Download July 2010 - Bite Magazine

22
BITE
‘n’
SLURP
BEER
WHAT IS IT?
A sampler’s insight!
So, I jumped on a train to
Dunfermline for the very serious
cause of a brew day. For the first
time I saw the whole process of
beer making from start to finish!
Well, actually to say the full process,
it excluded the first part which is the
soaking and kilning of the barley to
produce the three main malt types:
pale malt (very lightly kilned), caramel
or crystal malt (prepared by wetting
and roasted prior to kilning) and dark
malts (heavily kilned to produce
differing colours).
Malt
The recipe for the brew is the most
fundamental difference in the end
result. At this stage, we are deciding if
we were going to make a Pilsner, a
Pale Ale, a traditional Scottish 80’’ or
a Porter, to name but a few styles. So,
a German wishing to make one of
their very fine Pilsners (Veltins,
Warsteiner or Kaiserdom, for
example), would use probably use
mostly pale malt. We were making a
Pale Ale, so the mixture looked
something like 90% pale malt and a
little each of crystal malt
for body and wheat
malt, as the proteins
within the wheat
provide good head
retention in the final
product.
The Mash
Having chosen the recipe for
producing a Pale Ale, the first part of
the process is to get the mash on, the
process of converting the starches in
the grain into both fermentable and
non-fermentable sugars. The mash
itself is simply created by adding the
grain to hot water within the mash
tun to achieve a temperature
between around 63C to 68C.I was
asked to mix vigorously first with a
wooden spoon and then with a whisk,
the idea being to make sure that every
grain was in contact with the hot
water and there were no dry clumps
within the mash.
Hops
A full 90 minutes later, the liquid, now
known as wort, was pumped out of
the mash tun into the copper. The
remaining sugars are then flushed out