Beer : Health and Nutrition

Table 3.5 National Secondary Drinking Water
Regulations, United States (as from http://www.epa.gov/
safewater/mcl.html#mcls).
Factor Permissible level
Aluminium 0.05–0.2 mg/L
Chloride 250 mg/L
Colour 15 (colour units)
Copper 1.0 mg/L
Corrosivity noncorrosive
Fluoride 2.0 mg/L
Foaming agents 0.5 mg/L
Iron 0.3 mg/L
Manganese 0.05 mg/L
Odour 3 threshold odour number
pH 6.5–8.5
Silver 0.10 mg/L
Sulphate 250 mg/L
Total dissolved solids 500 mg/L
Zinc 5 mg/L
Basic outlines of malting and brewing
The Basics of Malting and Brewing 63
Beer is the product of the alcoholic fermentation by yeast of extracts of malted barley
(see Figs 3.3 and 3.4).
The sugars that are converted to alcohol for the most part arise from the starch of
barley. It was pure happenstance that the rst beers were brewed from barley 6000–8000
years ago (Bamforth 2003), but barley has been retained ever since because, unlike other
cereals, it retains its husk on threshing. This husk has traditionally formed the lter bed
through which the liquid extract of sugars is separated in the brewery.
The starch in barley is enclosed in cell walls and proteins (Fig. 3.5) and these wrappings
are rst stripped away in the malting process (which is essentially a controlled
and limited germination of the barley grains), to leave 85–90% of the starch behind,
but in a form accessible for hydrolysis to sugars in brewing. The controlled germination
softens the grain, rendering it more readily milled. Unpleasant grainy and astringent
characters are also removed. Malt has diverse food uses additional to the production of
beer (Table 3.6), and it is not only tastier than barley, but the malting process makes its
components more nutritionally available.