alcohol. It’s quicker and easier to grow than
the grapevine, much more productive in a
given acreage, can be stored for many months
before being fermented, and it can be made
into beer any day of the year, not just at
harvest time. Of course grains bring a very
different flavor to beer than grapes do to
wine; it’s the flavor of the grasses, of bread,
and of cooking, which is essential to the beer-
making process.
The Evolution of Beer
Three Ways to Sweeten Starchy Grains Our
ingenious prehistoric ancestors discovered no
fewer than three different ways to turn grains
into alcohol! The key to each was enzymes
that convert the grain starch into fermentable
sugars. Because every enzyme molecule can
do its starch-splitting operation perhaps a
million times, a small quantity of the enzyme
source can digest a large quantity of starch