Beer is an ancient and important beverage, enjoyed by everyone from the ancient Egyptians to medieval Europeans to modern people worldwide. Since prohibition, however, American beer has been so traditionally homogeneous that most Americans had only a vague awareness that there was an entire beer world outside of the standard rice- and corn-based brews of companies like Annhauser-Busch, Miller, and Schlitz. Imports were really the only way to try unfamiliar ales or lagers, but they were often prohibitively expensive or had slogans too imposing for the average American beer drinker (Tuborg Gold:The Golden Beer of Danish Kings!).

Since the mid 1990s, however, the microbrew revolution has been in full swing, and you can find fantastic American and Canadian-made beers in any style you could choose, and many American breweries successfully compete with their European counterparts in international competitions. Beer is once again reasserting itself as a beverage that can be savored and appreciated rather than simply guzzled to enhance one’s sexual appeal. To really understand beer, one has to understand the four basic ingredients that make beer.

Here comes the science:

What's In My Beer?

Water: Water does much more for beer than make it liquid (though admittedly this is fairly important). Minerals in the water used in beer making will give different flavors to the final product. The mineral content of the water from famous brewing cities is so integral to the flavor of certain styles that minerals must be added to brewing water in order to create authentic examples of the style. For example, the brewing water of Dublin is rich in calcium and sulfates, so when brewing an Irish Stout, gypsum (calcium sulfate) is added if the maker doesn’t happen to have a large amount of Dublin water on hand.

Grain: Malted grains provide the fermentable sugars that will be turned into alcohol, as well as the non-fermentables that will give "body" to a beer. Traditionally, this has been barley or wheat, but American and Asian beers often use rice or corn (which contribute a lot of fermentable sugars but not a lot of flavor), and oats are popular in certain styles, such as in oatmeal stout. Any “malty” flavors in a beer will come from the grains, and certain grains can give beers their most distinct characteristics – for example, roasted barley in stout.