The Truth about Beer. Three Most Popular Myths
30.01.15

Dmytro Zalevskyy, the brewer at the Beer Theatre “Pravda”, is talking about “live” beer and the most common beer myths.

Myth number 1 – powdered beer

Powdered beer is nonsense! Just imagine a production process of such powder and financial expenses for “converting” it into beer. There is no sense to do it! Classic ingredients are malt, yeast, hops, that are comparatively cheap. But beer quality depends on these ingredients, brewer's skills, keeping to the technological process thoroughly and production cleanliness. Whatever marketing and advertisements say, all beer is ecologic and natural. 

The Beer Theatre “Pravda” is used a technology that differs from common German and Czech brewing school. Except classic ingredients, i.e. malt, hops, water and yeast, we are experimenting too, adding sugar (classic, caramel), spices in beer. 

Myth number 2 – "live" beer

People often ask us if our beer is "live or alive" and what its shelf life is. And when they find out that shelf life is from 3 months to 5 years, they say it's because of "chemical substances", "powder"...

A brewer spends 80% of his time to maintain cleanliness and clean equipment. Otherwise, dirt or bacteria can get into beer that will turn sour in a week. To avoid it, brewing companies have to pasteurize it.

Non-pasteurized beer has got live yeast producing fermentation. Such beer is called "live". During pasteurization beer is heated and cooled quickly after which all live organisms are dying. Such process kills yeast besides foreign bacteria that considerably influence taste and beer flavour. Pasteurization is a nightmare for real non-mass beer production. 
 
We brew only non-pasteurized beer at "Pravda" and for the time being a bottle of beer has a shelf life of 3 months. And we will increase it, I believe. Level of knowledge and skills allow us to make brewing process clean, that's why beer can be kept very long.
 
Myth number 3 – alcohol is added into beer

The third popular myth about beer is that alcohol is added into beer to make it stronger. In fact, alcohol is very expensive. And could you imagine how much alcohol must be used in order to make 8-9% volume from 4,5%? It would be purely unprofitable!
 
Yeast produces alcohol in beer. Beer can reach 12-13% with traditional beer yeast. If simplifying, our task in brewing stronger beer is adding more malt into yeast (that contains sugar). Yeast consumes sugar, releases alcohol and carbon dioxide into beer. The more sugar yeast gets, the stronger beer will be. 

Evidently, mass production brewing companies don’t have much time in finishing fermentation process in whole. For this reason, their beer taste is not full and, as a result, we feel beer malt taste and alcohol taste separately.
 
We brew three beer sorts at "Pravda": light beer - "Svitlo" - 4,5%, stronger - "Syla" - 8%, "Svyato" - 8,5%. 

The Beer Theatre “Pravda” is located at 32 Rynok Square, opening hours 10:00 – 02:00, tel.: +38 050 37 44 986, +38 067 310 83 23.