Brewing in depth

The verb at the heart of this list is vergären, and it keeps the strong forms of gären: the yeast vergor the sugar, and the finished beer ist vergoren. That is worth fixing early, because gären itself has two sets of past forms and chooses between them by meaning. In the cellar it is strong: der Most gor, das Bier hat gegoren. Once it leaves the cellar and describes a mood, the weak forms are the usual choice: im Volk gärte es, there was unrest brewing, and der Ärger hatte lange in ihr gegärt. English does the same figurative work with ferment and brew and never has to choose a conjugation to do it. The rest of the list follows the beer from the kiln to the glass and ends with the vocabulary of the tasting room, where a fault has a name before it has a cause: buttrig, pappig, lichtstichig.