German Beer

Abstract

Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the saccharification of starch and fermentation of the resulting sugar. The starch and saccharification enzymes are often derived from malted cereal grains. In most of the cases, hop is added as preservative, as bittering substance, and for flavoring of the beer. There is a wide range of different beer styles all over the world. In Africa, for example, a very ancient technology is still existing in producing the so-called opaque beers, beers with shelf life for only 5 days. But the world market and the consumer behavior changed, and 1-year shelf life is not seldom. Over 90 % of the worldwide produced beer is today the pale, filtrated, bottom-fermented (Saccharomyces pastorianus var. carlsbergensis) lager beer, also called pils, pilsner, American lager, Munich hell, etc. This type of beer has an enormous drinkability. The chapter focuses on that special beer type and in short the historical steps to produce this high volume of beer today.