BEER INGREDIENTS
Beer is essentially a mixture of natural ingredients. Like baking bread, beer needs specific ingredients added at certain times to create the desired outcome. The recipe for beer is complex in nature, but it begins with 4 main ingredients: Water, Malted Barley, Hops, and Brewer's Yeast.
Water
Beer is approximately 90 percent water. That means it is critical that the 
water used be of the highest quality.
- Each brewery needs a close and reliable water source.
- A specific combination of minerals in the water is needed to facilitate the brewing process.
Malted Barley
Malted barley is the soul of beer. It provides beer with most of its 
characteristic color and flavor. To produce darker beers, malted barley is roasted to a dark brown or black. Malted barley is a major source of starch.
- It contains an enzyme needed to break down its own starches into fermentable sugars.
- When these fermentable sugars are combined with brewer’s yeast, they produce alcohol and carbon dioxide and other flavor compounds.
Hops
Hops are dried flower blossoms found on a type of perennial vine. They 
are used to “spice up” beer. Hops provide much of the aroma and bitter flavors for beer.
- There is an element in hops that reacts adversely to light.
- When exposed to light, this element breaks down and produces a sulfur compound.
- This sulfur compound creates an undesirable aroma, often referred to as “skunky.”
- In order to combat this skunkiness, brown bottles were designed to protect the beer from light.
Brewer's Yeast
Yeast is added to malted barley after it has been broken down into 
fermentable sugars.
- The yeast converts the fermentable sugar into alcohol
- This process is called fermentation
- During fermentation the yeast increases four fold in size
- This yeast is recovered and used for future fermentations, if quality specifications are met
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