New Brewers Guide to Beer Terms

When you first get into home brewing you get a lot of new words and term thrown out at you.  Many of them you may already know, but some may be a mystery to you.  There is nothing better than talking about beer with another home brewer and actually knowing what they are talking about.  Read through these hand full of terms and start your way up the beer education ladder.

ABV: This stands for alcohol by volume.  This is a measure of the total level of alcohol in your brew.  This is calculated by taking the starting gravity level minus the finishing gravity and then multiplying this number by 131.  So here is an example (1.054-1.012)*131 = 5.5% ABV

Wort:  The sugary liquid that you get from drawing the sugars out of the malted grains you are using.  Once you have your wort you will boil it for 1 hour and add your hops in as you see fit.  It is only wort until you add yeast.  The addition of yeast now creates this into a beer once fermentation is complete.

Gravity:  The measure of the sugar level in your wort.  You usually take at least two measurements one right before you add the yeast to your wort, and then one once it is completely done fermenting.  This is used to calculate your ABV.  Some abbreviations for this is SG (Starting Gravity), OG (Original Gravity) & FG (Final Gravity).

IBU:  (International Bitterness Units) The addition of hops is what gives you the bitterness to your beer.  The majority of the bitterness comes from the alpha acids in the hops.  The longer the hops are in the boil the more of the bitterness you get out of them, and the less aroma you will have.  When making beer you add your bittering hops at the beginning of the boil and your aroma hops the last 15 to 1 minute of the boil.  The late additions will only give you a small amount of IBU’s, so if you want your beer bitter like an IPA add a lot right at the start of the boil.

SRM:  (Standard Reference Method) When looking at the color of your beer you can rate this on the SRM scale.  Lighter colored beers like and Pale Lager rate as low from 1-5 and the darker beers such as a stout that appear black will be as high as a 70.  All styles of beers have a target range you want to be in hit to meet the style guidelines.

Hydrometer:  This is a simple thermometer type tool that is used to measure the sugar level in your beer.  The higher the sugar levels the higher up the hydrometer floats.  You use this to take your gravity readings.

Brewer’s yeast:  This refers to standard yeast that has been used throughout the years to brew beer.  This is usually dry yeast that comes in packet form.  This yeast should only be used by new brewers.  The reason for this is that there are many style specific liquid yeast strains on the market that you should be using to make the most style specific beer.  With that being said if you just want to make a standard beer and are not worried about style, but are worried about cost you can use this on all of your brews. 

Malt:  This is the backbone to your beer.  The majority of malt is barley malt, but wheat and rye are also used in beer making.  The malt is created by taking barley and adding water until the seed starts to germinate.  Once this happens the barley is kiln-dried to remove the moisture and in some cases change the flavor profile of the malt.  The reason for the grain to be malted is to allow you to easily extract the maltose sugar from the grains during mashing.  The picture in this post is of base pale malt.  

Crystal/caramel malt:  This refers to different malts that you add to your brew to give is a distinct color and flavor.  A crystal malt such as a 10L give a slight caramel flavor and adds a little golden color to you beer, where as a 120L will give a strong caramel/raisin type flavor and darken your beers substantially to a deep dark brown color.

Mash Tun:  This is the vessel that you use to soak your milled grain in water to convert the starches into sugars.  You normally combine your grain bill (recipe) in with a proportion of water in a ratio such as 2 qtrs. Heated water to 1 lb. grain, and let this soak at 154 degrees for about an hour.  Make sure when doing this you account for temperate loss from the coolness of the grain.  So most times to get the 154 degrees you need to add 167 degree water.  There are many calculations on the web on how to get the exact temp make sure to check them out.

Brew Kettle:  The prize of all brewers.  This is the pot that you boil your wort in and add your hops.  Most people boil the wort for an hour to arrive at the right hop bitterness they are looking for and this also completely sanitizes your wort.  After the boil you need to make sure you are super clean to avoid contaminating the wort before it goes into your primary fermenter.