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Metaphysics -
What is Beer,
anyway?

So how do you make beer anyway? It's pretty simple. When you mix sugars with yeast and leave them alone for a while, you get alcohol. If you're using fruit to provide your sugar, you get wine. If you use malted barley to provide your sugar, you get beer. A beer made solely with malted barley would be pretty vile -- sweet and syrupy. Several hundred years ago, some bright folks figured out a solution to the problem -- hops. Hops are aromatic, bitter herbs (related to marijuana, but don't bother smoking them). They add the bite to beer.

People have added thousands of different ingredients to beer over the years, but all beers come down to the same four things - water, malt, yeast and hops. In fact, there's a law in Germany that those four are the only ingredients allowed in beer. Of course, if you're not in Germany, you can toss in honey, Irish moss, cherries, coffee, orange peels or chili peppers. Which is part of why this is so much fun ...