The Brewing Process

Here I'm going to outline the long and arduous process that is brewing. The story of beer does not start in a cellar, but in a field. Beer is made of primarily four ingredients, and in Germany with only these four due to the Reinheitsgebot (a brewing law that has been in place since the 1500's): water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. There are two different types of barley and many varieties of hops, but I won't go into that. The first real step to make beer is to take the barley from the fields and malt it. This process soaks the grains in water and starts the germination, which transforms the starches in the grain into sugars. The germination is then stopped by drying and heating the grains, at which point it is usually ships to the brewers. Most brewers start with this malted grain. They grind it down to varying degrees, some making it into a very fine powder, others a more grainy mixture. This is then mixed with water and heated to extract the sugars into the water and finalize the breakdown of starches and proteins. This process is called mashing. Afterward, the mash is transported to another bin with a false bottom, the lauterton. Here the syrupy sugar-water is separated from the remaining barley husks and pumped into the boiling kettle. The syrupy substance is called wort. For homebrewing, it is much easier to just start with concentrated wort than to start with grains. Then comes the boil where more water is added as are any hops. The total boiling time is usually between an hour and an hour and a half. Bittering hops are added at the beginning of the boil, flavor hops in the middle, and aroma hops at the end. During the boil the alpha acids in the hops, which make the beer bitter, become soluble and disperse into the wort. After the boil the wort is cooled, then placed in the fermenter where the yeast is added. Top-fermenting yeast works at warmer temperatures and only takes 2-3 days to ferment, while bottom-fermenting yeast takes 5-6 days to ferment and works at lower temperatures. Top-fermented beers are typically ales and wheat beers while the bottom-fermented beers are lagers. After fermentation, the liquid can be called beer, but it is still young and probably not the best to drink. It still needs to condition for a week or two before it can be bottled. Once the beer is ripe and ready it can be filtered. There are of course unfiltered beers, but those often to not last as long as the yeast is still working. After filtration comes bottling and then your beer is finally ready to drink!