circle on 20th Street NW, it expanded to a much larger site in Foggy Bottom in 1895 after a major fire. The new brewery was located along the Potomac River at 26th Street and D Street NW where the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts now stands. The Heurich brewery was the largest in Washington's history, capable of producing 500,000 barrels of beer a year and 250 tons of ice daily.
Oriental Brewery or OB is a South Korean brewery currently owned by AB InBev, and initially founded by Doosan Group.
The original Fred Koch Brewery was a small, independent brewery in Dunkirk, New York that produced beer and ale from late 1888 until 1985. Production peaked in the early 1950s with over 100,000 barrels brewed annually. When the Dunkirk, New York brewery was closed in 1985, it was located at 15-25 West Courtney Street.
The beers of the Caribbean are unique to each island in the region, although many are variants of the same style. Each island generally brews its own unique pale lager, the occasional stout, and often a non-alcoholic malta beverage. Contract-brewing of international beers is also common, with Heineken Pilsener and Guinness Foreign Extra Stout being the most popular. The beers vary between the islands to suit the taste and the brewing method used.
Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, is the largest brewing company in the United States, with a market share of 45 percent in 2016.
Samuel Adams is the flagship brand of the Boston Beer Company. The brand name was chosen in honor of Founding Father of the United States Samuel Adams. Adams inherited his father's brewery on King Street. Some historians say he was a brewer, while others describe him as a maltster. The Samuel Adams brewery is located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, where visitors can take a tour, and shop beers and merchandise. Samuel Adams beer is brewed by the Boston Beer Company, which was founded by Jim Koch in Cambridge, MA, where he started the micro-brewery out of his home. Koch comes from a long line of Cincinnati brewers, and Samuel Adams beer was started using a recipe now known as the Samuel Adams Boston Lager.
George Juenemann (1823–1884) co-owned and operated Humphrey and Juenemann's Pleasure Garden, a Washington DC brewery and early example of an American beer garden. The facility was also known as Juenemann's Brewery.
The National Capital Brewing Company was founded in 1890 by Albert Carry and Robert Portner, two successful Washington, D.C. area brewers. The brewery could produce 100,000 barrels of beer a year and was considered state-of-the-art for the time. It replaced a previous brewery which operated on the site since at least 1877.
The Abner-Drury Brewery, operating from 1898 to 1938, was a brewery in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The brewery went into bankruptcy on July 31, 1935, and was subsequently reorganized as Washington Brewery, Inc. It went out of business permanently in August 1938.
