HomeBrewing - THE GLOSSARY

All right, it’s October, the month when homebrewers become more active - to brew of course :) Personally, I don’t brew during the summer due to a high risk of catching some infections into a beer, and I’m very excited about brew again soon. Finally! I planned something extra for this occasion, something different from what I presented you so far, namely, I’m planning to make a movie which will show you the whole homebrewing process. But I thought that before this movie will be made, it is worth to write another post. The goal of this post is to help you to better understand both mentioned movie and my previous and future homebrewing posts. Hereby, I present you the homebrewing glossary.

ABV - Alcohol By Volume, the measurement of the alcohol content of a solution (in terms of the percentage volume of alcohol per volume of beer)
ABW - Alcohol By Weight, the measurement of the alcohol content of a solution (in terms of the percentage volume of alcohol per volume of beer)
Alfa-acids - in other words, hop resins, the key to the beer bitterness
Amylases - name for enzymes which are breaking the bonds between long starch chains and converting them into monosaccharides
Batch - a single portion of a brewed beer
BLG - the unit of Balling Scale, it is indicating density of sugars in wort
Dry hopping - addition of dry hops to secondary fermentation, it’s increasing a beer’s hop character in the aromas
Enzymes - protein-based catalysts that support biochemical reactions like converting sugars into monosaccharides
Fermentable sugar - a sugar that allows to carbonate a beer, for example, glucose
Filtering - removal of designated impurities from the wort
Hop -the basic spice in beer, providing the characteristic bitterness due to the presence of alpha-acids in it
Hopping - boiling the wort with hops added
IBU - International Bittering Units, scale that measures a bitterness of beer
Iodine test - the test made to evaluate the presence of starch in the mash
Lautering - process that acts to separate the wort from grain via filtering and sparging
Lugol's iodine - a solution of potassium iodide with iodine in water, in homebrewing it is used to make an iodine test
Malt - the basic ingredient in a beer, processed barley or other grain
Mash - a mixture of milled malted grains and hot water used to produce the sweet wort
Mashing - one of the most important steps in homebrewing process that promotes enzymatic breakdown of the grist into fermentable sugars
Plato - nearly identical units to the BLG
Primary Fermentation - the basic part of fermentation process where sugars are converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide
Priming - method of adding of fermentable sugar prior to bottling to give the beer carbonation
Proteases - name for enzymes which breaks down high molecular weight proteins into lower molecular weight
Refractometer - device for the measurement of a beer’s BLG
Secondary Fermentation -time after primary fermentation and before bottling where settling and conditioning of the beer happen
Sparging - rinsing the grain bed during lautering
Temperature rest - holding the mash at a predetermined temperature in order to adjust fermentable sugar profiles
Wort - it is a bittersweet solution created by boiling malt, hops and water
Wort boiling - a critical step during the homebrewing process, during which the hops are added
Wort cooling - cooling down the wort to the temperature below 30°C as quickly as possible, in order to add the yeast
Yeast - single-celled organisms which convert the malt sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during the fermentation process

Of course, those are not all the terms used in brewing, I only tried to choose those which, in my opinion, can be helpful in understanding my homebrewing related posts :)

See also:

HomeBrewing - the basic process description
HomeBrewing - the needed equipment
HomeBrewing - THE INGREDIENTS
HomeBrewing - ROAD TO PERFECTION
HomeBrewing - HOW TO TASTE AND EVALUATE A BEER

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