The Pilgrim Brewer
Making Beer
Brewing starts with malt, which is created by steeping barley in water, beginning the process of germination. At a precise moment, the germination is arrested by adding heat. Malting is a process that is generally done separately from beer making, as the resulting malt can become a feedstock for either brewing beer or making whiskey.
Stages of brewing
Breweries start their process by taking malt and feeding it through a roller mill, to crack it open and expose digested grain extracts at the centre of the grain.3 The gentle handling of the husk at this point is important to the later stage where the intact husk is used for filtering.
After milling, the cracked malt is soaked in hot water for a period of time. This process of “mashing in” dissolves the fermentable sugars from the barley malt, which is then strained—lautered”through the barley husks at the bottom of the mash. The resulting clear filtered liquid is called wort, which is transferred to the brew kettle where brewing proper can begin.4
The wort is boiled, which sterilizes the liquid, coagulates the protein in the grain, and denatures the malt enzymes. Hops are added immediately for bittering. After approximately an hour, and just before the end of the boil, more hops are added for the purpose of imparting aroma to the wort. The boiling of the wort with the hops results in numerous complex reactions between the ingredients, which influences greatly the final flavour of the beer. After the boil, the wort is stirred with a paddle for half an hour, then allowed to settle for an equal amount of time. This persuades residual solids to settle out at the centre of the brewing vessel.5
The hopped wort is then transferred to a fermentation vessel, where yeast is added. Over a period of about a week, the yeast works its way through the wort, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide in the process, thereby creating beer.
The final stage in crafting the beer is allowing it to age in conditioning tanks. This allows all of the flavours to fully develop, and results in a clearer, more stable beer. Ales are finished conditioning in a week, lagers in four to six. In a process known as racking, the beer is then transferred to kegs for distribution. Bottles and cans are other possibilities, but each requires separate washing and filling equipment. For simplicity, this thesis posits a draught-only production facility.
Icons: milling, mashing/lautering, brewing, fermenting, conditioning, racking