Adjunct: A non-barley source of fermentable sugar.
Ale: A beer made with ale yeast.
Barrel: Also written as bbl. One barrel of beer contains 31 gallons.
Brewery: The entire building in which beer is made.
Brewhouse: The set of equipment used in the “hot side” of brewing beer: mashing, lautering, and boiling.
Brewpub: A combination brewery and restaurant.
Bright tank: A tank that is used to carbonate beer.
CAMRA: The Campaign for Real Ales, a movement in Britain dating to the 1970s. Its aim is to return tradition to the way beer is served, focusing primarily on cask-conditioned and bottle-conditioned beers. For information, visit camra.org.uk.
Cask-conditioned: Refers to beer that has been refermented in the cask. Cask-conditioned beer is typically served at cellar temperature via gravity or hand pump
CIP: Clean in place. This generally refers to brewery tanks equipped with spray valves that can be used to pump water and cleaning solution to quickly clean the entire tank with little manual labor.
Cold room: A large walk-in (or sometimes drive-in) refrigerator.
Ester: A chemical compound formed during fermentation. Esters often taste fruity.
Fermenter: A vessel in which beer is fermented, where yeasts eat sugars to create ethanol and CO2.
GABF: Great American Beer Festival, a yearly beer festival sponsored by the Brewers Association in Denver, Colorado. It includes the largest professional brewing competition in the United States.
Growler: A refillable glass jug for beer, often with a screw top, sometimes with a ceramic swing-top. In North Carolina, growlers can hold only 64 ounces (a half-gallon) or less.
Hops: The flower and fruiting body of the plant Humulus lupulus, used by brewers to impart both bitterness and flavor to beer.
Kegerator: A refrigerator built to hold kegs and serve beer.
Lager: Literally, “to store.” In beer, it refers to beer made with lager yeast.
Lautering: The step in the brewing process in which sugar is removed from grain in order to make the wort.
Lautertun: The vessel in the brewhouse in which lautering takes place.
Malt: Grain, usually barley, that has been slightly germinated and then kilned, creating a reserve of sugars and enzymes. Malt is the source of sugar in beer.
Maltster: A company that malts barley for use in brewing.
Mash tun: The vessel in the brewhouse in which the mashing process takes place.
Mashing: The step in the brewing process when water is added to grain in order to activate enzymes that will convert starch into sugar.
Microbrewery: A brewery that makes 15,000 barrels of beer per year or less.
Nanobrewery: A brewery that makes extremely small batches of beer. While there is no official definition of what constitutes a nanobrewery, it is generally considered to be a brewery that makes batches of three barrels or less.
Reinheitsgebot: The Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, which stated that beer could be made from only three ingredients: water, barley, and hops. Yeast wasn’t discovered for another 340 years and so was not included in the law. The Reinheitsgebot also defined a rigorous pricing schedule for beer that is no longer observed.
Sparging: The act of rinsing grain with hot water during lautering, which assists in removing sugars from the grain.
Taproom: A small beer bar often attached to, or associated with, a brewery.
World Beer Cup: The largest international professional brewing competition in the world, it is held every two years, on even-numbered years.
Wort: Unfermented beer.
Yeast: A unicellular fungus that eats sugar and secretes CO2 and ethanol, as well as hundreds of flavor compounds, in beer.