Ingredient Preference Help

Sounds like you are looking for beers that fit into Reinheursgebot, the old German Putity Law, and from my understanding a lot of traditional German beers should meet these requirements.

I know it will be hard to tell if breweries are using malt extracts instead of barely, but I feel you have a better chance with smaller craft breweries of having an all malt base with no extracts. Checking some breweries websites might help, some breweries are actually pretty open about what goes into their beers even though it’s not on the label.

 

Where are you? That will help others give you recommendations.

Here in NC we have OMB as a completely 100% authentic German style brewer and as authentic as it gets. Bottle most everything they sell.

 

You can go to this AB InBev website; they list the ingredients of their beers.

https://www.tapintoyourbeer.com/index.cfm

The first beer that comes up is Becks which lo and behold has the following ingredient list: “Ingredients: Water; Barley Malt; Hops.”

Yeast is not explicitly listed but needless to say without it beer does not ‘happen’.

Cheers!

 

Welcome to the BA site, OakGuy. You've joined a site that can be very helpful to answer posts like yours. However, all of us are in the same boat with you and do not have the benefit of seeing a list of ingredients, so it is not any easier to compile a list of beers that fit your requirements than it is for you to do so.

I can generalize and say what was said in the post above that craft breweries are likely where you will find these beers. You can look at a beer's label and determine if flavorings such as fruit, coffee, chocolate, etc. have been added, and you can also eliminate certain beer styles that traditionally are brewed with some wheat, rye, etc. I'm going to guess that 80% of the remaining beers that aren't excluded above will fit your criteria, but it will be difficult to determine in the remaining 20% that might use malt or hop extract.

Some BA members might be aware of beers that 100% fit your cruteria, but to avoid you compiling a list of these beers, some of which you would be unable to easily acquire because of limited geographical distro, I suggest that you update your personal profile info to include your state so that local beers can be recommended to you by members in your state/region.

 

I would think most beer fits into your parameters. But, your parameters also rule out Wheat and Rye beers.

 

The recommendations for German beers might be leading you off track. Reinheitsgebot regulations will allow things like hop extract.

 

Anything by Schneider Weiss or Weinstephaner are go too for me as far as being reihehietsgabibble certified

 

I think your best bet would be to swing into local breweries and put your premise to the bartender on duty. my experience is that many (most?) small US brewers are meeting your standards, at least in their more basic styles. You might excluded from trying some of their more experimental offerings but I would think most of their ambers, pales, browns, IPAs, porters/stouts, would be fine by your guidelines

 

Hey OakGuy, welcome to BA. If I lived in SoCal I believe I'd attend a BrewFest and ask the brewers themselves.

 

Beer is, by definition, made from malt extract.

 

Most craft breweries use malt - there are a very few that will use malt extract, but they are far between. It comes to cost - a one-time cost of a mill and mash tun, and being able to buy whole grain, versus buying extract for every batch, which is much more expensive.
Hop extracts are more common, but still not really widespread, except in some cases for duper hoppy beers.
Very very few, if any, craft brewers use colorants other than roasted or highly kilned barleys (or wheat, etc)
Flavorings are where things get a bit trickier, with the proliferation of fruited IPAs and such (grapefruit, mango, etc) Those will normally be right on the label, if not part of the name itself.
Then there are vanilla, chocolate, bourbon aging, and so on.
If you have questions, most breweries are happy to answer questions.

IN short, you shouldn't have any problems finding beers that are just those 4 ingredients.

 

A few smaller places don't have mills, but order precrushed bags of grain from the suppliers.

 

I'm not familiar with all of the CA breweries. The ones I was talking about are ~1000 bbl or less in MI.

The post was to say there are small Breweries that don't own a mill that still mash the grist.