Formation, Fermentation and Distilation of Beer and Alcohol

I was at the GUINNESS Breweries some days back to see an uncle, I tasted one drink and it was beautiful. It wasn't an alcoholic beverage but then I wondered how beer is produced. I was going to learn it, so I decided to learn about it. For humans, food is beyond a necessity to survive, it has become a huge part of our culture, history, and at some point routine that has shaped our lives to become what we are, and one of those food that has been able to influence our lives is alcohol. Alcohol range from wines (red, white, or any other color), to beer, whisky, vodka, and tequila, we have loved them in different forms. Humans have been able to consume ethanol in large quantities since it is the only safe form of alcohol that we can drink in large quantities. While I will explain the production of beer as we go on with this post, it is important to state that ethanol production is possible as a result of fermentation, which is the breaking down of Sugar. This will produce ethanol and CO2.

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Alcohol is possible thanks to microorganisms and chemistry, humans can have the taste of that that hooch that we cannot do without. It's been a long time since we have been able to metabolize ethanol but the first documented history of alcohol creation was evident in China around 7000 B.C.

Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced from the fermentation of barley, wheat, rice, and so on but in so many breweries, beer is made from Barley as its quality is better. When producing beer, the ingredients used are Barley, Yeast, Hops, Water, and Adjuvants which would be Corn, rice, or spices. The production of beer is done via fermentation where the primary metabolite is converted to secondary metabolite. The barley is the primary metabolite while the beer is the secondary metabolite.

The barley is milled into a powder and the powder is then added into water to become wart where it is mixed at 75 degrees for 2 to 4 hours. The filtration process is then done so the unwanted grains would be removed from the wort. The filtered worts are boiled and the Hops are added. Hops process alpha and beta acids antibacterial compounds. The Wort should be boiled along with the hops for about 2 hours. where insoluble worts would be filtered. The filtered worts product would get cooled at 9 degrees Celsius. The filtered wort would be placed in the filtration tank where the adjuvant, yeast, and water would be added and fermented for 7 days. This should be done in the presence of oxygen. The yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) converts the sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide after which the pure form of the beer is obtained. The beer is then stored in the metal vax or wood barrel for about 4 to 5 days bringing out the flavor and making the beer mature. Pasteurization is then done to kill the microorganism in the beer after which they are bottled.

When it comes to wines, instead of using grains, fruits are used, with grapes to be precise and these are mashed. The skins of the grapes contain Tannin compounds known as polyphenols which are tannic acids that are a combination of connected rings of carbons attached to oxygen and hydrogen. Yeast is still used for the conversion of grape sugar to alcohol and is kept in barrels for a long time to get its flavor.

While these alcohols are possible, for the making of vodka and whisky, an additional step is required and that is distillation. This has to do with evaporation, cooling, and then condensation. It boils down to the fact that ethanol has a different boiling point from water. It is important to know that potatoes are used to make vodka, corn is used to make bourbon, sugar cane is used to make rum, and agave is used to make tequila.

Just the same way alcohol makes people pee more often is the same way beer will also make people pee. It is made of water, and it has to do with the fact that you are taking Ethyl alcohol. It makes it hard for the neuron to communicate with one another but also interacts with the endocrine system especially the vasopressin production by the pituitary. This allows the for the excretion of water out of the body. The more alcohol you drink, the more water is released out of the body.

Reference

https://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/alcohol/a-short-history.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336266455_Review_Beer_Production

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-14-731

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK531662/

https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ae/ae-117.html

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/yeast-fermentation-and-the-making-of-beer-14372813/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826793/