Real Beer vs Mass Production - What’s actually inside your glass?

Real Beer vs Mass Production - What’s actually inside your glass?

Ever wonder why some beers leave you feeling heavy and bloated, whilst other well crafted beers feel light, crisp and clean? 

The secret isn’t just in the recipe, it’s actually the behind the scenes action that goes into making it. 

When you crack open a beer, you’re either drinking a product made with patience, passion and raw ingredients, or an industrial beverage engineered for maximum shelf life. Let’s take a step back on the brewing industry and break down what really sets true craft beer apart from mass-produced liquid.

The Ingredients: Pure Standards vs. Industrial Fillers

Traditionally, beer requires only four fundamental ingredients: water, maltese barley, hops & yeast.

In an independent brewery, these four ingredients are treated like gold. The malt provides natural sugars, rich colours and complex flavours, whilst the hops acts as a natural bitterness, creating herbal aromas and juicy citrus notes too.

When it comes to Mass Production, to keep costs low, industrial giant breweries often cut corners where instead of using 100% malted grains, they replace a chuck of the grain with cheaper substitutes like corn, rice or liquid corn syrup. These fillers provide fermentable sugar, where they strip the beer of its natural flavour, leaving you with a thin watery liquid that relies on heavy carbonation. 

The Process: Living Liquid vs. Pasteurised Shelf Life. 

Pasteurization is one of the biggest differences between commercial beer and independent craft beer. 

Industrial beers are routinely flash-pasteurized (heated to extreme high temperatures) to kill off any living bacteria and extend shelf life for months or years on supermarket shelves. This also ends up wearing off any delicate aromatic smells from the beer, and strips off subtle flavours that makes the beer unique. 

Craft beer is left unpasteurized. It remains untouched leaving all the natural hop aromas, delicate yeast characteristics and rich malt flavors stay completely intact and present in the glass. This provides a better experience when tasting your beer.

Patience is Key to Fermentation.

When it comes to mass production, time is money. Industrial breweries use sped up fermentation tanks and a technique called High-Gravity Brewing. Instead of brewing a beer to its recommended alcoholic state, mass producers brew an extremely dense, high sugar content alcohol liquid, which is then diluted with deoxygenated water to hit their target alcohol percentage.

Craft beers on the other hand are allowed to ferment naturally, mature slowly and clarify over time without being artificially rushed or diluted down. 

Why your body knows the difference. 

If you’ve ever noticed that “heavy”, bloated feeling after drinking a couple of beers, it’s because the bloating comes from artificial carbonation, unfermented complex sugars from cheap supplements and chemical preservatives used to stabilise mass-produced beer. 

Craft beer is a cleaner, smoother on the bitterness, and the overall light and refreshing drinking experience. Drinking craft beer isn’t just about enjoying the beverage, it’s about appreciating the art of independent brewing. The local craftsmanship that goes behind every creation of beer should be appreciated, and challenged. Is this an industrial formula designed for speed, or a beer crafted with pride?