If you go on a tour of any brewery, anywhere in the world, one of the first sentences out of the guides mouth will be “To make beer you just need four ingredients, water, malted barley, hops, and yeast”. I am guilty of saying exactly this when explaining the brewing process to people, but, it’s not true, not even close.
Illustrations by Christine Jopling.
A brewer with 13 years experience in craft beer. She has an MSc. in brewing science and has worked at some of the best breweries on the planet. Most days she can be found at her R&D brewery in south London.
Yes, the Reinheitsgebot of 1516, also known as the German purity law, dictates that beer is made of water, malt and hops, but just like we discovered that beer requires yeast to ferment (microorganisms hadn’t been discovered when this law was laid down), we may need a bit more than just those basics. In recent years’ brewers have discovered that a wide range of lotions, potions and powders can be used in beer to enhance it and make the end product better.
Some of these have been, in my opinion, unfairly derided and subsequently spoken of in cloak and dagger terms, with brewers presenting a front of using the basic ingredients, whilst dosing up on Murphy’s finest behind closed doors. This brewing equivalent of hiding your sins from God, whilst biting down on a brandy soused Ortolan, is unhelpful in allowing consumers to make informed choices about which beer to choose, and why some of these additions are not as bad as they may think, and others they may choose to avoid.
Adjunct has been a dirty word in craft brewing circles. Brewers using a wholly malt based grist for their beers looked at the likes of Budweiser and Carling, with their reliance on corn and rice, as lesser and lazy. Taking the cheaper and easier way out, rather than putting in the hard graft and taking on the expense of using pure malt. More recently adjunct has been used to describe beers created with artificial flavours such as peanut butter and jam doughnut, these are often sweet and designed to appeal to the market for a short period of time, rather than becoming an epoch defining brew.
Additives are also looked upon unfavourably, being associated with unwholesome preservatives and unnatural and unknowable bottles of “chemicals” brimming over with glowing green bubbles. The truth is, many brewers are reliant on these exogenous additives. They help to manage fermentation, to prevent dangerous boil overs, help the yeast to stay healthy, and reduce unwanted compounds, such a diacetyl and sulphur. What I hope to show is that these are not always unwanted and unholy things that must be exorcised from the brewery, but to demystify them, and allow you to decide where you stand on the great additive and adjunct debate.
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