The Naked Pint Read Free

to drinking and loving great beer.
    The goal of Beer 101 is to debunk many misconceptions that people have about beer, and to raise it to the level that it deserves as an artisanal and craft beverage. When you graduate from Beer 101, you will have a rudimentary understanding of what beer is. You will know what goes into it, how to describe it, how to taste it, how to order it, and, yes, how to drink it without feeling like a total idiot. In fact, we’ll let you in on a little secret: Unlike calculus, the learning curve for beer is quick! After you discover the basics, your knowledge will be far beyond what most people know about this misunderstood beverage. It’s part of the beauty of beer.

What the Hell Is Beer Anyway?
    W ine is easy to understand. You pick some grapes, you crush them, and then you let them sit around for a while until you get wine. Hell, even the I Love Lucy girls understood that. Of course, we realize that winemaking is a much more detailed and complicated process. We know that winemaking concerns the growing of the grapes and the quality of the terroir , the wood used in fermenting, varietals of the grapes, AOCs, stems on versus stems off, and so on. But even the most devout winemakers will tell you that when you really get right down to it, wine in its simplest form is fermented grape juice. We get it. You get it. But do
    WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL ABOUT MICROBREWS AND CRAFT BEER?

    In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jimmy Carter gave a great gift to beer lovers everywhere by signing the bill that decriminalized the home brewing of beer. Beer connoisseurs were tired of industrialized, watered-down, mass-produced beers made from inferior and inexpensive ingredients like corn and rice. They were inspired by the master brewers in Europe and finally had the law on their side to begin the art of homebrew. Brewers began their own small breweries using quality ingredients like barley, rye, wheat, herbs, fruits, and spices. It was called the Craft Beer Revolution.
    The term microbrew is used today to describe a high-quality beer that comes from a brewery that produces fewer than 15,000 barrels per year. The term craft beer refers to beer from breweries that may have grown too large to be considered micro but that are still producing artisanal, specialty beers.
    you have any idea what beer is? Only a chosen few are in the know. Join us, won’t you?
    Beer in its most basic form is a carbonated alcoholic beverage made from fermented grains . It is primarily made up of four key ingredients: malt, hops, water, and yeast. Feel smarter already? You should. You now know more than most people do about beer. (We told you the learning curve was quick.) Now let’s take a closer look. What exactly are these ingredients?
Malt
    What do Whoppers, Long John Silver’s, Ovaltine, and beer all have in common? Well, those chocolate-covered candies, the vinegar you sprinkle on your fish and chips, and that powder you stir into your milk are made with malt, which just happens to be the basis for all the color, alcohol content, viscosity, carbonation, and subsequent mouthfeel of beer. Malts are cereal grains that have gone through what those in the know call the malting process or, more simply, malting. Sound complicated? Well, it actually kind of is.

    Have you ever tried to grow an herb garden that started from seeds? The first thing you’re supposed to do is put the seeds between a wet warm paper towel to let them sprout or germinate. Malting starts out with this same germination process. The cereal grains are soaked in water and allowed to just begin to sprout. For your garden, once the seeds sprouted, you’d plant them and watch them grow until you were ready to harvest your herbs. During the malting process, however, the growing process is immediately halted as soon as the cereal grain sprouts by a quick drying. This process allows the starch that exists in the seed to be usable as a fermentable sugar. During the brewing