This Tasting Is Devoted to the 4 Major Components of Beer: Sugar, Hops, Yeast and Water

Beer Tasting: Components

This tasting is devoted to the 4 major components of beer: sugar, hops, yeast and water

The following beers contain high amount of or strong flavor profiles of each of the major ingredients found in beer.

Beer #1 Malt (Sugar)

-Malt is derived from barely

Tasting: Paulaner Salvator

-A classic teaching beer

-Incredibly luscious malty flavor

-Virtually no hop aroma

-It is a dupplebock which has less alcohol and more sweetness than a regular bock

Beer #2 Hops

-A type of flower

-Used as a spice and a preservative

-Adds bitterness

-Helps round out the flavor of the beer

Tasting: Liberty Ale

-Great learning beer for figuring out the flavor of hops

-Citrus flavor

Beer #3 Yeast

-Not used so much for flavor

-It’s primary job is to eat sugar and turn it into alcohol and carbon dioxide

“Hefe” means yeast

Tasting: Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse

-Cloudy from the yeast

-Flavors of cake, cloves and banana

Beer #4 Water

-The largest component in beer

-Has a huge effect on the final product in the ways it can effect the malting, mashing and brewing process

Tasting: Bass Ale

-Burton on Trent, where Bass is brewed, has famously hard water.

Adjunct Components: Ingredients that replace portions of typical components of beer

Beer #5 Rye

-Often times portions of the malted barely is replaced with another grain during the brewing process

-Other grains include: corn, rice, wheat, oatmeal & rye. Occasionally spelt & quinoa

Tasting: Full Moon Pale Ale

-The rye in this beer gives is a bit of an astringent quality

Beer #6 Spices

-In the earliest beers, spices were probably used to cover the off flavors that may have occurred in unpredictable fermentation.

Tasting: Hoegaarden White Beer

-Flavors of coriander & Curacao orange peel

Reference: Eric Roach, http://wordpress.com/tag/fine-art-of-beer-tasting/