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Brewing British Beer
Special varieties of British grown (East Anglia and Yorkshire) barley are selected to be transformed into malt, a process that starts by steeping the grain in water to encourage it to germinate, growing it for 4 to 5 days and then drying it in a kiln.
Malt is crushed and mixed with hot water (brewing liquor) to become mash, oatmeal - like mixture, in which the starch from the malted barley-corn is converted to fermentable sugars, producing a sweet golden liquid called wort. Wort is filtered from the mash and boiled in a brew kettle and the hops added. 
Once the bitterness and flavour are extracted, spent hop material is removed with the spent grain from the mash and used to feed livestock. Hopped wort is cooled to the appropriate temperature for the recipe and yeast added for fermentation, which takes 5 to 10 days. At the end of fermentation, the yeast is removed for future brews and the young or green beer is chilled to storage tanks for maturation where it clarifies and ages for one to two weeks. Mature beer is then filtered and carbonated prior to filling into bottles, kegs or cans.The main differences between bitter, stout and lager:
- Bitter acquires its red colour from malt which has been roasted longer than that used for lager. Stout acquires its black colour from heavily roasted malt and barley.
- Bitters and stouts traditionally use British hops whereas lagers tend to use German, Czech or North American hops.
- Lagers are fermented at cooler temperatures than bitter or stout.
- Different strains of yeast are used for bitter and stout than lager.
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