America on Tap is Coming to Sea Isle: A Craft Beer Primer

Lite Rock 96.9 WFPG invites you to join us for America on Tap, an authentic American beer festival on Saturday May 16th at Kix McNutley's in Sea Isle City.

To get you ready for the big beer fest, here's a beer primer with the basics everyone should know.

Our primal craving for beer can grow into affection by simply appreciating what it really is, and how it’s made.

The definition of beer goes something like this: an alcoholic beverage, made from malted cereal grain, flavored with hops, and brewed by slow fermentation. Mainly, beer is made from malted barley, hops, yeast and water.

There are over 100 varieties of beer, and America is home to more styles and brands than any other market in the world. Each and every one of them falls within 1 of 2 camps (which do not describe color, strength or flavor), determined by the type of yeast: Ales and Lagers.

Beery terms like “Microbrewery” and “Craft Beer” are cropping up more frequently as attention in America shifts back towards traditional brewing roots. They are often thought of as synonymous, but distinguishing factors separate them. They emerged partly to create distance from “domestic” beer. Technically, domestic just means produced in the US.  In beer-speak “domestic”, through the omission of specifics like “craft beer”, refers to American lager from large breweries.

Craft brewing is an elusive caption and hard to pin an explicit description on. The classification promotes beer based on quality with criteria for production volume (6 million barrels per year or less).  The idea is that craft beer is distinctive and made with better ingredients. A craft brewer is “small, independent and traditional.” A craft beer does not have to come from a microbrewery. Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams are all too big to be microbreweries, yet fit in the mold of craft brewing.

A Microbrewery, recently re-defined by the Brewers Association, is a market segment of the craft beer industry and one that “produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year with 75% or more of its beer sold off-site”. It is about quantity, not quality. Dogfish Head, Clipper City and New Belgium are all microbreweries.

You'll have a chance to sample many excellent beers at the upcoming America on Tap with Lite Rock 96.9 WFPG at Kix McNutleys' in Sea Isle City on May 16th from 2:30p to 6p.

Get Your America on Tap Tickets Now!