How Beer Works

A Pilsner glass
A Pilsner glass

Have you ever wondered what "malt" really is, and how you get malt from barley? And what about hops, and why d­o we need yeast? Barley, water, hops and yeast -- brewers combine these four ­simple ingredients to make beer.

­But it's not just a matter of mixing the right amount of each ingredient and voila! have beer. A complex series of biochemical reactions must take place to convert barley to fermentable sugars, and to allow yeast to live and multiply, converting those sugars to alcohol. Commercial breweries use sophisticated equipment and processes to control hundreds of variables so that each batch of beer will taste the same. In this article, we'll learn how events like Prohibition and World War II influenced the taste of the beer we still drink today. Then we'll take a tour through a regional brewery, the Carolina Brewing Company, to learn how they make beer, picking up some of the amazing technology and terminology of beermaking along the way.

People have been brewing beer for thousands of years. Beer especially became a staple in the Middle Ages, when people began to live in cities where close quarters and poor sanitation made clean water difficult to find. The alcohol in beer made it safer to drink than water.



In the next section, we'll take a closer look at the ingredients of beer.