Recently I witnessed a dialogue between two young people in a supermarket. They were choosing a beer, and one of them caught the attention of the inscription “beer drink” on the bottle. He said that he would not drink any “chemistry”.
The second, on the contrary, insisted on taking beer drinks – they have different tastes and are stronger. As a result, at the checkout, everyone paid for their drinks. And I thought, are beer drinks so unnatural? Let’s try to figure it out.
What is beer drink
This is a drink made from malt and hops, in which additives are present in an amount of at least 20%. It can be with any taste and strength. Sometimes spices or other stronger alcohol, such as rum, are added to such drinks.
Important: Regulates the quality of these alcoholic beverages at the state level GOST R 55292-2012 for beer drinks and GOST R 51174-2009 for beer.
How beer is made
This is a drink with a low alcohol content, which, according to GOST, is made from germinated barley (malt), with the addition of hops, yeast and water.
The process of brewing beer can be described in stages:
- Wort preparation (malt is crushed, water is added, heated and then filtered, separating pure wort);
- Wort boiling (pure wort is brought to a boil and hops are added, filtered after a while);
- Fermentation (cooked wort is cooled and yeast is added);
- Maturation;
- Filtration;
- Bottling in containers.
How beer is made
Here everything is both simpler and more difficult at the same time. On the one hand, the guys who prompted attempts to understand this topic are right. A variety of beer-based cocktails or “beer drinks” are based on discolored and desalinated beer, to which colors and flavors are added.
To say that this is a natural beer, I think is wrong. There are also doubts about the quality, although here everything rests on the good faith of the manufacturer, since, from the point of view of the law, everything is in order.
On the other hand, there are also beer drinks such as:
- Lambic (no yeast from unsprouted wheat grains);
- Criek (with the addition of fruits and berries);
- Stout (dark ale);
- craft beer (also known as signature craft beer).
Important: The inscription on the drink “beer drink” is not a sentence.
How is beer different from beer
And, if everything seems to be clear with cocktails on discolored beer, that there is practically nothing from beer in the classical sense, then how does beer differ from a beer drink?
So beer is malt, hops, yeast and water. A beer drink is a low-alcohol drink, which, in addition to malt and hops, contains additives that are both natural and not.
In addition to composition requirements, the strength of beer cannot exceed 7% (according to GOST), so varieties in which more than 7% automatically fall into the category of beer drinks. Here’s the math.
The main differences are in the manufacturing technology – everything is according to the same GOST, if the base is malt (only from germinated barley grains), then it is beer, if the grain is different (corn, rice or, for example, as in the Belgian LAMBIC (Lambik), unsprouted barley ), then it is a beer drink.
Beer produced in accordance with GOST does not have a taste of yeast, but has the taste of the components used without foreign odors and flavors (light varieties have hop bitterness, dark ones have a malty taste). It should not have a sharp aftertaste without sour shades.
But beer drinks, depending on the type and composition, can have any taste.
Beer color can be from straw to red-amber. The color depends on the type of malt and the degree of roasting of the grains. The color of beer drinks is limited only by the imagination of the producers.
Beer has a light barley smell. Beer drinks have the same situation with smell as with color.
In conclusion, I want to say that a beer drink is not quite what the young people in the store thought about. If the bottle says “beer drink”, then this does not mean that there is something not natural in its composition.
Excessive alcohol consumption is harmful to health! Take care of yourself!
I, in turn, sometimes drink a bottle of Guinness (Guinness) or cherry Kriek (Scream) with friends and do not worry about the fact that, according to the law, it is written on these drinks that this is a beer drink. What do you think?