The Brewing Process, Simplified

You too can make beer! Brewing is the production of beer through steeping a starch (usually grains) in water and fermenting with yeast. The process of brewing is the process of steeping, such as with making tea. Brewing has taken place since the 6th millennium BCE in ancient Egypt. The basic ingredients of beer are water, a fermentable starch source (can be converted to alcohol) such as malted barley, a occasionally a secondary starch source (adjunct) such as corn or rice.

There are several steps in the brewing process, these are: malting, milling, mashing, lautering, boiling, fermenting, conditioning, filtering and finally packaging. But first, let us go over the basic ingredients of a beer. Water, beer is composed mostly of water. Different regions have water with different mineral components, better suited to making different types of beer. Dublin, Ireland has hard water suited to making a stout style (like Guinness). Pilsen, Czech Republic has soft water, well suited to making pale lager (like Pilsner Urquell).

The next ingredient needed is a starch, a fermentable ingredient that determines the strength and flavor of the beer. The most commonly used starch is malted grain. Grain is soaked in water and then dried in a kiln. Malting the grain produces enzymes that convert starches into fermentable sugars. Some brewers have produced gluten-free beer made with sorghum (a grain that does not contain gluten) with no barley malt for people that cannot digest gluten-containing grains.

Our next ingredient is hops, the flower of the hop vine. It is used as a flavoring and preservative agent. Hops lend several characteristics to beer, they contribute a bitterness that balances the sweetness of the malt. The bitterness of beers is measured on the International Bitterness Units (IBU's) scale. For more in-depth information about hops, read the blog post titled The Little Hop That Could. Our next important ingredient is yeast. Yeast metabolizes the sugars extracted from grains and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. Some brewers add a clarifying agent to beer, this makes the beer appear bright and clean, rather than cloudy. Ok, now that you know the basic ingredients let's look at the brewing process!

All beers are brewed using a simple process. Refer to the Wachusett Brewing Company "Process" diagram above and use it as a guide. The malt is crushed to break apart the grain kernels and expose their carbohydrates and sugars, this process is called "milling". These cracked grains can better absorb water and their starchy insides are now exposed. Mashing is the next process, in which the starches are turned into sugars which can be fermented. Hot water is added, and naturally-occurring enzymes in the malt break down the starches into sugars. This conversion from starch to sugar is "saccharification" (a nice vocabulary word). The result of this mashing process is called "wort" (pronounced "wert"). The wort is strained through the mash tun in a process called lautering.

The wort is moved into a large tank and boiled with hops and occasionally with other herbs and/or sugars added. Boiling terminates the further breakdown of starches. At the end of the boil, the hopped wort settles in a vessel called a "whirlpool" in which solids are separated out. Boiling the wort ensures its sterility and prevents infections.  After the whirlpool, the wort is transferred rapidly to a heat exchanger to be cooled. Yeast is unable to grow in high temperatures, so an ideal temperature is very important. When the yeast is added to the wort, the frementation process begins and sugars become alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The beer then sits and conditions. Flavors become smoother, and unwanted flavors dissipate. Conditioning may take a week to several months, so the next time your favorite craft brewery runs out of a particular style, please be mindful of this potentially long conditioning process! Some beers are then filtered and are ready to be kegged or canned or bottled.

Read about the Samuel Adams brewing process on their website. If you are interested in a more in-depth resource on brewing, check out this book titled "The Brewer's Handbook". Or take a brewery tour, Wachusett Brewing Company offers tours Wednesday-Saturday. This is a great way to experience the scale of a production brewing operation. The next time you are making a homebrew, you are really just following many of these steps on a smaller scale!

Do you have better understanding of how the brewing process works? Have you ever done a brewery tour? We would love to hear from you!