The Brewing Proccess

The process for making beer can be summed up in 8 simple steps.

Crush the grain. The individual grains of malted barley must be cracked open to allow the water to reach the starches inside the husk.

Mash the grain. The brewing term for combining the grain with hot water which activates enzymes in the grain to convert the starches to sugars.

Sparge or Lauter the grain. These are the techniques for extracting the liquid containing the sugars, now called sweet wort (or wert) from the grain while leaving the husks behind.

Boil the wort and add the hops. Boiling converts the oils in the hops into the compounds which give beer it’s bitterness.

Cool the wort. The yeast work best at very specific temperatures, usually between 45-65 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the type of beer being made.

Pitch the yeast. Pitching is the brewing term for adding the yeast to the wort in the fermentation vessel.

Ferment the wort into beer. During fermentation the yeast convert the sugars in the beer into alcohol and co2 gas (carbonation).

Condition and bottle the beer.

While the process can be summed up in just a few sentences, the devil, as they say, is in the details. Understanding the science behind each of the steps, the chemistry occurring in each stage of the brewing process is key. But there is also an element of art in brewing. A creativity in selecting from the hundreds of available grains and hops and harnessing the living yeast to create the beer the brewer intended.

Tagged as: brewing, how, made, proccess