ABV: An abbreviation for “alcohol by volume”. This is the percentage of alcohol (ethanol) found in your beverage – the rest will be made up largely of water.
Adjunct: Something added to beer, normally another cereal, used in place of a certain amount of malt. Can be used to affect the colour, flavour or body of the beer or to save on costs.
Ale: A beer brewed with a top-fermenting yeast.
All-grain: A beer brewed with grain, hops and yeast with a mash. No malt extract (hopped or unhopped) is usually used. This term is generally used in homebrewing.
Bottle-conditioned: Using a fermentable sugar to carbonate the beer in the bottle. Used with many Belgian beers and in some South African microbreweries. It’s a traditional method and a natural way to carbonate.
Brewing liquor: The water used for brewing.
Brewpub: A bar that also brews its own beer, usually on the premises.
Chill haze: Excess proteins left over during the mash and boil will create a haze in the beer when it is chilled to below 1.6 °C. The beer will clear if allowed to warm up slightly.
Conditioning: A broad term used to describe various processes that can take place after fermentation. These can include lagering, bottle-conditioning and cask-conditioning.
Contract brewing: An arrangement where a brewing company will pay to produce its beer on another brewery’s equipment. They might brew the beer themselves or employ the services of the in-house brewer. A way for a start-up to afford to launch a new brand without having to purchase equipment and premises.
Draught: Beer packaged in a keg and served on tap in a bar. It may or may not be pasteurised and is considered by many to be the best way to serve (or drink) a beer.
Dry hopping: Using hops in the fermenter, secondary fermenter or keg in order to infuse the beer with extra hop aroma and flavour.
Efficiency: The amount of sugars extracted during the mash. There are various types of efficiency throughout the brewing process, but all are essentially used to help determine the final alcohol content of the beer.
Extract brewing: Using dried or liquid malt extract to add fermentable sugars to your brew. No mashing is required in this style of brewing.
Filtration: Using a charcoal (or other) type of filter to sift out yeast, trub and proteins from the beer to make it clearer.
Grist: The malted barley after it has been crushed.
Hophead: A person who loves hoppy beers.
Hops: The cones (or flowers) of the Humulus lupulus plant, used to add bitterness, aroma and flavour to beer. Also helps to preserve the beer.
Hot liquor tank: A vessel for storing the water that will be added to the mash during the brewing process.
IBUs: International Bitterness Units. Measures the amount of bitterness imparted by the hops during the boil. Hopheads often look for beers that are above 50 IBUs.
Kettle: The vessel used to boil the wort.
Lager: A beer brewed with a bottom-fermenting yeast.
Lagering: A way to mature beer at near-freezing temperatures in order to produce a crisp, clean beer.
Lautering: The process of separating the wort from the grist after the mash. The vessel used for this is called the lauter tun, though homebrewers and small breweries might have a combination mash tun/lauter tun.
Liquor: See Brewing liquor.
Malt: A shortened term for “malted barley”– the base grains used to brew beer – which provide the fermentable sugars that turn wort into alcohol. These grains have been modified from their natural state in order to make the sugars easier to extract.
Mashing: The conversion of starches in the mated barley to sugars. This is the first step of the brewing process, once the malted barley has been crushed.
Mash tun: The vessel used to contain the grist at the start of the brewing process. This is where mashing takes place.
Microbrewery: A brewery that produces small volumes of beer. In South Africa at present there are no official parameters regarding the volume a microbrewery can produce. Also known as a craft brewery.
Mouthfeel: The perceived heaviness and texture of a beer in your mouth.
Off-flavour: A flavour – or aroma – that should not be present in a beer. Off-flavours can be caused by poor sanitation, bacterial infections and poor brewing practices among other things. Many of these compounds are always present in beer, but when a certain flavour reaches the human taste threshold, it becomes noticeable and undesirable.
Pitch: As in “to pitch the yeast”. This simply means to add yeast to the wort – it doesn’t mean it’s being launched from some great distance.
Session beer: A lighter beer designed to allow the drinker to have several in one sitting.
Set mash: see Stuck sparge.
Sparge: Adding water to the end of the mash to get the last of the sugars from the grains. Will either be a fly sparge, where 75 °C water is added at same speed the wort is drained, or batch sparge, where the first runnings are drained and then the mash is refilled, re-circulated and the process is repeated.
Spent grain: The grains left after the mash. Usually sold to farmers for animal feed.
Stuck sparge: If the grains are crushed too finely or a lot of yeast is used without a protein rest, the sparge may become clogged during lautering. Among homebrewers this is commonly called a stuck sparge, while commercial brewers more often refer to it as set mash or stuck mash.
Trub: The yeast cells, hop residue, proteins and gunk left over after a brew. Will be at the bottom of the kettle as well as the fermenter.
Unfiltered: Beers that have not been filtered and, thus, will be cloudier with slightly more flavour.
Wort: The sugary liquid taken from the mash after the starches have been converted to sugars. It’s pronounced “wert”.
Yeast, top-fermenting: Refers to Saccharomyces cerevisiae (also called ale yeast), a yeast used in brewing. The yeast congregates at the top of the fermentation vessel, forming a layer of foam.
Yeast, Bottom-fermenting: Refers to Saccharomyces pastorianus (also called lager yeast). Unlike Saccharomyces cerevisiae, this yeast sinks to the bottom of the vessel during fermentation.