How to...

… brew multi-award winning beer.

Brewing is a mixture of art and science. Historically it was a mixture of trial and error together with good observation that made the difference between good and bad beers. Through time science began to provide explanations of the art.

There are basically two ways of looking at brewing.
1) Mix a solid and a liquid at the start of the day & spend the rest of the day (and subsequent week) trying to separate them.
2) Make a mess and tidy up.

The overall process is fairly simple. However, because we are dealing with nature - things do not always go to plan. So here is an overview and if you want to know more then get stuck into the detail later on.

We start by selecting which malt is to be used for a given recipe. This malt is then milled, fairly coarsely, to produce grist. This is then mixed with hot water at about 65-70°C. The temperature is critical but varies depending on beer style and type being made. The resulting thick porridge (called mash) is collected in a vessel called a mash tun, basically a large stainless steel tank with a special base. The base has a series of slots in it about 2mm wide which allow the liquid to be run off, but keeping the solid materials behind.

The liquid is run off into another large stainless steel vessel called a copper. This is simply a large kettle which is heated using steam. To ensure all the goodness is extracted from the mash, more hot water is sprayed over it to rinse out the remaining sugars.

Once the copper is filled the hops are added and boiled together for about an hour. The whole bitter/sweet mixture is then transferred through a heat exchanger, cooled from about 102°C to 20°C, and collected in another large stainless steel vessel – the fermenting vessel. Yeast is now added which ferments the brew over the next couple of days. At this stage we have beer, though still not ready to drink yet.

After settling the beer is run into a further settling vessel – a conditioning tank. From here it is run into clean sterile casks ( stainless steel 9 gallon tubs). After storing for a week or two the beer is then distributed to the pubs for sale.

This is a simple overview of the process.