Beer | Brewing Process

Beer is the third most popular drink after water and tea in world. The alcoholic content in beer ranges from 3 % - 10 %. Beer is alcoholic beverage made from fermentation of grain. Just like we used fruit in wine , we use cereal while making beer. Cereals like barley , wheat , corn can be used and the main thing that matters is the cerelas used should contain starch. Beer is made from malted barley , hops , yeast and water. It is the hops that makes beer bitter and durable in storing and gives flavour to beer . Source of water also plays Important role in taste of beer. The malt is the body of beer. Hops is added during fermentation. Beer is served chilled as refreshment.

The Beer making / Brewing process :-

The beer making process is very easy if we just understood some basic steps :-

1. Malting 

2. Milling

3. Mashing 

4. Lautering 

5. Fermentation 

6. Pasteurization

1. Malting :- It is the first step in beer making. The fresh barley is soaked in water and let germinate. The germination process is then stopped after 4/5 days and it is dried in kiln to stop germination. The malt now taste sweeter after drying.

2. Milling :- The finished malt is now milled so that it can dissolves in water easily.

3. Mashing :- During mashing the starch in malt is converted into fermentable sugar. The water is added to the milled malt to produce mash.

4. Lautering :- It is the fourth step in beer making in which Mashed is filtered in lauter and the solution of malt sugar ' wort' is transferred to wort kettle and boiled. The Hops are added , the more hops are added the bitter will be taste of beer. Now after boiling the wort , the hops are removed and it is cooled at right temperature for fermentation.

5. Fermentation :- There are two types of fermentation : Top fermentation and bottom fermentation.  Bottom fermentation is used for lager and pilsner beer while top fermentation is used for Ale, porter and stout beer. In fermentation step, yeast is added to the wort and sugar is converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide. After fermentation, the beer is stored and matured at cold temperature before it is filtered to produce bright and clear beer 

6. Pasteurization :- This steps protects beer from being spoiled.  It kills bacteria and yeast cell. Pasteurization is carried after beer has been canned  or bottled and package sealed which involves running of package in through hot water at 140 degree Fahrenheit for two/three minutes .

Carbon dioxide is added after filtration and pasteurization.

TYPES OF BEER 

1. Lager

2. Ale

3. Stout 

4. Porter

Lager is bottom fermented i . e fermented at lower temperature with less hop flavour. It have two variation , pilsner and Dark lager

Ale is too fermented and have short maturation and fermentation but more hops flavour. It's variation are stout and porter. Stout are strong and dark while porter have heavy malt flavour.