BEER BASICS

HOW TO MAKE BEER

If you’re a beer enthusiast interested in how your favorite beverage is made, then you’ve come to the right place.

There are eight major steps that go into the brewing process: malting, mashing, lautering, boiling, fermenting, conditioning, filtering, and packaging. Below, we briefly explain these steps.

• Malting: the process of turning barely grain into malt. Broken down into 3 steps: steeping (grain soaks in hot water solvent approx. 40 hours), germination (grain is spread out on floor for approx. 5 days), and kilning (now-malt goes through very high temp drying in kiln).
• Mashing: malt is mixed with hot water in vessel called mash tun in order to create a cereal mash. This process creates a sugar-rich liquid called “wort.” Lautering: the process of straining the wort through the bottom of the mash tun to separate the wort from the grain.
• Boiling: the beer wort is then boiled with hops (flowers used a s flavoring agent for beer) in a large tank called a “copper” or brew kettle.
• Fermenting: the process of converting sugars into alcohol. It is achieved through the use of yeasts and/or bacteria and the absence of oxygen.
• Conditioning: the process of maturing or aging the beer by transferring it to another container (so that it is no longer exposed to the dead yeast and other debris).
• Filtering: stabilizes the flavor of the beer and gives it a polished shine. This may be achieved through filter sheets.
• Packaging: the simplest step of them all; putting the beer into containers to be distributed to consumers.

Common Types of Beers