What goes into your draught beer?

The breweries we feature create their wonderful draught beers using only traditional beer brewing methods and ingredients, there are no 'shortcuts' or other methods sometimes employed to speed up the draught brewing process. We offer a very natural draught cask ale product devoid of chemicals and additives commonly found in the many draught beers available in the UK today. Real draught cask ale is made from 4 main ingredients all of which are natural and not chemically enhanced in any way, it is simply the varieties of ingredients that give British beers their many flavours.

Barley

Barley is the main constituent in beer. Barley grains are low in fat and protein, but rich in starch. Malting starts the process of releasing the starch, which is made up of sugar molecules, to make it available for use. Brewers use specially selected varieties of barley to make high quality beer. The UK climate is particularly suitable for growing malting barley, making British Malt some of the best in the world.

Hops

A climbing plant that can grow to a height of over 20 feet, the hop's closest botanical relative is cannabis! Hop cones contain a wealth of resins and essential oils that give the beer its distinctive bitterness and hop flavour. Hops are used rather like a spice, to add a distinctive flavour to the brew. Typically a barrel of beer is made from 20kg of malt and 150g of hops. Traditionally hop cones are used, but today they tend to be compacted into pellets to preserve their freshness.

Water

Pure water is essential to the brewing process as this is the main ingredient both in volume and importance, with 7 or 8 litres needed to produce 1 litre of beer. The quality of the local water supply explains why some quite small towns, such as Burton upon Trent, have been home to several large brewers. Some breweries even have their own wells. Brewers can now treat water so that they can make any beer style - this is called Burtonisation, after Burton upon Trent, one of the homes of British beer.

Yeast

Yeast is a microscopic member of the fungus family. The Latin name for brewing yeast is saccharomyces cerevisiae - literally "beer suger yeast". Yeast feeds on the sugar released from the malt, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, a process called 'fermentation'. Yeast also produces a vast array of flavor compounds, and much of the subtlety of beer flavour comes from the strain of yeast used and the fermentation conditions. Brewers use their own specially selected and jealously guarded yeast strains to produce the distinctive flavours of their own particular beers.

Different combinations of the ingredients above have resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of variations of cask beer. Other ingredients can also be added for flavour, such as other cereals, fruit, spices, herbs and honey, to name a few.

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