The earliest beers were brewed as far back as 5,000 years B. C., mainly in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, Europe, China and Egypt. This was during the Neolithic period. At that time, most brewing was done on a domestic scale. In 700 A. D., the monks in Europe began making and selling beer, particularly in Belgium. Now, with beer being brewed on a much larger scale, over 130 billion liters are being manufactured and sold, amounting to roughly 300 billion dollars globally. Tampa/St Petersburg has its own lively trade in breweries, shops, festivals, brewpubs and other beery events.
It wasn't that long ago that American beers were uniformly bland, distinguishable only by their advertising campaigns. The past ten or twenty years has seen a phenomenal explosion in the craft ale industry. This has been partly inspired by the British, who have a long-standing tradition of producing cask ale.
Britain distinguishes two fundamentally different approaches to brewing. One is cask-conditioning and the other is brewery-conditioned or keg beer. Cask ale is a living product, with the yeast continuing to ferment sugars derived from the main ingredient, malted barley, into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This gives the beer a natural, gentle fizziness. Cask ale is served from either firkins, which hold nine gallons of liquid, or kildekins, which hold 18 gallons.
Fermentation in the cask gives the beer a natural bubbling quality. However, since it cannot be pasteurized on account of the necessity to keep the yeast alive, cask conditioned ale is vulnerable to attack by beer pathogens like bacteria or fungi. It is also highly temperature-sensitive and needs to be maintained at cellar temperature, between 54 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
By the mid 1970s, a large and growing segment of the market was brewery conditioned. It was cheap and easy to produce and required less cellar-keeping skill than its cask counterpart. It was a natural progression for classically-produced, well-kept beers to become phased out in favor of their fizzy, essentially dead, keg cousins.
This enraged Britain's beer drinkers because it was dumbing down the British national drink. By the 1970s, drinkers were so disgusted with what was on offer, four particularly angry young men met in a pub in Ireland formed what was to become the Campaign for Real Ale, CAMRA for short. From four original beer activists, the campaign has grown to a membership of nearly 150,000 and is recognized as the biggest, most successful consumer organization in Europe.
Twenty or thirty years ago, even in Real Ale Britain, beer selection was limited to a few, high-quality but very similar looking and tasting brews. These were the coppery colored bitters with a taste spectrum from 'malty' to 'hoppy'. Thanks in part to the efforts of CAMRA to stimulate the market, these past decades have seen a dramatic increase in the range of colors and tastes and types of beers for the connoisseur to sample. Like so many other great British trends, America has followed suit and has launched a new craft style of brew.
Tampa brewing is a fine example of the growth of craft beer. One of the oldest breweries in the country is stationed here. There are plenty of tours and tasting rooms to keep the discerning beer-lover happy any day of the week.
It wasn't that long ago that American beers were uniformly bland, distinguishable only by their advertising campaigns. The past ten or twenty years has seen a phenomenal explosion in the craft ale industry. This has been partly inspired by the British, who have a long-standing tradition of producing cask ale.
Britain distinguishes two fundamentally different approaches to brewing. One is cask-conditioning and the other is brewery-conditioned or keg beer. Cask ale is a living product, with the yeast continuing to ferment sugars derived from the main ingredient, malted barley, into alcohol and carbon dioxide. This gives the beer a natural, gentle fizziness. Cask ale is served from either firkins, which hold nine gallons of liquid, or kildekins, which hold 18 gallons.
Fermentation in the cask gives the beer a natural bubbling quality. However, since it cannot be pasteurized on account of the necessity to keep the yeast alive, cask conditioned ale is vulnerable to attack by beer pathogens like bacteria or fungi. It is also highly temperature-sensitive and needs to be maintained at cellar temperature, between 54 and 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
By the mid 1970s, a large and growing segment of the market was brewery conditioned. It was cheap and easy to produce and required less cellar-keeping skill than its cask counterpart. It was a natural progression for classically-produced, well-kept beers to become phased out in favor of their fizzy, essentially dead, keg cousins.
This enraged Britain's beer drinkers because it was dumbing down the British national drink. By the 1970s, drinkers were so disgusted with what was on offer, four particularly angry young men met in a pub in Ireland formed what was to become the Campaign for Real Ale, CAMRA for short. From four original beer activists, the campaign has grown to a membership of nearly 150,000 and is recognized as the biggest, most successful consumer organization in Europe.
Twenty or thirty years ago, even in Real Ale Britain, beer selection was limited to a few, high-quality but very similar looking and tasting brews. These were the coppery colored bitters with a taste spectrum from 'malty' to 'hoppy'. Thanks in part to the efforts of CAMRA to stimulate the market, these past decades have seen a dramatic increase in the range of colors and tastes and types of beers for the connoisseur to sample. Like so many other great British trends, America has followed suit and has launched a new craft style of brew.
Tampa brewing is a fine example of the growth of craft beer. One of the oldest breweries in the country is stationed here. There are plenty of tours and tasting rooms to keep the discerning beer-lover happy any day of the week.
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