A Brewer for a Day

One of my favorite things in this world is beer.

I love everything about it; from basic domestics to complex, robust micro brews. These days, it's nearly impossible to throw a rock without hitting a new brewery; especially here in Minnesota. I think one of the things that I love the most about it is learning about it...besides the buzz that is!

Visiting breweries while I travel--both personally and professionally--has become a big part of my planning process. I truly love eating and drinking like the locals when I visit a new place. It builds a common bond with new friends, plus allows them to share some of their favorite, regional specialties.

Next week, I'll be the emcee of a local charity dinner hosted at my neighborhood brewery, Brau Brothers Brewing Company. In a discussion about the dinner with the brewmaster, Dustin Brau, I indicated that I'd love to learn more about how it is actually made. He mentioned they were doing a double batch the next day. I asked if I could join along and learn to be a more informed host...you know: for charity!

He agreed. I was thrilled!

Saturday morning, I got there just as they were starting the second batch (I got to sleep in a bit). Dustin was there and put me right to work. I documented the entire process to my best ability with photographs from my phone (not the best, but they'll do). So crack open one of your favorite beers and learn along as I assist these masters as they turn simple ingredients into the beverage that we all love! 

The Basic Building Blocks of Beer

Kegs of fresh beer

Almost all beer is four simple ingredients: Yeast, Grains (barley/malt), hops and water.

There are two types of beers: ales and lagers. The difference is primarily the type of yeast they use and the temperature in which it is fermented. 

That's basically it...from these four ingredients and two styles, thousands of combinations have been honed to create a vast variety of beers. I'm not going to get that technical, but wanted to give a little background to establish an understanding. The beer we made this weekend was an ale.

A new batch of yeast

Propagating the Yeast

The first step, before all ingredients are processed, the yeast must first be propagated. This means that it is allowed to flourish so that when it is added to the beer, it will be hungry and ready to eat the sugars from the grains and convert them into alcohol and carbonation. 

When I arrived, they had already begun this process and were ready to add it to the fermenting chamber. They informed me that they extract the yeast from other beers as they are living organisms that are purged prior to bottling. There is large attention to sustainability as yeast and grain is kept cycling throughout the brewing process This is the most science I can get.

Remember, I'm a banker not a brewer. this is just as I understand it.

From Grain to Wort

Mixing the milled grain into water

The next step, we put roasted barley malts from their whole grain form into a mill that grinds it and adds it to water in a large kettle called a Mash Tun. This kettle held hundreds of gallons of water and grain and I had to stir it as over 250 pounds of grain was poured into the water. I had to make sure the grain didn't clump up, otherwise it would not allow the sugars to be fully extracted.

Monitoring the sugar content of the wort

As the water was heated, it was transferred from the Mash Tun into another huge vessel  called the Boiling Kettle. The extracted liquid had a high sugar content and is referred to as Wort. We had to monitor the wort to ensure that it was getting all the sugars we could from the grain. This was done using a light filtering device. Once the boil kettle was filled, we were ready to bring it up to a full boil.

Hop to it!

Hopped up wort boiling away

Once the wort is at a full boil, we added the hops. If you are not familiar, hops are a flower that are used to give flavor to the beer. If you've had a pale ale or IPA, these are the things that give beer that citrus-like or pungent flavor. Some people love them and others hate them. I love them.

Harvesting Spent Grain

The beer we were making was a Scotch Ale; which did not have a hop-forward flavor. It is a more malty varietal and used smoked barley as the primary flavoring agent. However, there were still two batches of hops that are added to the mixture.

As the hops and wort boil for an hour, we cleaned out the Mash Tun. The by-product of the Wort is a bunch of cooked grains called Spent Grain. This is reserved and sold to local farms to feed livestock.

I've been to some breweries that use the spent grain to feed the cows from which they get the milk with which is used in making a milk stout--talk about sustainability!

A Quick Spin to the Fermentation Chamber

As the beer spins out the solids stay in

Once the hops have been boiled, a machine is used to create a whirlpool in the boil kettle so that the solids are all forced to the middle and all liquid is able to exit out the edges. As the liquid escapes, it is sent through a radiator to rapidly reduce its temperature from boiling to one that it will ferment at in the Fermentation Chamber.

Original Gravity sample

As the beer is extracted and travels to the Fermentation Chamber, we extracted a sample to test so we can understand the Original Gravity of the beer. This is the first indication of the attenuation of the beer.

The fermentation chambers.

Attenuation is the way they determine how alcoholic a beer is going to be. As it ferments, the yeast process the sugars into alcohol and carbonation.

As the attenuation goes down, so does the alcohol levels in the beer. According to the brewer, this would take 1-2 weeks for this beer to achieve the desired attenuation.

That was essentially all it took to make beer. Now, we just had to wait for it to ferment before we can drink it. By my estimation, this batch should be ready to drink by the time we have our charity dinner. I sure hope they like it!

The labels are added to bottled beer

Odd Jobs in the Brewery

The Biofine device

The above process took about four hours from start to finish, but that wasn't everything that I got to help out with. I got to help transfer beer from the vats into kegs to be sent off to bars for tap beer. I also got to work briefly as a labeler and packer on the bottling line.

There was another thing that I assisted in where we hooked up a machine that shot a dreadful smelling concoction of dehydrated fish guts and citric acid called Biofine. As I understand it, the Biofine is used to gather the yeast to the bottom of the fermentation chamber so they can extract it and use it in another batch. I'm not sure if that's right, but it makes sense to me.

Cleaning all the time

One of the most important jobs in the brewery is cleaning and sanitation, After each step, we cleaned and sanitized every instrument so it prevents bacteria from forming. If any unintentional bacteria finds its way into the beer, the entire batch can be compromised. I even had to crawl inside the mash tun and scrub the insides from top to bottom.

I had a great time learning about the process, but my favorite part of the day was sampling the end product in the tap room as we discussed everything that had happened during the day.I hope you enjoyed going through this with me and maybe learned a little new information about the process of brewing beer.

Thanks for reading!