On the first Friday of August each year International Beer Day is celebrated! This fine day is dedicated to ales, lagers, pilsners and craft beers…

For beer lovers everywhere, whether you are sipping in the garden, on the beach, in your local pub garden or even at a tasting - enjoy this glorious day with friends and family!

The art of brewing beer has been in motion for a LONG… long time - with some historians suggesting that beer recipes have been discovered that are more than 3,000 years old! More popular in European countries such as Romania, Germany and Poland who are said to drink some of the most beer in the world per capita - it is easy to see why this marvellous creation is so popular! You may be thinking though - how is beer actually made?

Brewing a tasty beer is a lengthy and labour intensive process. There are usually four key ingredients that are needed to brew beer and it starts with the choice of grains. In most circumstances the grain of choice will be barley however sometimes wheat or even oats have been known to be selected. The other key ingredients are water, hops and yeast. Flavourings may change along the way and possibly technical alterations made be made such as the temperature the beer is brewed at or the grade of ingredients used but these key ingredients usually stay pretty much the same!

Once ingredients are chosen the brewer then moves onto the malting process. Grains are processed to isolate the enzymes to be used in the beer. This process requires the grains to be heated, dried and cracked to release the goodness within the grain!

We then move onto the malt being mashed. A sugary liquid is created from the grain as it is left to steep in hot water. This will usually take place in a brewhouse vessel known as a mash tun. This mashing stage takes around an hour as the grain sits in hot water until the sugary liquid known as wort is produced.

The wort is then transferred to a separate vessel where hops are added to the mixture. This adds this bitterness which you find in beer. Once this stage is completed the mixture is then cooled to a lower temperature around 18 degrees before the fermentation process takes place and the yeast is added.

When fermentation process begins when the mixture has cooled and yeast is added to devour the sugar which in the process actually creates carbon dioxide along with alcohol. At this stage you can also add additional flavourings to give the beer a signature finish. This is a key time when the beer must be monitored and kept at a regular temperature to give you a perfected mixture. Unless you have high tech equipment you may struggle with this stage if you are a home brewer for example.

The beer is then filtered down to begin the processing stage. The fermentation process is complete and you now have yourself an alcoholic beer. Beer that are then transferred to casks or kegs are some of the least processed types of beer as there are a range of different methods to keep the beer in its best form when bottling or sealing the beer in cans. This is where craft beers step in as they are considered to be more flavourful and less processed during these final stages.