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- Cereal (pictured above): This is a family of crops (all types of grass) grown by humans to make food and drink, including wheat, barley, corn, rye, oats, rice and millet. Cereal grains (the part that holds the seed) contain a lot of carbohydrate, and are therefore a source of sugar and energy.
- Carbohydrate: Also known as starch, carbs are a complex sugar. Yeast cannot feed on complex sugars directly, so starch needs to be broken down into simple sugar first before yeast can ferment it into alcohol.
- Malt: The most common way for alcohol producers to turn carbohydrate in cereals into fermentable sugars is malting. In simple terms: the grains are moistened so they begin to grow, a process that naturally converts their stored energy (carbohydrate) into usable energy (sugar). Before the grain can use the energy, it is dried out with heat, which stops it growing and traps the sugar.
- Hop: A plant related to the vine, whose flowers are harvested to flavour beer. When brewers refer to “hops”, they mean the flowers from the same plant.
