Today, let’s talk about how beer is made.
Most people probably know that beer has four main ingredients: water, malt, hops, and yeast. They all play their respective roles in beer.
The first step is to mix crushed malt with hot water, a step called wort. This turns the malted barley into something that makes a good beer. There are ways to make many different styles of malt through different malting processes. You can get a range of colors and flavors from different malts, even dark things like caramel malt. It gives the beer a dark nutty, black color and roasted flavor. All the types of grain roasts, roasts and flavors, they come together from different types of malts. All the sweetness that comes from the malt. These are the massive sugars that the yeast wants to ferment. They stay in the beer and give it a sweet taste. Also, all the sugars that the yeast wants to ferment into alcohol come from the malt. Therefore, the amount of malt at the beginning mainly determines the strength of the beer. The type of malt we choose to use determines how dark the beer will be.
The next component is the hops. Hops are added during the boil to separate the sweet liquid from the grains that are transferred in the kettle and brought to the boil. Hops give the beer its main bitterness because some of the compounds in hops are called ɑcids and they are needed as a standard bill in the boil in order for these compounds to dissolve in the liquid. If you boil hops for that long, they will boil out a lot of the flavor you want from hops. So, in general, there are some hop conditions during the boil in order to get most of the bitterness in the early conditions. In the late conditions, you get less bitterness. You can even add hops to a cold beer in the fermenter, which is called dry hopping. This can provide the most flavor you want from hops and no bitterness.
When the boil is complete, the liquid cools down before it is mixed with the yeast in the fermenter. You can’t see inside the fermenter because it is a large metal tank. You can see how much yeast is in there during the fermentation process and how much energy it has. The sugar that comes out of the malt turns into alcohol and carbon dioxide. There are 2 types of yeast used; one is ale yeast and the other is lager yeast. You can get different flavors from different types of yeast. Ale yeast ferments faster and warmer, producing more pollen and giving the beer a fruity flavor when it is finished. Lager yeast ferments cooler and slower, and requires more maturation time at the end of fermentation to get the flavors you are looking for from lager yeast. Typically, ales take about a week to ferment and require at least a week of cold aging. Lagers typically take a week and a half to two weeks to ferment and require at least two weeks or more of cold aging after fermentation is complete.
Once fermentation is complete, the beer is carbonated and is then bottled and barreled for sale.