Beer Terminology

Acetaldehyde – Green apple aroma, a byproduct of fermentation.

Additive - Enzymes, preservatives and antioxidants which are added to simplify the brewing process or prolong shelf life.

Adjunct - are unmalted grains (such as corn, rice, rye, oats, barley, and wheat ) used in brewing beer which supplement the main mash ingredients (such as malted barley), often with the intention of cutting costs, but sometimes to create an additional feature, such as better foam retention.

Aerobic - An organism, such as top fermenting ale yeast, that needs oxygen to metabolize.

Alcohol By Weight – Amount of alcohol in beer measured in terms of the percentage weight of alcohol per volume of beer, i.e., 3.2% alcohol by weights equals 3.2 grams of alcohol per 100 centiliters of beer. (It is approximately 20% less than alcohol by volume.)

Alcohol By Volume (ABV) – Amount of alcohol in beer in terms of percentage volume of alcohol per volume of beer.

Alcohol - Ethyl alcohol or ethanol. An intoxicating by-product of fermentation, which is caused by yeast acting on sugars in the malt. Alcohol content is expressed as a percentage of volume or weight.

Ale - a type of beer brewed from malted barley using a top-fermenting brewers’ yeast. This yeast ferments the beer quickly, giving it a sweet, full bodied and fruity taste. Most ales contain hops, which impart a bitter herbal flavour that helps to balance the sweetness of the malt and preserve the beer.

Bock - A type of potent lager, originating from Hanseatic town of Einback in what is now Germany. This is where we get the term Bock from (Einbock). Originally, bocks were very dark beers brewed from deeply colored malts, which then lead to the variety of bocks available today. (More info)

Cask – A closed, barrel-shaped container for beer. They come in various sizes and are now usually made of metal. The bung in a cask of “Real” beer or ale must be made of wood to allow the pressure to be relived, as the fermentation of the beer, in the cask, continues.

Drinkability - This is a term used to describe the quality of beer’s ability to draw the drinker back to consume it, does the beer make you want to drink more of it or just drink it occasionally.

Ester – Volatile flavor compound naturally created in fermentation. Often fruity, flowery or spicy.

Flavor - This is a measure of the quality of the beer on the palate.

Humulus – (Hop) is a small genus of flowering plants native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The female flowers (often called “cones”) of H. lupulus are known as hops, and are used as a culinary flavoring and stabilizer, especially in the brewing of beer. – Originally Wikipedia

Lager – From the German word to store, lagers represent a major family of beers. They have a longer and cooler fermentation period than ales, and are brewed with bottom-fermenting yeast. Most German and North American beers are lagers.

Malting is a process applied to cereal grains, in which the grains are made to germinate by soaking in water^[1] and are then quickly halted from germinating further by drying/heating with hot air

Pasteurization – Heating of beer to 60-79(°C/140-174°F to stabilize it microbiologically. Flash-pasteurization is applied very briefly, for 15-60 seconds by heating the beer as it passes through the pipe. Alternately, the bottled beer can be passed on a conveyor belt through a heated tunnel. This more gradual process takes at least 20 minutes and sometimes much longer.

Plato - An empirically derived hydrometer scale developed in 1843 by German scientist Karl Balling, and improved by Fritz Plato to measure density of beer wort in terms of percentage of extract by weight. The scale expresses the density as the percentage of sucrose by weight, so a wort measured at 12° Plato has the same density as a water−sucrose solution containing 12% sucrose by weight. For the brewer, it has the advantage over specific gravity that it expresses the measurement in terms of the amount of fermentable materials. – Originally Wikipedia

Porter or sometimes London Porter is a dark-coloured style of beer.

Refreshness - This is the quality of the beer to quench thirst and leave the drinker feeling refreshed and moving toward a relaxed state.

Smell - The aromatic characteristics of a beer.

Wort – The sweet liquid derived from mashing, or mixing malted barley with water. Wort is the beginning of all beers.

Additive

Enzymes, preservatives and antioxidants which are added to simplify the brewing process or prolong shelf life.