Technological Innovations Enable Consumers to Brew their Own Craft Beer

Brewing is the combination of science and arts. A brew master utilizes basic science process and expresses creativity by varying the combinations of grains, yeast and hops that results in a multitude of styles. Beer is manufactured by the use of four basic ingredients such as water, barley, yeast and hops. Extraction of sugars from grains results into conversion of yeast into alcohol and CO2, which creates beer. However, craft beer slightly differs from traditional beer.

What is Craft Beer?

Craft beer is not simply made but it is crafted. The definition of craft beer is difficult, as it means many different things to many different beer lovers. A microbrewery or a craft brewery, which are much smaller than large-scale breweries and are independently owned, produces limited amount of beer. This beer has different taste than a traditional beer. Typically, these breweries produces much smaller amount of beer as compared to corporate breweries. Such types of breweries are characterized by their emphasis on flavor, quality and brewing techniques. Increasing popularity across the globe is likely to result in boosting the growth of craft beer market in foreseeable future.

Why Craft Beer?

Here are several reasons why craft beer should be preferred over traditional beer.

• Better Taste: Crafts beer tastes much better than beer water, which is mass produced and marketed by big beer companies. Crafts brewers concentrates more on beer taste rather than focusing on marketing and stock prices. This is the key reason behind better taste of craft beer. Crafty brewers includes lots of amazing ingredients into every beer. The big beer companies on the other hand are on the big mission to take out ingredients from their beers in order to make it watery as possible.
• More Alcohol: Craft beer is available in many shapes and sizes but, all of them contains a punch. Most craft beer contains 5-10% alcohol by volume, and several craft beer can reach 20%, 30% or even 40% alcohol by volume. This is really a significant amount of alcohol as compared to traditional beers, which highly contains 8% alcohol by volume.
• Less Expensive: Drinking craft beer will reduce the cost per session compared to traditional beer. For a party or get-together ordering craft beer will be much less expensive than that of traditional beer.
• Low Calories: Craft beers DO have more calories per beer than beer water however, only few calories will be consumed per drinking session.

What are the Health Benefits of Craft Beer?

With moderate consumption of craft beer, there are several health benefits associated with it. USDA Dietary Guidelines have specially mentioned health benefits linked with limited consumption of craft beer.

1. Women those consumer craft beer moderately have decreased risk of weight gain, compared to those who don’t. Further, they have reduced risk of hypertension and risk of cardiovascular disease.
2. Craft beer is the rich source of silica and helps increase bone mineral density and might help prevent osteoporosis.
3. It helps reduce risk of heart failure, particularly for moderate craft beer consumers.
4. Consumption of alcohol helps reduce cholesterol by increasing high-density lipoprotein levels.
5. Decreases risk of diabetes by roughly 40% as compared to abstainers.
6. Helps increase absorption of dietary fibers.
7. Reduces risk of poor cognitive function for men and women.
8. Hops comprises of Xanthohumol, which has effective anti-cancer activity in liver cancer cells.

What are the Effects of Excessive Consumption of Craft Beer?

Beer is a beverage of moderation and a perfect companion to social occasion and dinner. All the health benefits linked with craft beer was only for limited consumption, over the years. However, increased consumption of beer will have negative results. The first major negative result is alcoholism and several other include

1. Cancer: With the increased consumption of alcohol, the risk of cancer increases. This include oral cancer, stomach cancer, as well as hormone based forms of breast cancer.
2. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: Doctors are not sure about the amount of alcohol to be consumed by a pregnant women without placing her baby at risk. Therefore, US health policy advices pregnant women to avoid consumption of alcohol.
3. Heart attack as well as heart failure are several major problems associated with increased consumption of beer.
4. Risk of stroke while heavy drinking is associated with the beer.

Brewing Machine Serves Fresh Craft Beer

PicoBrew is replacing its existing beer-brewing devices with universal device which is likely to cater fresh craft beer. The company has recently launched Kickstarter, a device which can brew beer as well as coffee, kombucha, tea and whatever else. There will be two models of the Pico U such as basic and deluxe. Both the machines have similar specification except the deluxe machine can brew five-liter of batches as well as craft beer. The size of the machines is small enough so as to fit on any counter, which makes new machine smaller than previous one.