Every question about beer answered

Beer ifs pretty much the lifeblood of our country and many others.

Why International Beer Day (which happens to fall this Monday 15 June) hasn’t been made a Bank Holiday, we’ll never know.

But that’s not the only beer-related question we have. In fact, the nation has been searching for plenty of different things related to the beveraged.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the weirdest questions you lot have about beer, and answered them all in one handy place.

You’ll never have an uninformed pint ever again.

Are beer cans recyclable?

All metal beer cans are endlessly recyclable, so it’s important not to throw them in the bin.

According to Recycle More, if all the aluminium cans sold were recycled there would be around 14 million fewer dustbins emptied into landfill sites every year.

Simply rinse out your cans and put them in your recycling bin or take them to a recycling centre. If you buy a multipack with plastic rings, cut these up and they can be recycled at your local supermarket along with plastic bags.

Are beer and ale the same?

Essentially, all ale is beer, but not all beer is ale.

Beers are generally divided into two families; lager and ale.

They’re both made roughly the same way, but lager is fermented using a bottom-feeding yeast. They take between four and five weeks to ferment, and do so at between 3C to 10C.

Top-feeding yeasts are used for ales. This only takes five to ten days and the yeast forms a film at the top, functioning best at 20C to 25C.

Other than that, both lager and ale use hops, malts, and water, but because lager has fewer sugars in the end result, it tastes crisper and cleaner compared to the richer ales.

Within lagers and ales there are more subcategories such as  bitters, stouts and porters in case of ale and bocks, pilsners and darks in case of lager.

Can beer go off?

Like any food or drink, beer can go off, but it depends on how it’s stored and the type of beer.

Because it’s made from organic materials, oxygen, light, or bacteria exposure have an effect on how it tastes and speed up the decaying process.

Most beer you’ll buy in a shop has an expiration date on the bottle or can, but some will still taste fine and can be consumed after this as long as they’re stored correctly.

Everything from how far the beer’s travelled, when it was made, what the packaging is like, and the temperature and light conditions in storage impact this.

Keep an eye on the sell-by date, but you can often get away with drinking it a few months later if it’s been in the fridge.

Can beer freeze?

If you’ve ever put a bottle of vodka in the freezer, you’ll know that it’s much harder to freeze alcohol than water due to its lower freezing temperature.

Beer has a lower alcohol content than spirits do, but it also has sugar in it which lowers the freezing temperature even more.

So it will freeze, but it’ll take longer to do so than water or other liquids would.

Just make sure that if you pop your bottle of beer in the freezer to cool down you don’t leave it too long. Otherwise the pressure in the bottle will grow and you’ll end up with the top popping off – or worse, an explosion.

Can beer cause thrush?

Thrush is a condition caused by too much yeast in the body. Ergo, you might think that beer (which is made with yeast) can cause thrush.

And you’d be right.

Most alcoholic drinks have the live yeast brewed out of the, but in beer some still remains.

That doesn’t mean that every time you have a few beers you’ll suddenly be plagued with yeast infections, but if you’re already prone to yeast infections, beer could exacerbate things.

What beer is vegan?

There is a wide range of vegan-friendly beer out there, but some beers use ingredients like milk or honey in the processing which makes them unsuitable.

Others use isinglass in the filtering process – a product made from fish bladders – which also is not vegan.

Nowadays, beer producers have other ways to filter their beer (such as filtration using moss or seaweed) so brands like Heineken, Corona, Coors, and Budweiser – as well as many others – can produce a vegan brew.

Where and when did beer originate?

Beer has been around a long time, and it’s thought to date back to around 10,000 BC in Ancient Mesopotamia.

It’s been theorised that the idea for beer came from someone trying water that bread had been sat in, which sparked recipes made from grains and water.

The Sumerians had various different types of beer recipes, and the Ancient Egyptians were also partial to a cold one.

Why do we get a beer belly after one too many?

The old phrase ‘beer belly’ is used to describe someone who likes their beers plentiful and as a result ends up with some junk in the front.

Beer isn’t the sole source of blame for these rotund tums, though. It’s actually just the extra calories that are consumed – whether from beer, wine, food, or anything else.

Drinking alcohol regular can also change the way your body burns fat, with it working hard to process the alcohol you’re consuming rather than getting rid of the fat.

So if you want to get rid of a beer belly, it’s not really about removing it from your diet, just having it in moderation – like everything else.

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