Home > Science Fact Finder > Food and Nutrition - What Are The Ingredients In Beer?

Food and Nutrition - What Are The Ingredients In Beer?

What are the ingredients in beer?

Beer is made from water, malt (a grain, usually barley), sugar, hops, yeast (dried beer yeast, not baker's or wine yeast), a little salt, and a little citric acid. Malt gives beer its characteristic body and flavor. Hops, the ripe and carefully dried fruit of the herb Humulus lupulus, give beer flavor and bitterness. Hops are the single most expensive ingredient in beer.

Making beer is a complex process. One method involves first mixing and mashing malted barley with a cooked cereal grain, such as corn, in water. This forms a mixture called "wort." The solids are filtered out of the wort, hops are added to the liquid, and the mixture is heated. The hops are then filtered out and, after the mixture is cooled, yeast is added.

The beer ferments for 8 to 11 days at temperatures between 50° to 70° Fahrenheit (10° to 21° Celsius). (Fermentation is a process during which...

[The entire page is 273 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass