HOPping Over the Bar: Brewers and Barley and Hops ... Oh My!

This week at the brewery I learned about the important ingredients necessary to brew great craft beer! Barley, hops, and yeast are the three main ingredients along with water and lots of fun!! There are different flavors of barley that make different flavors in the beer. The first thing you do with barley is crack open the shell to expose the enzymes. The grains can be put through the mill numerous times to eventually make a powder, but one time through the mill is all you need for beer! Barley can be roasted or toasted to give your beer the flavor and color of your choice!

Hops look kind of like little flowers, and yes they are part of the marijuana family! Without adding hops to the beer you would just have malt liquor, which is also delicious, but that’s not our goal here. There are two kinds of hops, North American hops and European hops. European hops are less bitter and more fragrant, while North American hops are more bitter. The more hops you add to your brew the more bitter tasting your beer will be. Two kinds of barley and hops in two different forms below.

Yeast is what creates the bubbles and the alcohol in the beer, that’s the part we all like! Basically, the byproducts of yeast are CO2 and alcohol. Mix it with honey and you’ll get mead, rice to get saki, fruit to make wine, etc.

Last, but not least is the fun part!! Drinking beer and having fun is very essential to brewing great beer! Lucky for us there was an old costume store near the brewery and we got to play dress up after we tried a few of our brews! We stayed away from the body suit of Garfield because we noticed a very strategically placed hole in the crotch area LOL! I don’t even want to think about the reasoning behind that, to each their own I guess! I vote for Alicia, aka Sexy Kangaroo, having the best costume, Garfield and Obama were pretty close seconds though! Who do you like the best?

Sipping on San Diego Pride ESB, trying to take in the taste of the hops! Started brewing my own beer today! Details to come next week! I hope everyone is having a fun and safe Labor Day!