5 Flavours in alcoholic drinks

The beer is one of the most diverse drinks available. And the flavour profile of your beer is made up of what you put it in, in terms of your raw ingredients, and also the processes which you've put them through. So if we start at the beginning, the malts which we use, which make up what's known as the grain belt-- so the types of malt we use, the amount of malt we use, the mash temperature that we use, which determines how sweet or dry our finished beer will be, depending on how many-- or the amounts of residual sugars which are left in the beer, will all have an impact. If we use more dark malts, more coloured malts, we'll end up with caramel, biscuity flavours, roasty flavours, coffee-type flavours, and these are all present in the malt from the malting process. As soon as we've made wort, we then boil it, and that is another process. So those compounds which we've extracted from our malt into our wort can then undergo further chemical transformations. If you heat chemical compounds up, they can react with each other, and one of the classic examples in brewing is the Maillard reaction. And that's the reaction of amino acids with sugars. And you can see this when you bake a loaf of bread. It's the reason the bread goes brown on the outside, those are Maillard reactions. And the same thing occurs when we're brewing, it occurs in the malting process what we're making malt, and to a certain extent, it also happens in the boil. So although you've extracted these compounds from your raw ingredients, they then undergo further chemical transformations due to the processes that you're putting them through. Also in the boil, we're then going to add our hops. So the hops are contributing the alpha acids and the hop oils, which are giving us bitterness, in terms of the alpha acids, because they are summarised to the iso-alpha acids, which give us the bitter compound. And the hop oils, which are giving us the hoppy, aromatic, very sort of citrusy, herbal type flavours, but tend to boil off quite quickly, so we tend to use them later in the boil. Or, we can use a process called dry hopping, which is where we add dry hops after fermentation is complete, and those will tend to add very bright, citrusy, piney type flavours and aromas to the beer. Finally, we've got fermentation, where the yeast get to do its job. And the type of yeast that you use, whether it's a Belgian strain, or a German strain, or an English strain, will determine the type of compounds that are produced by the yeast. So principally, they're using fermentable sugars, which you produced in your mash, and they're turning them into alcohol and carbon dioxide. But they're also capable of processing other compounds which are found in your wort. And they may come from your hops or from your malts, and the yeast can process those into other compounds, as well. So the yeast are not just producing alcohol, they're also having a profound effect on the flavour. So the flavour of your beer will ultimately depend on what ingredients you choose to use and how you choose to use them, and how you do the processes of boiling, and fermentation, and things like that. So everything makes a contribution, and that's what makes beer one of the most diverse products available.