The Brewing Process

Beer is brewed using a combination of grains; the most common grain used to make beer is barley. The barley is harvested and then malted . Most beer is the product of malted barley and made by fermenting the sugars from the malted barley and forming it into alcohol. The sugar that most brewers use is a wide range of malts including lager malts, pale malts, Vienna malts, Munich malts, toasted malts, roasted malts, and chocolate malts. The combination of malted barley gives each beer its own distinct characteristics; the lighter beers use lighter malts, the darker the beer, the more toasted, roasted and chocolate malts are used. In general, this results in darker beers having more identifiable roasted and nutty characteristics.

Water is added to the malted barley in the mash tun and mixed until it has an oatmeal-like appearance. Additional water is added and then the resulting sugar water (now called wort ) is extracted through a whirlpool action or through draining the liquid through a false bottom in the mash kettle. The wort is boiled and flavoured with hops and sometimes other additives (like honey or maple for sweetness). Hops are added at different stages (start, middle, finish) to create different flavours in the beer. Temperature rests are also used to create different desired end results including increased head retention or body. After the wort is boiled for around 90 minutes, it is rapidly cooled through a heat exchanger and transferred into the fermentation tank. Yeast is added at this point and this is where the real magic of the brewing process begins. The yeast ferments the wort and converts the sugar to alcohol. The process takes 7-14 days depending on the style of the beer and the temperature that the beer is fermented at. Lagers are fermented at a cold temperature at the bottom of the fermentation tank taking a longer period of time. Ales are fermented at the top of the tank and at a warmer temperature taking a shorter period of time. From this point some beers are transferred to a conditioning tank or remain in the fermentation tank. Beer that is conditioned over a longer period of time results in a beer with a higher alcohol content and more clarity with limited residual sugars. From here the beer is bottled or placed in kegs and consumed. In brewpubs the beer is dispensed directly from the conditioning tank for consumption.

There are some variations of the brewing process including cask conditioned or bottle conditioned beer where yeast is added to the bottle or cask (keg) and the fermentation takes place over a longer period of time in. Occasionally, priming, or additional sugar is added to the bottle or cask to continue the fermentation process and increase alcohol content. However both large and small breweries (and home brewing or u-brew) use virtually the same brewing process just in varying scales. Some large commercial breweries also use additives to alter the colour, to act as preservatives to increase shelf life, or to artificially increase the alcohol content. Some breweries also pasteurize their beer once the beer has been packaged in bottles or cans to increase shelf life and to kill of unwanted bacteria or residual yeast. Most beer that is in a keg or "draft" is un-pasteurized.