Damn, the pictures make this thread torture. Rodahn, visit craft breweries. They often have "all you can drink" sample rooms where you can ask the brewers about each draught. You can find different schools of beers which you like.
Beer basics:
Beers are divided into two main categories, lagers and ales. Lagers are typically "bottom fermented" meaning they are aged for longer periods of time, at colder temperatures with no air exposure. This results in a crisper beer. Ales are "top fermented" meaning they are aged for shorter periods, at higher temps, and air exposure. They tend to be sweeter than lagers.
All beers require four ingredients: beer, malt, hops and yeast. Beers often contain additional malts from adjunct grains (mass produced commercial beers like Budweiser are made with corn mashes, because it's a cheap ingredient and gives it a crisp, sweet taste). They may also contain other spices like citruis fruit ring peels, pepper, coriander, cactus plant, "Spice of Paradise" (used in highly recommend Sam Adam's Summer Ale) and anything else you can imagine.
The water is the most important part. It's why breweries spend so much money on water treatment processes. The purer the water, the better the beer is going to be. Beer is about 90-95% water.
The malt is what produces a source of food for the yeast to ferment. Malt is made from cereal grains, most commonly barely, though wheat is a common (my favorite) substitute. Corn and rice are used in other parts of the world. Malting is an old artisan trade, one dating back to ancient civilization. Malt is just taking milled cereals (the milling greatly impacting the characteristics of the malt) and beginning the germination process. The malt can be cooked at various temperatures, providing a wide range of beers. If you get a chance to sample barely malts of different varieties, I highly suggest it as it will greatly enhance your understanding and appreciation of beers. Smell and chew the malts, sampling all their flavors. Toasting the malt more produces darker beers - they range from virgin, to golden malts all the way to dark, "chocolate" malts. The malt is then mashed using various processes developed of the years and strained. The most common way to cook the malt is in giant kettles that are fed water (again, notice the frequent importance of water) using some sort of sparging system. As the malt is sparged, the cereal grain bodies are collected by something called a lauter tun, which is basically a big rake strainer.
The exact details how beers are malted and mashed have great effect on the final beer product. Many beer companies have large and complicated chemical transfer systems to control the process to a great degree with high consistency. The actual processes used are often very complicated and involve multiple malting, mashing and cooking stages.
Mashing involves cooking the initial malt and transferring, preparing it to hops added. This liquid is called first wort, has no carbonation or alcohol and tastes very sweet as it contains sugar from the malt. If you get the chance to sample this product at this stage, do so. When it is mashed, hops are added as well as usually other spices at this stage. This involves much higher temperatures than the malt initially was exposed to and is the real cooking process.
Yeast is added, converting the sugar into alcohol and carbonation dissolved in the solution. Depending on the desire for the type of beer, the yeast may or may not be filtered out. Unfiltered beer leaves the yeast, adding to the cloudiness of the beer (Hefeweizens are a German style that is not filtered malted with wheat, and Witbier is a Belgian style that also is unfiltered and malted with wheat). It also adds volume in terms of making the beer more "fluffy".
Finally, the beer is "lagered" or stored at cold temperature where it ages and its taste may be enhanced by aging it on any number of agents such as birchwood chips, orange or lemon peel (giving the beer a distinctive note of banana or cloves especially in the nose, see Witbiers or Hefewiezen as a good example) and anything else you can imagine. Some beers are even aged on cocoa or vanilla beans (such as those made with dark toasted malts, which works surprisingly well).
Pasteurization is a packaging process, not a brewing process. Kegs are never pasteurized.
My favorite styles are Witbier, which is a Belgian White Ale brewed with wheat malt rather than barely. It is aged on lemon or orange peels and coriander giving it a distinct floral aroma and spicy, peppery taste. It is awesome in the summer. My other favorite are Belgian Trappist Ales (Dubbel, Tripple and Quadrupple) which are a very old style. They are brewed with medium golden brown malts, lots of hops. They are a Spring beer. The result is a copper color beer with very high alcohol contents (upwards of 10% in some), very crisp taste, yet somewhat warm and fruity, big dense creamy heads and lots of fun.
Things to look for in a beer: big, dense heads that leave a sticky lacing down the glass, floral and viney notes in the aroma, bitter and alcohol tasting finish and quality malts.
Finally:
www.ratebeer.com The users on this community are **** poets when it comes to describing beer. These guys are for real about their beer and know way more about beer than I'll know about anything ever. They have thousands of beers cataloged in their database, probably tens of thousands and from microbreweries all over the world. Give 'em a try.
Cheers
*Sips a cold ... ice water*
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