Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Brewing Beer (Process)

Beer is a much more complex drink than many people realize. In order for beer to be complete it must go through many different steps. People have been brewing beer for over ten thousand years, and the process of how people brew it has stayed basically the same. People don’t realize the process and time that has gone into every beer they drink.

The brewing of every beer begins with infusion. This is the process of extracting the sugars that are stored up in the malt, whether the malt is barley, wheat, or any other grain (Glover). The malt is first ground up in a mill, the ground up malt is known as the grist. The grist is then mixed with hot water, which beer brewers refer to as liquor, and is left to sit in a vessel knows as the mash tun. The hot liquor mixed with the grist is left to sit in the mash tun for a couple of hours where it is gradually heated to seventy-five degrees Celsius. At the end of this time, the mash tun will contain a warm, thick, and sweet smelling liquid called sweet wort (Tritton). The sweet wort is drained away from the mash tun and the leftover grains that were filtered out of the sweet wort are later sold as cattle feed.

Now that the sugars have been extracted from the grains and the sweet wort has been created, the sweet wort is ready to be boiled. The sweet wort is run through brew kettles, which are large closed vessels that are heated by steam coils. The sweet wort is boiled in the brew kettles with hops for an hour or more. Hops come from a tall plant that is one of the species of plants that is distantly related to the cannabis plant. They are dioecious plants meaning there are male and female plants (Ogle). Only hops from female plants are used in the brewing process. Hops provide essential oils which give the beer its bitterness. Sometimes, hops are added at the very beginning of the boiling process to give the beer a stronger bitterness. After the boiling process is complete, the wort which is now called a “hopped wort” is ran through a device called a hopback. The hopback removes any remains of the hops from the wort. The wort is then cooled in preparation for fermenting (Glover).

The hopped wort is placed in fermentation vessels also of which yeast is also added to. From the yeast, millions of tiny fungus cells begin the feast on the sugars that were originally extracted from the grist, which turns the sugars into alcohol. This goes on for about four to eight days also producing carbon dioxide in the wort. The carbon dioxide is what the gives the beer its foam head when poured into a glass. In top-fermenting, the process used when brewing ales, the yeast rises to the surface forming a heavy head around the top vessel which needs to be skimmed to prevent overflowing. In bottom fermenting beers, the yeast eventually sinks to the bottom of the vessel (Bravery). When fermentation is complete, the yeast is drained from the bottom of the fermentation vessel.

After the fermentation process, the liquid, now known as “green beer,” is run into conditioning tanks where it is left to settle and mature. The amount of time the beer matures can affect different aspects of the beer. Whether or not the beer is going to be cloudy when it’s in a packaged container, or being poured into a glass (Glover). The amount of time the “green beer” sits to mature is different from beer to beer. For example, the maturing time for mild ales is quite short. It can be anywhere from three to seven days. For bottom fermenting beers, the settling time can take as long as weeks or even months. Most beers today have a relatively short maturing and conditioning period, which is usually a minimum of three days and it is done at negative one degrees Celsius (Bravery). Once the beer has matured the proper amount time and has been run through one more filter to rid it of any leftover particles, the beer is ready to be packaged and sold.

The process of making beer is more of an art more than anything. There are so many things such as hops, temperature, time, grain, ect., that can vary the outcome of a wort of beer, and if beer doesn’t get brewed exactly how it is supposed to, the outcome will be very disappointing. Beer is a very complex drink and before anyone is able to drink a beer, there is a huge process that must take place, which most people don’t realize and take for granted.

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