What Is Enriching Beer and How Is It Done?

The Internet forums are alive and well with this question: “what is enriching beer and how is it done?” In very short answer: it isn’t done.

So, why is the internet on fire with this question right now?

Art Imitates Life or Life Imitates Art

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a popular sitcom in the US that has been on television since 2005 and is still in production, having just signed for another 4 seasons in 2020.

Why do you care about this US sitcom on a beer blog?

Back to the question of beer enrichment.

On an episode of It’s Always Sunny that aired in 2016, the bar owners discover a rival bar is serving enriched beer, and they are amazed by it.

Note that the title of the episode is “The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation.”

Enriched beer, in the episode, is a nod to North Korea having been found to be enriching uranium for we don’t know what purpose.

Test Your Yeast

So, while we usually say that life imitates art, in this case, art is imitating life. The show was having fun with the concept of enriched uranium and the rivalry between North Korea and the western world. They turned it into a rivalry between the guys’ bar and the competing bar, and made it about beer versus enriched beer.

Enrichment

When we talk about enrichment, we are typically talking about making something better, more beneficial.

The Oxford English Dictionary has the definition of enrichment as “the act of improving or enhancing the quality or value of something.”

Uranium

So, when we talk about enriched uranium, we mean we make the uranium easier to put to human use.

Uranium is enriched through a few different chemical processes, including gaseous diffusion and gas centrifuges, which makes it a viable energy option.

One of the most important uses is for nuclear energy.

And of course one of the most destructive uses is nuclear weaponry.

Food and Beverages

When it comes to food and beverages, when we enrich them, we typically mean we are adding vitamins and minerals. Another word we use for this is “fortified.”

Cereal can be enriched, bread can be enriched, and milk can be enriched.

Education

Another way we think of enrichment is in education.

A child can have enrichment classes, or materials in the class can be added for enrichment purposes.

We tend to think of the child then getting an even better education thanks to these approaches to enrichment.

Enriched Beer?

But when it comes to beer, we don’t usually think of enrichment.

Indeed, there have been a few attempts at turning beer into a health drink, and they have largely fallen flat.

People may reach for organic beer or gluten free beer, but they are not reaching for beer with extra vitamins and minerals. In short, while beer drinkers may not want any bad elements added to their beer, they certainly are not drinking beer for its health benefits.

Healthy Beer

It is actually funny to thing about how to enrich beer and about making beer healthy when once upon a time beer was actually the healthiest option around when it came to beverages.

Beer, when you think about it, is actually enriched water. It is, in essence, already enriched.

In early times, as populations grew, which meant that waste grew and spread, especially after the rise of capitalism and industrialization, people did not have a reliable drinking source. Rivers and streams could no longer be trusted, and people had nothing to drink with their food, nothing safe anyway.

Beer was the answer.

In most families, women baked bread and brewed beer as acts of nourishment for their children as well as the adults in the household.

Most beer made in households was ale, and it was a simple matter of kilning and cracking the grain to boil and steep, then letting it sit out after it cooled so that the fermentation process would begin. Later a mix of herbs called “gruit” would be added to cut the sweetness down in the beverage, and families would then have a hearty and healthy drink with a very low alcohol content. No one was getting drunk on the family ale.

In this way, beer saved the day and was the healthy option, often keeping children from becoming malnourished on the one hand or sick from contaminated water on the other.

Enriched Beer in Theory

While no beer company is currently brewing enriched beer as far as we know, it can obviously be done in theory.

And when you think about it, you can take a lot of routes to enriching beer.

One lab tried adding goji berries to increase the use of this fruit high in antioxidants. The scientist added the berries at various stages of fermentation to see how much this would increase the vitamin and mineral content to great results.

Another lab experimented with adding different types of plants to the wort during fermentation.

You could try to enrich beer using different grain combinations, playing with fruits and berries, and even adding a sweetener like honey to add in anti-fungal and antibacterial properties.

Enriching just means making the beer more valuable, and that can be done in many ways on many different levels.

As usual, when it comes to brewing, it is a game of experimentation and exploration. Add a little of this and leave off a little of that. Try the beer along the way at different stages, and see what comes of it.

You can do this experimentation with ales and lagers alike, brewing up your own craft beer in small batches, and who knows, maybe you’ll be the first one to market “enriched beer.”

Cheers!

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Sources:

Julien Ducrueta, Pierrick Rébénaque, Serge Diserens, Agnieszka Kosińska-Cagnazzo, Isabelle Héritier, Wilfried Andlauer, Amber ale beer enriched with goji berries – The effect on bioactive compound content and sensorial properties, Food Chemistry
Volume 226, 1 July 2017, Pages 109-118
https://www.soundbrewery.com/enriched-beer/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium