Brew Day!

As mentioned before, I got to brew some beer behind the scenes at a pub called Rock Bottom this past Saturday. The goal of the session was to see all the commercial equipment used to make a batch of beer, the various types of ingredients added, and to sample some different types of beer. There were 20 'brew hounds' that were part of this class. Our beer for the day was Fire Chief Ale (A nice, mildly hoppy, red ale). This particular Rock Bottom was located in downtown Portland and they sold most of what they brewed on site. They offer a variety of different beers, from bitter IPA's to creamy stouts.

Brewing beer is a relatively simple procedure and involves just a couple of ingredients : water, barley, hops, and yeast. The barley is sent through a grinder to crush it a bit to crack the grain and separate it from the husk. It is then dumped in a big stainless steel vessel where 151 degree water is added. This soupy, oatmeal looking mixture is then stirred and left to rest for about 90 minutes. It's during this time that the magic of brewing happens as the heat causes the starch in the grains to be converted to sugar (this sugar is eventually gobbled up by yeast, and the byproduct is alcohol and CO2). After the mixture has soaked for 90 minutes, all the delicious sweet and colorful wort is strained into another tank (this is what is happening in the video). Once there, it is boiled for 60 minutes along with some tasty bitter and aromatic hops. It takes this long for the hop oils to be broken down and comingled with the wort. Many of the hops used today were grown right here in the northwest, about 30 minutes south. Next, the wort is sent through a chilled cooler to get it down to 68 degrees as fast as possible (in this case, it took 10 minutes to cool 250 gallons). The cooled wort is pumped into the fermentation vessel and the yeast is added where it devours all the sugar over a few days. Soon afterwards, the beer will be pumped into serving tanks and carbonated with CO2. Ta Da!!! Beer has been born!