Which Ingredient Has The Greatest Influence On A Beer?

[vanceonbeach]

Which ingredient has the greatest influence on a beer? :huh:



Beer is basically water, malt, hops, yeast and possibly some adjuncts right. Looking through lots of recipes recently, it struck me how similar most of them are. There's a base malt or extract, chosen from a fairly limited range. Some specialty malts to tweak the colour and/or add a touch of flavour. Where the variety really seems to kick in is with hops and yeast. There's loads of different hop types all offering different things depending on whether they are bittering, flavour or aroma additions. Then there's a bewildering number of dry and liquid yeasts described as clean, fruity, malty, nutty, estery, dry, tart, citrusy, spicy, the list of adjectives goes on and on.



So I'm thinking in order of influence it generally goes like this:



1. Yeast

2. Hops

3. Specialty malts

4. Base malt



Is this a useful guide for coming up with recipes or am I barking up the wrong tree (or just barking mad)?

 

[drsmurto]

Beer is 90-97% water (depending on style) and it didn't make your top 4?

 

[.DJ.]

it may make up the highest proportion but surely that doesnt mean it has the greatest influence?

a beer hopped with Amarillo as oppossed to Saaz will have a farther differential in flavour than a beer using tap water as opposed to one using water with minerals added???

 

[jonocarroll]

a beer hopped with Amarillo as oppossed to Saaz will have a farther differential in flavour than a beer using tap water as opposed to one using water with minerals added???

That statement only implies that minerals are of a lesser influence.

You could not add hops at all and you would get a reasonable shift in the beer... Try not adding water and see what you get.

I believe the answer to the original question is that it depends on style - yeast makes a big difference in a Belgian, hops make little difference to a stout.

 

[drsmurto]

it may make up the highest proportion but surely that doesnt mean it has the greatest influence?

a beer hopped with Amarillo as oppossed to Saaz will have a farther differential in flavour than a beer using tap water as opposed to one using water with minerals added???

I didn't say it had the greatest influence although history suggests that the water profiles in cities around the world determined the style they brewed....

I merely suggested that it should have been given more weight in this debate.

But... what if you brewed these beers using pilsen water and burton water....... do you think there would be zero difference between the end result other then the hop flavour/aroma?

EDIT - spelling

 

[bconnery]

All of them.
You could go round in circles arguing which one, and we probably will, but they all play a massive part and it will come down to symantics in the end.
Is an APA mostly driven by the yeast or the hops? Sure the hops are the major flavour profile but select a different yeast etc.
So is it your hops or your yeast choice that has influenced the flavour?
An all munich APA will be very different to a base malt + crystal etc. with the same hops and yeast, so which has had the biggest influence?

I think it varies from beer to beer and style to style and you can't really rank them...

 

[.DJ.]

I didn't say it had the greatest influence although history suggests that the water profiles in cities around the world determined the style they brewed....

I merely suggested that it should have been given more weight in this debate.

But... what if you brewed these beers using pilsen water and burton water....... do you think there would be zero difference between the end result other then the hop flavour/aroma?

EDIT - spelling

I guess it also depends on what your interpretation of "influence" is aswell

I agree certain water would make a difference. Would it make the biggest difference? Maybe, maybe not, depending on style and other ingredients as bconnery has mentioned..

so the answer is ....

1. Yeast

1. Hops

1. Specialty malts

1. Base malt

1. Water

 

[drsmurto]

I guess it also depends on what your interpretation of "influence" is aswell

I agree certain water would make a difference. Would it make the biggest difference? Maybe, maybe not, depending on style and other ingredients as bconnery has mentioned..

so the answer is ....

1. Yeast

1. Hops

1. Specialty malts

1. Base malt

1. Water

Now we are reading from the same page!

And as bconnery and QB have pointed out, its very much style dependant.

 

[Renegade]

I agree with bconnory's overall statement when he says 'all of them'

Look at some beers where the yeast heavily drives the flavour, like a wheat. You go easy on the hops so you can enjoy the yeast.

However for an IPA you go crazy with hops, and might use a yeast that is either quite neutral or something that allows the hop flavour to shine.

Then look at a porter, where those rich flavours of dark grains are the flavour you might seek.

Then there's the multitude of combinations. How many grains are out there ? How many hops ? How many yeast strains? There's hundreds, perhaps thousands of flavour combinations that depend on how you apply each to the mix. That's what makes it such fun (for me anyway, who does a brand new 'franken-style' every single time I brew)

In the end, there is no ultimate answer. Unless you want to say 'Water' - that really is the 'greatest influence'. You add it, it's beer, you don't add it, well, you end up with dusty cereal. Ok if you're a chicken, not so good if you like a cold beverage.

 

[Swinging Beef]

the brewer

 

[Renegade]

I don't think the OP was posting a philosophical question.

 

[katzke]

That statement only implies that minerals are of a lesser influence.

You could not add hops at all and you would get a reasonable shift in the beer... Try not adding water and see what you get.

I believe the answer to the original question is that it depends on style - yeast makes a big difference in a Belgian, hops make little difference to a stout.

I think the list is about as good as one can get. Water additions sure are important as the old saying if you can drink the water you can brew is false. But to stay in style the list works.

Yeast is important for style as well as hops as well as the grain choice.

Saying that hops make little difference to a stout is just wrong. Try a stout with big bittering hops or grapefruit flavor finishing hops and tell me it is a good stout.

Now if you want to know the most important ingredient then it would have to be the sweat off the brow of the brewer. For a good brewer can make a better beer then a slob. The good brewer will also know how to use the ingredients to the best advantage.

I guess a better question then, what is the most important ingredient to beer, would be something based on the Iron Chef competitions. Given a pile of ingredients, if you did not have to use all of them, how would you sort them to decide what to brew?

In that case I do not think I would put yeast first but it is a tough call. It kind of all depends on the other ingredients.

 

[bum]

You could not add hops at all and you would get a reasonable shift in the beer... Try not adding water and see what you get.

Not beer?

 

[manticle]

All of them.
You could go round in circles arguing which one, and we probably will, but they all play a massive part and it will come down to symantics in the end.
Is an APA mostly driven by the yeast or the hops? Sure the hops are the major flavour profile but select a different yeast etc.
So is it your hops or your yeast choice that has influenced the flavour?
An all munich APA will be very different to a base malt + crystal etc. with the same hops and yeast, so which has had the biggest influence?

I think it varies from beer to beer and style to style and you can't really rank them...

^Said it for me. For a dubbel, yeast might play a bigger part in final flavour than hops, for a Baltic porter it might be malt, for an APA or IPA it might be hops. That's what you'd look at when developing recipes but as suggested above all will play an important role. Yeast might sit in the background in a mild brown ale but in that case you need to select a yeast that will sit in the background. Therefore its influence is in being unnoticed. Same with the hops as suggested by Katzke.

As for water: besides the obvious part water chemistry plays in developing different brew profiles, don't forget that without it, your beer would be either muesli or syrup.

 

[bum]

But not beer.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I would say water and yeast .. but only in the sense of

Bad Water

Poorly Managed Yeast

because grains, hops, well managed yeast (including fermentation temperature), reasonable water -- all those are really really important to beer flavour, but .... its hard to make a really truly bad beer, by getting those things wrong. It might not be great, it might not be what you were aiming for. But at the end of the day - if I have to, I will settle for "not bad"

For bad, don't want it in my mouth beer - its almost always going to be bad water or bad yeast management

(or sanitation, but thats not an ingredient I guess)

 

[manticle]

But not beer.

no

 

[Renegade]

Not beer?

But not beer.

Do you happen to own a big canoe ?

 

[bum]

My point is that the question wasn't "The absence of which ingredient will prevent you from making beer?". We're talking about beer so it is a given all the necessary ingredients are there.

 

[manticle]

My point is that the question wasn't "The absence of which ingredient will prevent you from making beer?". We're talking about beer so it is a given all the necessary ingredients are there.

Then all necessary ingredients should be included on the list and being necessary ingredients, they are all necessary and therefore the original point is moot.

@OP - the things that don't seem to add distinctive flavour in a beer (and many of them do) are most definitely still important. You put base malt as least important ingredient. As mentioned I'd struggle to make a definitive hierarchy and don't see the point but that just makes no sense to me. Base malts are the backbone of many beers. Try a good pilsner and tell me pilsner malt has nothing to do with it.