I've been on an internship at Hill Farmstead Brewery in Vermont and thought I would collect some thoughts on what makes good beer great, hopefully with some connections to bread and gastronomy more generally:
Unpasteurized beer is alive. By manipulating yeast cell counts, fermentable sugars, and temperature, brewers try to capture lightning in a bottle.
How should one talk about vitality? One might talk about beer quality from any number of angles. Just as a poorly roasted coffee bean will yield a coffee that is flat in the cup, the same would be true for beer (bad process usually equals bad flavor).
Great beer achieves balance and depth from a number of different factors:
Yeast strain
Attenuation
Sweetness
Bitterness
Hop aroma /aromatics
Carbonation
Crispness
Softness/Minerality/Mouthfeel
Temperature
The balance and specificity of execution necessary to deliver great beer oddly reminds me of this article on the commercial production of ketchup by Malcolm Gladwell:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/06/the-ketchup-conundrum