Beer, at its most basic, is only a handful of ingredients: water, barley, hops and yeast. With these simple elements and a bit of instruction, anyone can brew beer. But when someone has been trained in the art and science behind brewing, that’s when something truly special can be created.

In this course, you’ll explore some of these raw materials, their properties and how they affect one of the first phases of brewing beer: wort production. Through online lecture and group discussion, you’ll explore a variety of topics, including the composition of malts and how to analyze them; the role that adjuncts play; the science of sweet wort and how to optimize its production; hop handling, processing and analysis; and the nature, properties and relevance of the principle chemical species important in brewing (notably polysaccharides, proteins, lipids, and polyphenols). By the end of this course, you will possess a fundamental understanding of the chemistry and composition behind beer’s most basic ingredients, and the ability to control those materials in order to achieve desired results during wort production.

Learning Outcomes

• Analyze the essential compositional features of barley and other grains, water, hops and yeast as they pertain to brewing process performance and product quality
• Understand and control the chemistry, biochemistry and physics underpinning the processing treatments that are used to render barley, water, hops and yeast in a state suitable for brewing
• Detect key microbial threats to brewing and beer and address them
• Apply the basic principles of plant cleaning and sanitation
• Differentiate between Quality Control and Quality Assurance and describe the major analytical procedures that are employed from barley to beer
• Understand and control the chemistry, biochemistry and physics of beer quality attributes, including foam, color, haze and physical stability
• Test grain to be suitable for malting and brewing

Skills You Will Gain

• Raw brewing material analysis, selection and handling
• Wort production