What Glossary Should I Know Before Brewing？

Here are the glossary we need to know before we make beer. An in-depth understanding of these terms will help you to have a better understanding of how to make beer. We need to understand and remember these glossary.

Alpha Acid Unit (AAU) – A measure of homebrew hops. Equals the weight in ounces multiplied by the percentage of alpha acid.

Beer Glossary

Attenuation – The degree to which sugars are converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Cold Break – When the wort is cooled rapidly before pitching the yeast, the proteins solidify and fall out of solution.

Conditioning – An aspect of secondary fermentation in which the yeast refines the flavor of the final beer. Conditioning continues in the bottle.

Fermentation – The entire process of converting maltose into beer, defined here in three parts, adaptation, primary and secondary.

Hops – Hops vines grow in cooler climates and brewers utilize their cone-shaped flowers. The dried cones come in pellets, plugs or whole.

Pyrolysis – The protein that coagulates and falls out of solution during the boiling of wort.

Clawson

Gravity – As with density, gravity describes the concentration of maltose in wort. The specific gravity of water is 1.000 at 59 F. Typical beer wort ranges from 1.035 – 1.055 (original gravity) before fermentation.

International Bittering Unit (IBU) – A more precise unit for measuring hops. Equals AAU multiplied by factors such as percentage utilization, wort volume and wort gravity.

Clawson (kroy-zen) – Used to refer to the head of foam that forms at the top of a beer during fermentation. Also an advanced method of priming.

Lagging – The period of adaptation and rapid aerobic growth of yeast after pitching to the wort. The lag phase usually lasts 2-12 hours.

Pitching – A term used to describe the addition of yeast to the fermenter.

Primary fermentation – The initial fermentation activity marked by the evolution of CO2 and Clausen. Most of the total attenuation occurs during this phase.

Priming – The method of carbonation of a beer by adding a small amount of fermentable sugar prior to bottling.

Racking – Carefully siphoning the beer away from the residue with a siphon tube.

Disinfection – Reduction of microbial contaminants to negligible levels.

Secondary fermentation – The period of settling and conditioning of beer after primary fermentation and before bottling.

Disinfection – The elimination of all forms of life, especially microorganisms, by chemical or physical means.

Residue (trub or troob) – The sediment at the bottom of the fermenter, consisting of hot and cold breakage, hop debris and dead yeast.

Wort (wart or wert) – Malt-sugar solution boiled prior to fermentation.

Wort, Brix or Plato – These three nearly identical units are the professional brewing industry standard for describing the amount of available extract as a weight percentage of sucrose in solution, rather than specific gravity. For example, 10°Plato is equivalent to a specific gravity of 1.040.

Brewstone – A hard organometallic scale deposited on fermentation equipment, consisting primarily of calcium oxalate.

BIOTIN – A colorless crystalline form of the B vitamins, found especially in yeast, liver and egg yolk.

Blowout – An airlock arrangement consisting of a tube from a fermenter submerged in a bucket of water that releases carbon dioxide and removes excess fermentation material.

Decoction – A method of saccharification in which temperature maintenance is achieved by boiling a portion of the saccharide and returning it to the saccharification tank.

Finishing agents – Ingredients such as isopropyl alcohol, bentonite clay, Irish moss, etc., which serve to help flocculate and settle the yeast in the finished beer.

Flocculation – Bringing it together. In the case of yeast, it is the yeast that clumps and settles out of solution.

Hops – A container filled with hops that acts as a filter to remove breakage from the finished wort.

Infusion – The process of saccharification by adding boiling water to complete the heating.

Isinglass – A clear swim bladder of a small fish, consisting primarily of the structural protein collagen, which acts by electrostatically binding, absorbing and precipitating yeast cells.

Irish moss – An emulsifier, Irish moss promotes the formation and precipitation of fractured material during boiling and cooling.

ppm – Abbreviation for parts per million, equivalent to milligrams per liter (mg/l). Most commonly used to indicate the concentration of dissolved minerals in water.

Points per pound per gallon (PPG) – A unit used by American home brewers to calculate the total soluble extract of malt based on specific gravity. This unit describes the change in specific gravity (points) per pound of malt dissolved in a known volume of water (gallons). It can also be written as gallons* degrees per pound.