A beer glossary for new joiners in drinks companies

How to use this glossary

Skim it once in your first week. Come back when a word in a meeting or a report makes no sense. The terms are grouped by where you are likely to hear them, from raw materials through brewing and packaging to sales and finance.

For a fuller picture of how the parts connect, read the beer business explained alongside it.

Raw materials

• Malt. Barley that has been soaked, sprouted and dried. It provides the sugar yeast turns into alcohol.
• Adjunct. A non-malt source of sugar or starch, such as rice, maize or sugar syrup. Common in Indian mainstream lagers.
• Hops. Dried flowers of the hop plant, usually as pellets or extract. They give bitterness and aroma.
• Maltster. The company that turns barley into malt.
• Malt analysis. The quality sheet sent with each malt lot. Brewers use it to plan recipes and yield.

Brewing and fermentation

• Brewhouse. The part of the brewery where malt and water become wort.
• Mash. Crushed malt mixed with hot water so enzymes turn starch into sugar.
• Wort. The sweet liquid drained from the mash and boiled with hops. Pronounced "wurt".
• Brew. One batch from the brewhouse.
• Plato (°P). A measure of how much sugar is dissolved in wort or beer, roughly as a percentage by weight.
• Original gravity. Wort strength before fermentation.
• CCT. Cylindroconical tank. A tall steel fermenter with a cone at the bottom where yeast settles.
• Lager and ale. The two main families of beer, defined by the yeast. Lager yeast works cool and slow, ale yeast warmer and faster.
• Maturation or lagering. Holding beer cold after fermentation so its flavour settles and it clears.
• High gravity brewing. Brewing strong wort and diluting it later to the final strength.

Finishing and packaging

• Filtration. Removing yeast and haze so beer is bright.
• Bright beer tank (BBT). Holds filtered beer ready to pack.
• Filler. The machine that fills bottles or cans. Usually the pace setter of the line.
• Pasteurisation. Heating packaged beer to make it microbiologically stable. Measured in pasteurisation units (PU).
• Returnable bottle. A glass bottle that comes back from the market to be washed and refilled. Common in India, typically 650 ml.
• OEE. Overall equipment effectiveness, a measure of how well a packaging line uses its time. See our OEE guide.
• Changeover. Switching a line from one product, pack or label to another.

Quality

• ABV. Alcohol by volume, the percentage of the beer that is alcohol.
• IBU or EBU. Bitterness units, roughly milligrams of bitter hop compounds per litre.
• EBC. A scale for beer colour. Also used for haze.
• Dissolved oxygen (DO). Oxygen in beer. It causes staling, so it is kept as low as possible.
• Off flavour. A flavour that should not be there, such as butter (diacetyl) or wet cardboard (oxidation).
• Trueness to type. Whether a batch tastes as that brand should.
• Hold. Stock blocked from release until quality signs it off.

Sales, supply and finance

• Hectolitre (hl). 100 litres. The standard volume unit in brewing.
• Case. The standard sales unit. In India, often twelve 650 ml bottles.
• SKU. A unique combination of brand, pack and often state.
• Shipments. Cases sold from the brewery to the next layer, a distributor or state corporation.
• Depletions. Cases sold from that layer to retailers and bars. Closer to real demand.
• Strong beer. In India, beer typically above 5 per cent ABV, often a separate duty category.
• Excise. State duty on alcohol. Rules and rates vary by state and change, so always check the current notification.
• Dry day. A day when alcohol sales are not allowed.
• Trippage. How many times a returnable bottle is used before it is lost or broken.

Words that mean different things to different teams

Watch out for "volume". A brewer may mean brewed hectolitres, a planner packed cases and a sales lead depletions. "Yield" can mean extract recovery in the brewhouse or beer recovered from a tank. When a number looks wrong, ask which meaning the speaker had in mind. It saves more time than any glossary.

The quickest way to make these words stick is to see them in action. A guided walk past a brewhouse, a CCT and a filler, followed by an opt-in tasting within company policy, does more than a week of reading.

Common questions

What is the difference between wort and beer?

Wort is the sweet liquid before fermentation. Once yeast has turned its sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, it is beer.

What does CCT stand for?

Cylindroconical tank, the tall steel vessel most breweries use to ferment and mature beer.

Is a case the same size everywhere?

No. In India a beer case is often twelve 650 ml bottles, but can and small bottle cases differ. Always check the case definition in a report.

Why do Indian beer SKUs multiply so fast?

Labels and pack details often differ by state, so one beer in one bottle can be several SKUs.

Learning for yourself? See Brewing Fundamentals