How is Beer Made?

How is Beer Made?

29 Mar 2021

by The Craft Beer Lover

If you didn't already know, brewers are basically chemists. They take four or five simple ingredients and use variations in temperature and time to take those ingredients and turn them into liquid gold.

If you have ever wondered about how beer is made, we can tell you. But know it is the hard work of dedicated artisans who pay meticulous attention to the details of this process. 

Let's dive a litter deeper into how brewers work their magic!

Grain Bill and Milling Grains

The first step in the brewing process is to assemble and mill the grains. The most common grain is malted barley, but rarely is a recipe made with just one grain. It is often a mix of several kinds of malted barley and sometimes a lesser amount of wheat, corn, rye, or rice.

This mixture is known as the grain bill. The malted grains are passed through a Mill, which crushes them and exposes as many enzymes as possible. Exposing these enzymes will be crucial to the next step of the brewing process, when the milled grains are sent to the Mash Tun.

Mashing

Now that the malted grains have been milled, they are combined with already hot water in what is referred to as the Mash Tun.

The mash tun is a large vessel that will hold the grain and water mixture for somewhere around an hour while the enzymes turn starches into sugars.

Think of this somewhere along the lines of steeping tea. These grains release the sugars into the water. Once the water is separated from the "spent" grains, what is left is a sweet liquid know as Wort.

Mashing is where the beer's colour and body will be created, but the sweet wort has a long way to go before becoming beer.

Boil and Hop Addition

The spent grains are filtered out of the hot wort, and what follows is one of the more exciting stages of flavor development in the brewing process.

The hot wort is transferred to a large container called the Kettle for boiling. During the boil, the wort will be pasteurized and combined with hops, which help preserve the beer and balance it with some much-needed bitterness.

Hops added early in the boil, which usually lasts an hour, will add bitterness and preservative qualities.

Late addition hops provide flavor and aromatics.

Some styles like the Hazy IPA have very few early addition hops and a large amount of hops added toward the end of the boil or even after. This is why you can have a beer with very low bitterness but a ton of hop flavor.

The boil is also where you will add other ingredients like spices, citrus zest, or even ginger.

Pitching Yeast and Fermentation

The boiled wort is now ready to become beer, but it is missing one essential ingredient: yeast!

Yeast is actually a living organism whose main job in the brewing process is to consume all of the sugar in the wort and then produce oxygen and alcohol.

This process is known as fermentation.

First, the wort is cooled, and then the brewers "pitch" the yeast into the fermentation vessel. Over several days the yeast will do its job, and the result is the bubbly alcoholic drink we know and love.

Different yeast functions better at different temperatures, and what temperature wort is fermented at will have a huge effect on the style. Lagers are fermented at cooler temperatures, around 7-13 degrees, and ales are fermented about 12  degrees warmer. 

Filtration and Conditioning

Towards the end of the fermentation process, some styles will call for more hops or other ingredients, but after a few days, the newly created beer is ready for conditioning.

The beer will sit for several days while the yeast settles and the flavors mellow. If required, the beer will be filtered and then transferred to what is known as the Bright Tank, where it will be carbonated and stored until it can be transferred into kegs, cans, or bottles.

As a conclusion

The art of brewing is such that the same ingredients could make two completely different beers if different decisions are made throughout the process.

These steps can seem straightforward, but it is incredibly simple variations that yield all of the different styles of beer we consume today. So next time you are enjoying your favorite brew puchased directly from the brewery at Only Craft Beer, make sure to thank your brewer for their attention to detail in the labor of love that is brewing.

And remember, become a Craft Champion and you will pay less for your favourite beer, ALWAYS!