Morgan: Beer or Wine?

Sommeliers are wine experts, right? They know everything to know about wine and make very educated recommendations about what wine is most appropriate with your fish or veal. But is wine the most popular beverage with a meal? I don’t think, I’m too far off the reservation, when I say no. Beer is the more popular beverage with meals. The fact is that real beer is a far more versatile beverage than wine, bringing a wider range of flavors and aromas to the table. Now you can say I have no class or I’m low class…that’s alright, you won’t break my achy-breaky heart. Let’s talk about beer, baby!

Making beer

Brewing is the process of changing water and grain into beer through a yeast catalyst. The quality of the water is extremely important. Hard water produces a bitter ale, soft water produces bitter lager. Barley or hops, or a combination of them, is used for the grain.
Getting dry grain ready for fermentation is called malting. The grain is steeped in water until it sprouts. The sprouting or germination is not allowed to end naturally but is interrupted either by drying or roasting in kilns.

Barley

Barley has been a grain of choice for thousands of years. The longer the roasting of the malted barley, the darker the beer. Barley, or wheat beers have a sweet taste.

Hops

Hops are herbaceous climbing vines and look like a cross between pine cores and artichokes. The bitter, dry flavour of hops counterbalance the sweetness of malt.

Yeast
Sugars in the malted grains are converted into alcohol by yeast. Different yeast ferment sugars into different flavours. For ales, top fermentation yeast is used, while bottom fermentation yeast is used for lagers.
The beer making process starts by germinating the grain, then steeping the resulting malt in hot water to get the wort. Base wort contents means the percentage of wort in the beer before fermentation. The alcohol contents is roughly one third of the base wort contents.The wort is boiled (brewed) and hops are added. After brewing, fermentation starts by adding yeast. After fermentation, the wort is drown into tanks where it is allowed to condition or age. Yeast and hops are sometimes added in a secondary fermentation process.

I’m no Brewmeister, but my taste buds are in perfect working condition. My Top 3 Favorites have to be…
1. Yuengling Traditional Amber Lager With its deep amber hue and mild hop character, traditional lager is a classic brew, reminiscent of turn-of-the century beers. This amber lager may also be characterized as an American Style premium lager that is a more flavorful medium bodied beer than just an American-style Pilsner. Each Brew has ruby colored highlights with a slight hop aroma and flavor. The degree of toasty sweet caramel-type character in the flavor and aroma results in a refreshingly balanced palate.http://www.yuengling.com/
2. Parkbrauerei Pirminator – Strong light bock originating in Zweibruken- Pirmasens, GermanyIt is known for its taste, which comes down to the particularly lengthy maturing process in the storage tanks.
3. Smithwick's Draut has a ruby red tone with a stable, but slightly thin head. It is produced using hops and special roasted, malted barley. Its texture is smooth and refined, with a bitter and complex finish. Smithwick’s was originally brewed in St. Francis Abbey Brewery in Kilkenny, known as 'Smithwicks Brewery' until c.2000. The brewery is situated on the site of a Franciscan abbey where monks had brewed ale since the 14th century, and has ruins of the original abbey on its grounds. It is Ireland’s oldest operating brewery, founded by John Smithwick in 1710.

Top 3 Interesting Beer Factoids
1. Worldwide, 20,000 brands of beer are brewed in 180 styles, from ales, lagers, pilsner and stouts to bitters, cream ales and iced beers.
2. Beer has been a popular beverage for a long time. Babylonian clay tablets show detailed recipes of beer making in 4300 BC. Beer was also brewed by the ancient Chinese, Assyrians and Incas.

3. An Egyptian text of 1600 BC gives 100 medical prescriptions using beer. A few years ago, the New Castle Brewery in England brewed 1,000 bottles Tutankhamun Ale from a 3,200-year old recipe found in the sun temple of Queen Nefertiti.

And malt does more than Milton can, To justify God's ways to man. A. E. Housman (1859 - 1936)

But if wine is your choice than you can't go wrong with Proof of Concept