Beer Styles

About Beer Styles

There are as many different styles of beer as there are styles of wine. Just as the type of grape and the processing methods used affect the style of wine, the same is true for beer. In fact, because beer is more complex to make than wine and more processes are involved, the taste of beer can vary greatly.

Beer can be: light, dark, sweet, dry, sour, bitter, fruity, aromatic, weak and strong. There are beers that are great for quaffing on a hot summers day, and beers which are best sipped in front of an open fire on a cold winters night. The variety is enormous.

The major ingredients of beer are water, malt (this is just a specially processed grain), hops, yeast. Optional ingredients include other sources of starch, sugars, various flavourings, and in some beers fruit.

Hops are used in almost all European style beer as a bittering agent to balance the sweetness of beer and because it acts as a natural preservative. There are many different hop vareties, and the variety and where it is grown will influence the taste of the beer. Hops are natually gluten free.

For a gluten free beer, all malts and starches from gluten containing grains must be avoided. The other problem ingredients are: sugars derived from gluten containing grains, and yeast grown on gluten containing ingredients.

Gluten free beers use different grains from ordinary beer and because of this they cannot taste exactly the same, just as wine made from different grapes taste different. The grains that can be used for making gluten free beer include: sorghum, buckwheat, maize, rice, amaranth and quinoa.

Silly Yaks Gluten Free Beer

Aztec Gold

Tropical White

We will make it from sorghum malt and use the traditional flavourings. This beer will be very light in colour, have low hop bitterness and a citrussy nose, it is a very refreshing summer drink.