Self-Sufficiency: Home Brewing. John Parkes

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      The Industrial Revolution

      Following significant improvements in the efficiency of the steam engine in the mid-18th century, industrialization of beer became a reality. Further innovations in the brewing process came about with the introduction of the thermometer in 1760, closely followed by the hydrometer, a simple but invaluable instrument that allowed brewers to measure attenuation (a measure of how much sugar in the wort has been fermented into alcohol by the yeast).

      The hydrometer transformed the brewing process of beer. Before its introduction, beers were brewed from a single malt: brown beers from brown malt, amber beers from amber malt, and pale beers from pale malt. With the help of the hydrometer, brewers were able to compare the yield from equal weights of different malts.

      Brewers observed that pale malt, though more expensive, yielded around 50 per cent more fermentable extract per unit of weight than the cheaper brown and amber malts, making it more cost-effective. Once this fact was established, brewers switched to using mostly pale malt for all beer types, supplemented with a small quantity of highly-coloured malt to achieve the desired colour for darker beers.

      All malt starts life as pale malt, and it is the kilning process that transforms both its colour and flavour. In general, none of these early malts were sufficiently shielded from the smoke involved in the kilning process, and consequently, early beers had a smoky component to their flavours. Evidence suggests that maltsters and brewers constantly tried to minimize the smokiness of their finished beer.

      Writers of the period describe the distinctive taste derived from wood-smoked malts, and the almost universal revulsion it engendered. The smoked beers and ales of the West Country were famous for being undrinkable – locals and the desperate excepted. The following extract from Directions for Brewing Malt Liquors in 1700 goes some way to describing the general feeling:

       ‘In most parts of the West, their malt is so stenched with the smoak of the wood, with which ’tis dryed, that no stranger can endure it, though the inhabitants, who are familiarized to it, can swallow it as the Hollanders do their thick black beer brewed with buck wheat.’

      The invention of the drum roaster in 1817 by Daniel Wheeler allowed for the creation of very dark, roasted malts that were free from the unpleasant smoky taint brought about by roasting over open fires. The externally-heated drum roaster was able to produce a range of dark malts suitable for contributing to the flavour of porters and stouts. The development of the drum roaster was prompted by a British law preventing the use of any ingredients other than malt and hops in beer; prior to this, colouring of beers had been achieved using alternative ingredients. Porter brewers, employing a predominantly pale malt grist, urgently needed a legal colourant, and Wheeler’s patent malt was the solution.

      Modern beer production

      Prior to Prohibition in the 1920s and early 30s, there were thousands of breweries in the United States, mostly brewing heavier beers than modern US beer drinkers are used to. Most of these breweries went out of business, although some converted to producing soft drinks.

      Bootlegged beer was often watered down to increase profits, beginning a trend, still ongoing today, of the American palate’s preference for weaker beers. Consolidation of breweries and the application of industrial quality control standards have led to the mass-production and mass-marketing of light lagers.

      The decades after World War II saw a huge consolidation of the American brewing industry: brewing companies would buy out their rivals solely for their customers and distribution systems, shutting down their brewing operations. Smaller breweries, including microbreweries or craft brewers and imports, have become more abundant since the mid 1980s. By 1997 there were more breweries operating in the United States than in all of Germany, historically the most established brewing nation.

      Many European nations have unbroken brewing traditions dating back to the earliest historical records. Beer is an especially important drink in countries such as Belgium, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom, with nations such as France, the Scandinavian countries, the Czech Republic and many others having their own methods, history, characteristics and styles.

      There is a significant market in Europe, and the United Kingdom in particular, for ‘live’ beers. These unfiltered, unpasteurized brews contain live yeast, and are awkward to look after because not only do they continue to ferment in the cask but there is also a risk of air getting into the cask, turning the beer sour. ‘Dead’ beers, on the other hand, are easier to look after. These are beers that have had all traces of yeast removed before being pasteurized and transferred into airtight metal casks. Live beer quality can suffer with poor care, but many people prefer the taste of a live beer to a dead one. While beer is usually matured for relatively short periods of times compared to wine – a few weeks to a few months – some of the stronger so-called real ales have been found to develop character and flavour over the course of as much as several decades.

      In 1953, New Zealand brewing pioneer, Morton Coutts, successfully developed the technique of continuous fermentation, a process which involves beer flowing through sealed tanks, fermenting under pressure and never coming into contact with the atmosphere, even when bottled, thus eliminating the possibility of the alcohol oxidizing into acetic acid (vinegar) and spoiling the beer. Coutts went on to patent this process which is still in use today by many commercial brewers.

      In comparison, Marston’s Brewery in Burton-on-Trent, England, still uses open wooden Burton Union sets for fermentation in order to maintain the quality and flavour of its beers. Belgium’s lambic brewers go so far as to expose their brews to outside air in order to pick up the natural wild yeasts which ferment the wort. Traditional brewing techniques protect the beer from oxidation by maintaining a carbon dioxide blanket over the wort as it ferments into beer.

      Traditional brewing techniques are still widely used for the sake of maintaining the quality and uniqueness of the final product, which suffers if brewed using the more efficient industrial processes developed in modern times. Today, the brewing industry is a huge global business, consisting of several multinational companies and many thousands of smaller producers, ranging from brewpubs to regional breweries.

      Advances in refrigeration, international and transcontinental shipping, marketing and commerce have resulted in an international marketplace, where the consumer is presented with hundreds of choices between various styles of local, regional, national and foreign beers.

Beer styles

      The evolution of beer styles

      The style of a beer is often indicative of the region of the world in which it was originally brewed. The factors affecting the style of beer produced include the quality of the water available, the range of locally-grown ingredients, notably cereal grains and hops, yeast strains and ambient temperature.

      Certain towns within a country are well known for their water supply and the fine beers that are produced from this water; Burton on Trent, in England, is one of these places. Cereal crops vary from country to country, although most brewers around the world have used barley as the basis for their beers, giving rise to regional variations from the use of other malted grains and adjuncts.

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