Beer
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
- Beer is also the name of a place in Devon, England - Beer (Devon)
Beer is an alcoholic drink. It is made (brewed) with water, sugar, hops, barley (types of cereal grains), and yeast (a fungus that produces alcohol). Beer is made when the yeast 'eats' the sugar, and as it does, it lets out alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The earliest records of beer were written around 4000 to 5000 years ago by the Sumerians. It is said that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by accident. It is not known exactly how this happened, but it could be that a piece of bread or grain became wet, and a short time later, it began to ferment and made a pulp that causes drunkenness. A seal around 4,000 years old is a Sumerian "Hymn to Ninkasi", the goddess of brewing. This "hymn" is also a recipe for making beer. A description of the making of beer on this ancient engraving in the Sumerian language is the earliest account of what is easily recognised as barley, followed by a pictograph of bread being baked, crumbled into water to form a mash, and then made into a drink, that is recorded as having made people feel "...wonderful and blissful". It could even be possible that bread was first baked to be a way to make beer that is easy to carry around. The Sumerians were probably the first people to brew beer. They had found a "divine drink" -- they felt it was a gift from the gods.
Different beers can have different natures, depending on the ingredients used; for example, an ale has the same amount of hops and malt with sugar, and is fermented from the top (using a top settling yeast). This tends to give the beer a different flavour, and also makes it a little more alcoholic. Another type is a lager, that uses fewer hops and more sugar, with a bottom fermenting yeast, leading to a crisper and cleaner taste.
Different countries have different ways to make beer. In Germany,Austria,Switzerland,Czech Republic, and Slovakia, usually no sugar is added before fermentation. This is because of the Reinheitsgebot. The Reinheitsgebot says that in beer there should only be hops, malt, and water. The Belgian beers are different, there, sugar can be added before fermentation.
[edit] Amount of alcohol in beer
Normal beers have around 4-6 % alcohol (for the volume, ie. in 100ml beer there is 4-6ml alcohol). In brewing beer, the amount of alcohol can be made more or less quite easily. The Belgian types of beer are made by adding more sugar. Through the fermentation, this will then turn to alcohol. Today, there are beers with between 2% and about 16% of alcohol (about the same alcohol content as wine). Some beer labels say there is no alcohol in them because it was taken out later. This is not completely true, though. Beers "without alcohol" usually do have less than 1% of alcohol.
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