Our Process.
Our Beer is brewed naturally. What does that mean? Naturally-brewed beer is made with Malted Grain, Water, Hops & Yeast - that's it, nothing else! We don't filter or pasteurize our beer, and neither do we add anything else to our beer. Other people may do so, but we don't.
Want to know a bit more though?.
Malted grains include Barley, Wheat, Rye, Maize, Sorghum, etc, although Barley & Wheat are the most commonly used of the cereals. What's important though, is that whatever the chosen grain is, it would need to be ``malted`` before it can be used. Malting, in a nutshell, is taking the grain kernels and encouraging them to activate their starch content which is done through steeping them in water, then drying, kilning or roasting them to contain the starch. Why is this necessary? Well, we need this starch a bit later when we start the brewing process.....
Mashing.
Mashing is the process of soaking the dried malt (mentioned above) in hot water for at least an hour; what this does, is convert the starches that we released during malting into fermentable sugars (such as maltose, maltotriose, fructose, sucrose, glucose)
Sparging or Lautering.
We then collect this sugary liquid by separating the liquid from the grain, and by rinsing the grains to extract all the left over sugars.
Boiling.
This sweet, sugary liquid, now called Wort (pronounced Wert), is then put to the boil, again for a minimum of an hour. The boiling of the Wort is crucial for a few good reasons: firstly, it sterilizes the beer, but secondly, thirdly and fourthly, this is where the bitterness, flavour and aroma of the beer is confirmed. That's right, Hops is responsible for this development and is therefore, much like an artist choosing the right colors to finish his masterpiece. To cut a long story short, there are great and vast variety of Hops, each offering different bittering, flavouring and aromatic characters, so the brewer needs to understand this concept otherwise we may as well just go and chew on a pine cone.
Cooling & Fermenting.
Cooling & Fermenting - After the boil, the Wort needs to be cooled down to the mid-twenties before we transfer it to a fermenter and add yeast. This process, called fermentation, is when the yeast converts sugars in the Wort into alcohol and Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Yeasts are living microorganisms that operate optimally within a specified temperature and pH range. Depending on the style of beer that's being made, much like hops, yeast, for the purpose of beer making are ussually either of the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae or Saccharomyces pastorianus, come in a great variety of strains within the species that are optimal for crafting a different beers.
Bottling / Kegging.
Once the beer has finished fermenting it is kegged or bottled and capped to keep in freshness. Our beers are naturally carbonated through metabolizing sugars by remaining yeast while carbon dioxide is trapped in the container.
Take a sip & relax.
