Wine or beer? (2 pages) Suppose you work in the economic development agency of a

Question

Wine or beer? (2 pages)

Suppose you work in the economic development agency of a U.S. city that was once a major manufacturing center. Someone in the mayor’s office has proposed offering economic incentives to a beer maker to encourage the business to locate in a former industrial space. Someone else argues that a winery would be better in the space (perhaps because the mayor prefers wine to beer).  

You are asked: Which firm is likely to need greater financial incentives to locate in your city? Explain in terms of Urban Economics.

Explanation / Answer

Former industrial space can be utilised for manufacturing beer rather than wine because beer is made as industrial product whereas wine is an industrial product. Beer will have more information centimes than wine in this scenario.

Wine Versus Beer, Agricultural Versus Industrial
Wine is an agricultural product. What happens in the vineyard is more important to the final flavor of the wine than what happens after the grapes are picked. It matters what kind of soil is underfoot. Chalky, loamy, granite or volcanic, the character of the soil shows up in the wine.Sunlight and temperature matter as well. Warmer climates produce grapes with higher sugar content, leading to boozier, juicier wines.
Because it is so important, the majority of the vintner’s time and energy is spent tending the grapes. The period of actually making wine, though intense, is really quite short—just a month or so out of the year. Squeeze out the juice, put it in tanks or barrels, and forget it. Once it’s in fermenters, it pretty much just does its thing. This isn’t to say that the winemaker does nothing to influence the character of the wine. They decide whether to use oak or stainless for example. It’s just that once the grapes are picked, the majority of the wine’s final flavor is set.

Beer, on the other hand, is an industrial product. It starts with agricultural ingredients, but it is the processing that the maltster and brewer put the ingredients through that makes beer. There is a reason that a brewery looks like a factory. It is one. A brewery is a beer manufacturing facility.
Sure, the agricultural nature of the ingredients has to be considered. The variety of barley used—be it Klages, Harrington, or some other—has been shown to affect beer flavor. Different varieties have different levels of starch, protein, and enzymes. It matters where hops are grown. A variety grown in one region will taste and smell very different from the same variety grown in another. And bittering alpha acid content of hops varies from crop to crop.
Brewers have access to ingredients from all over the world, while vintners have only the grapes that they grow. Brewers can pick and choose from a dizzying assortment of malt, hops, yeast, and assemble them in an endless number of combinations. The impact of malting far outweighs the subtle flavor differences of barley varietals. And with a little simple math, brewers can adjust recipes and brewing processes to account for yearly crop and bittering alpha acid variations. It’s really the myriad choices the brewer makes after the ingredients have been harvested that determine the profile of a given beer.

SIMILARITIES, DIFFERENCES OF BEER AND WINE
A visit to California Wine Country is a perfect time to compare some of the world’s best artisan beers and wines. It’s fun to learn about the different taste characteristics of each. Beer and wine have a number of similarities and a number of differences. This article discusses several components of the wine and beer making processes as well as the tastes and flavors associated with them.
Fermentation
1.   Both beer and wine are naturally fermented beverages. Yeast produces the primary fermentation process in both. Yeasts eat the sugars in the sweet liquid wort produced by brewing process like they eat the sugar in grape juice.
2.   The primary type of sugar in grape juice is fructose, while the primary sugar in brewing wort is maltose.
3.   It is the action of the yeast in the fermentation process that gives both wine and beer their alcohol content. During fermentation, yeast eat sugar and give off alcohol and carbon dioxide. If this carbon dioxide is captured, it can be used to carbonate beer and sparking wine.
4.   Vintners may use the natural yeast occurring on the grape skin, or they may add a specific winemaking yeast. Brewers almost always add a specific brewer’s yeast. Yeast used for fermentation comes in many different strains and varieties—some better for wine; some better for beers. While they are essentially similar organisms, in that they all eat sugar and produce alcohol, different strains of yeast can have quite different effects on the beer and wine produced. Differences will occur in fermentation speed, alcohol content, aroma and taste characteristics. Both brewers and vintners may add specific yeasts to control the characteristics of the resulting beverage.

Filtering
A clear, bright translucent beer or wine has had the yeast removed from the liquid. An intentionally cloudy beer, or less commonly a cloudy wine, contains residual yeast. Both brewers and vintners may use racking, filtering and other techniques to separate the yeast from the beer or wine before it is bottled.

Aging
Both wine and beer need a bit of aging following fermentation to allow their characteristic tastes to develop. Wines typically benefit from considerably longer aging than do beers. Some ales need only a few days of aging or conditioning, while other beers, such as lagers, typically take several weeks. Other beers are aged more like white wine, meaning they may be aged for several months, sometimes in barrels. Only a few beers, most notably the Belgian Lambics used in Gueuze, are aged for multiple years that would put them in a similar aging category as better red wines. Bottled beer is more similar to a white wine in that it is ready to drink when it is distributed to the market. Red wines typically improve with more bottle aging. Very few beers improve with bottle aging. Once they are released to market, they change with aging, but do not likely improve.

Taste and Aroma Sources
Both beer and wine may have aroma and flavor components derived from (a) ingredients, (b) fermentation and (c) aging.
(a)The ingredients of wine are simply the grape varieties that are in it and the yeast. Beer, on the other hand, has four primary flavor-determining ingredients:
• the amount and types of grains,
• the amounts and types of hops,
• the type of yeast
• to a lesser extent, the water in beer used may also affect the final flavor.
Additionally, if any supplemental ingredients are added, such as herbs, spices or fruits, these will also affect aroma and flavor of the resulting beer or wine.

(b)The type of yeast and the temperature and techniques of fermentation will add flavors and aromas to both wine and beer. For example, if you smell something like apricot, melon or tobacco in a wine or beer, this is a most likely created by the fermentation. A hot fermentation temperature produces more deeply fruity and spicy aromas and tastes. A cool or cold fermentation produces cleaner and lighter flavors. The bottle conditioning process used in some specialty ales to add carbonation to the bottle, somewhat like the Champagne process, will also affect the taste of the finished product. While yeast handles the primary fermentation, sometimes brewers and vintners encourage secondary bacterial fermentations to add additional aromas and modify flavors. The malolactic (non-yeast) secondary fermentation that wines often undergo definitely changes their tastes.

(c)Aging techniques add both flavor and aroma components. Certainly the most noted aging technique is aging in wood and it adds distinctive notes to both wine and beer. French oak produces the signature vanilla extract aroma. Other complex flavors are derived from the slower chemical changes that take place in the aging process. More prevalent in wine, certain aromatic compounds evolve over time to provide a less fruity, more mature bouquet. Flavors of oxidation, also a product of aging, can be noticed in both beer and wine. When an ale is aged in a fresh whiskey barrel, it certainly picks up spiritous notes in the finished beverage.

Sweetness
Brewers and vintners often choose to not ferment out all the sugars in their beer or wine. Residual sugar in both wine and beer makes the beverage have a softer or sweet taste. Beers are more likely to have a bit of sweetness as a flavor component than are table wines, in part because beer often contains extra sugars, not found in grape juice, that are largely unfermentable by the brewing yeast used. Softer styles of wine are typically produced by stopping the fermentation process (removing the yeast) before all the sugar has been converted.

Fruity, Floral, Herbal/Spicy and just plain Nuttiness
1.   The apple, pear, apricot, cherry, and banana fruity aromas and tastes characteristic of some beer styles (many ales) are byproducts of fermentation and not from added fruit. The pungent citrus-grapefruit aroma in many American IPAs, however, comes from the hops and not fermentation. In wine, the fruity or even jammy aromas (esters) can come from both the fermentation process and the grape varieties themselves. In both beer and wine, aging tends to lessen the fresh fruit-like aromas.
2.   Grassy, herbal aromas and flavors in beer mostly comes from the hops. Certain hop varieties are known for that. In wine, these flavors are mostly associated with certain grape varieties (like a grassy Sauvignon Blanc) and are also somewhat dependent on fermentation techniques.
3.   Floral aromas in beer come most often from the hops, namely a group of hop varieties known as noble hops, traditionally used in better European lagers. In wine, floral aromas are most often associated with a particular grape variety, such as Riesling.
4.   Spiciness is another byproduct of fermentation. Depending on the combination of the specific yeast and ingredients, a number of spice-like aromas may occur. The characteristic clove aroma of a good Hefeweizen is produced by the fermentation process, as are the black pepper and anise notes often detected in dark red wines. A clove or cinnamon aroma in white wines is most often associated with aging in oak barrels.
5.   Chocolate is a great aroma to find in wine and beer. If it appears in your Porter or Stout, it has come from the dark roasting of the malts used to make it (unless the label actually says it has chocolate or cocoa nibs added). If it’s in your Cabernet Sauvignon, chocolate it’s comes from a combination of fermentation and barrel aging.
6.   Butter is often a tell-tale characteristic of a Chardonnay that has purposely undergone a secondary, malolactic fermentation. But If you taste butter in beer, and you are not drinking an English Pale Ale, chances are it’s a flaw. In both wine and beer the butter is a byproduct of a fermentation process.
7.   Nutty aromas are more common in beer than in table wine. In beer the nuttiness is most often associated with ales made from well-toasted malt. Brown Ales may be particularly nutty. In wines, nuttiness is mostly associated with fortified, barrel-aged dessert wines such as sherries and ports, but may also be found in an occasional red table wine.

Bitterness
Bitterness in beer is mostly attributed to the hops, though some can also come from dark roasted malts. Bitterness in wine is associated with a high tannin content and and is more common in certain red wines. Tannins (or phenolics) in wine come from fermenting the juice with the grape skins, stems, and seeds and from aging in wood.

Acidity
Wines often have an acidic tartness as a major flavor component. Most beers do not. Grapes have good quantities of naturally occurring fruit acids (most importantly, tartaric acid) that add a tart flavor to wine. Beers typically don’t have that tart component because malt and hops are not acidic. However, certain traditional beer styles do get a lactic acid tartness from special secondary fermentation techniques. Good examples include Guinness Stout, Belgian Lambics, Flemish Red and Flemish Brown Ales, and Berliner Weisse. Today, craft brewers are also experimenting with souring many other types of beer.

Color
Beer gets its most of its color from the grain used to produce it. Beer malts are toasted to different degrees, ranging from pale, to caramel, to reddish, to brown and black. Depending on the ratios of the different malts added to the mash, beers pick up a corresponding color. Some color may also added during the boiling of the wort. A longer boil can cause some caramelization of the malt sugars and darken the beer a bit, especially one that starts with pale malts. In winemaking, if the juice is fermented with the grape skins in the tank, wine picks up color from the skins. For juice that is fermented without the skins, the resulting wine is typically white, whether the grapes were white, red or black.
Lighter-styled beers, usually golden in color, are more like lighter-styled white wines in that their flavors are more subtle and they have less immediate flavor impact in the mouth. Many darker beers are more similar to big red wines in that they have big, rich, full flavors.

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