Beer 101 - How is it made?

Learn about beer, and how it's brewed

There's a lot of important steps in creating one of the most popular beverages in the world - and we're here to show you how it's done.

Key Ingredients

Malted Barley

Malted barley grains are the base of all beer recipes and give the distinct sweet, malty flavours we all know and love. Sometimes we use other grains for a varied flavour, aroma and mouthfeel, but barley is in 95% of all beers!

Lager malt and pale ale malt are the most widely used as base malts for all beer styles. Speciality malts are used in smaller quantities to create distinctive flavours colours and aromas.

The colour of the malted barley indicates the colour of the beer. Light lagers are brewed with light malt, dark ales are brewed with darker malts.

Hops

Hops are a perennial flowing plant growing in climbing vines. They are usually dried out before being used in the brewing process and create the bitter flavours in beer.

Hops are used at different stages of the brewing process to create different effects and they work as a natural preservative.

Yeast

Yeast is a sophisticated single-celled organism that is responsible for transforming sugar-filled wort into beer through a process called fermentation. Adding yeast to the wort produces by-products, the most important of these by-products are: Alcohol, carbon dioxide, heat and flavour.

Yeast is the only ingredient that is unique to each brew. It gives alcohol, flavours, aromas and that beer’s unique characteristics. There are approximately 1,500 species of yeast currently identified.

Water

Water is the lifeblood of beer and makes up the largest concentration of all the ingredients used in brewing, 90% plus!

There are 2 types of water used in brewing and the difference between the two is mineral content:

Hard Water - Higher amounts of calcium, calcium carbonate and magnesium can create harder or more harsh flavours in beer.

Soft Water - The lack of minerals allows softer and milder flavours to come through.

The Brewing Process

Ingredients

The first step is to have great ingredients. We go to great lengths to make sure our ingredients are of the finest quality. Malting - Barley is dried and roasted at varied temperatures and times to give beer its distinctivness. The malted barley delivers sweet flavours, colour and body to the beer. Milling - The malt mill is a big powerful hammer mill rotating at 5,000 rpm. The malted barley is ground into a fine powder called grist to prepare the ingredient for use. Mashing - Each brew contains 10 tonnes of matled barley which is added to the mash tun along with lots of hot water. We now call this 'wort'.

Mash Filtration

The malt is filtered out by big sheet filters pressed together, the wort is then pumped into the copper. Wort Boiling - This is where the hops are added to create the bitter flavour. Boiling bring out a change in the hops resin to give them their bitterness. Wort Separation & Cooling - Next, the unwanted protein and hop material called 'trub' is separated from the wort by transferring it into a vessel at an angle to create a whirlpool. Yeast Pitching - Yeast is often talked about as the 'magic ingredient'. There's a specific yeast type for ale and lager which will add it's own distinct flavours.

Fermentation

Now we add the yeast; during fermentation yeast eats up the sugars, protein and vitamins in the wort and expels alcohol, heat, flavours, aromas and CO2. Centrifugation - When the yeast has finished it's job it falls to the bottom of the tank. A centrifuge increases the force of gravity and speeds up the process. Conditioning - This takes place in conditioning tanks and is simply the time for the beer to mature. At this time the beer flavour develop and become rounder. Bright Beer Production - The beer is now filtered to remove fine particles, following filtration the beer is clear or 'bright' and ready for packaging.