Beer Brewing Vocabulary and Abbreviations

By Pat McLoughlin

There are several words that you will be introduced to when brewing beer. Some of them are probably things that you have heard before such as pH, Ale, and Lager. This article will give a more in depth description of these terms as well as give you a variety of new homebrewing vocabulary that you may not have heard yet.
ABV - Alcohol by volume
ABW - Alcohol by weight
Airlock - a plastic top that lets carbon dioxide be released during fermentation without contaminating your brew.

Ale - top fermented beer
Carboy - glass fermenter
Conditioning - Adding sugar to your beer before bottling. This makes the left over yeast react with the sugar to create carbonation.
DME - dry malt extract
Dry hopping - adding hops during the fermentation stage
Fermentation - the time in the brewing process where your beer is sitting in a container and reacting with the yeast. This usually takes a couple weeks and is done before bottling your beer.
FG - Final gravity (the gravity of the beer taken at the end of fermentation)
Gravity - denseness of a liquid (used to determine the amount of alcohol)
Hydrometer - tool used to determine gravity
IPA - India Pale Ale
Lager - bottom fermented beer
Lautering - mash separated into the wort and leftover grain

Malt - Grain (either barley or wheat) sometimes in a malt extract form which is a syrup
Mead - fermented honey
OG - Original gravity (the gravity of the beer taken at the beginning of fermentation)
pH - percent Hydrion
Pitching - pouring yeast into your beer
Sparging - filtering water through grain to get the sugar out of the grain
Wort - What you call your brew when you have finished boiling before adding it to the fermenter.

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