Beer: It's What's On Tap
Tailgating and Beer, Get It. But What Is the Inside Story?
Some beer advertising has made a big deal about water, but really, it's the least important ingredient. As long as the water is pure and not too metallic, we can make it work for beer.
— Grant Wood, senior brewing manager, Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams
Football and beer. They go together like Montana to Rice, like chips and salsa.
Whether you’re on the back porch in Tuscaloosa barbecuing chicken and ribs waiting for the Tide to roll their latest opponent or tailgating in the Detroit Lions' parking lot before kickoff, grilling sausages or just listening to a postgame report, the tag lines you hear, “cold-filtered’, ‘beachwood-aged’ and “only the best hops’ are as familiar as the "red zone" and "the 3-4 defense".
So what are the X’s and O’s that breweries use to create your favorite beer? What is the basic game plan for these companies that produce that the flavorful brew that the average American drinks about 20 gallons of each year?
Ales and Lagers
While there are basic groupings such as ale and lager and shades of flavors among those -- stouts and porters are in the ale family; pilsners and bock beers are lagers -- the main differences between the two main groupings is the yeast and its processing.
“Ales generally use a different strain of yeast, referred to as a top-fermenting type of yeast. As it depletes the extracts, or the sugars, as it ferments, it is buoyant, settling at the top of the fermenter. This is opposed to a lager where the yeast settles at the bottom,” said Bryan Sullivan, senior brewmaster at Anheuser Busch’s Los Angeles brewery. “Ales are also fermented at a warmer temperature and quicker -- the result is a fruitier taste -- and are brewed with darker malts or caramel malts so an ale will be a little bit darker compared to a lager. Sometimes it will almost have a red color to it due to the caramel malts used.”
Many beer makers say yeast is beer’s key component.
“I believe that yeast is the most important ingredient in beer, and at Samuel Adams, we have many of our own proprietary yeast strains,“ Boston Beer Co. senior brewing manager Grant Wood said.
Yeast, Barley and Hops: A Simple Brew
To show how highly yeast is regarded, Anheuser Busch’s proprietary strain dates back to the one used with the first Budweiser brewed in St Louis in the 1800s. Every month Anheuser Busch will obtain a freshly propagated yeast strain from the cryogenically frozen original and ship it to each of its breweries to ensure consistency in Anheuser Busch's lagers.
The yeast used for lagers is aged and brewed at a cooler temperature than for an ale or stout. It yields an almost citrus-type fruit tone.
You often hear the word ‘hops’ when referring to the brewing process. Hops are a floral that grows on a vine. They give beer its spiciness and the bitter profile to the taste. Hops kind of balance out the sweetness of the malt, so one often refers to hops as the “spice of the beer.”
Said Wood: “Hops are to beer as grapes are to wine. They bring the bitterness and floral, herbal, spicy notes to beer, depending upon the varietal and the growing region.”
There are various blends used, but most of the best hops are grown in the Pacific Northwest and in Germany.
Malted barley also is different in beers. A lighter colored malt is used for a lager and a darker malt for brewing a porter or ale. The barley can be dried or roasted to create a variety of sweet or caramel flavors, from bread to burned.
Other grains are used as well, such as corn, rice, rye, oats and wheat.
The other main ingredient is the water, which the experts say is one of the less critical components of beer.
“Some beer advertising has made a big deal about water, but really, it's the least important ingredient. As long as the water is pure and not too metallic, we can make it work for beer,” Wood said.
Budweiser uses locally provided water, putting it through a carbon filter and then through a reverse-osmosis process.
May I See Some ID?
And then there is the aspect that gives beer its resident kick: the alcohol content.
“A lot of it is in the conversion process in the brew house. There are natural enzymes that are present in the malt. That converts the starches in the malt to fermentable sugars. Depending on the volume of starches converted, when the yeast consumes that it will convert it to alcohol. It is determined in the mashing process,” Sullivan said.
New Belgium brew master Peter Bouckaert said there is a basic formula in determining the strength of a particular brew.
“You can always break convention, but to get higher alcohol, you ferment for a longer time. Winter ales tend to be higher strength, summer lagers and wheats lower, but there is no hard rule here.”
The Process
So with the “players” in place, here’s how the core beer-processing takes place. The basic brewing format has not changed for centuries, yet the style variations are countless.
The start is the mashing process. It is where water is added to the grains to convert the starches with the natural enzymes that are in the malt to fermentable sugars. This mash cooker uses steam coils to heat to 140 to 150 degrees F, and takes two to five hours. An agitator -- it looks like a big fan -- keeps a uniform mixture of the water and grain.
“A lighter beer requires a longer mashing period because you are converting more starches to fermentable sugars," Sullivan said. "The mashing length of time is a determinant for the body and alcohol profile of a given beer."
The next part is called lautering or straining, and where the liquid, called wort, is separated from the grain husk. The grain acts as a natural filter bag. The wort will be slightly brown after the 60- to 90-minute process.
Then comes a spin through the lauter tun, a separation vessel. It has a false bottom almost like a grate, holding the grain back while allowing the liquid to pass through the grain.
From the lauter tun the material goes to a brew kettle, where the temperature is raised to 212 degrees to sterilize the wort. The hops are added and the bitter component is pulled out of the hops. That can take about an hour and a half.
After boiling in the brew kettle the concoction is cooled to 50 degrees. That is done before adding yeast, which starts fermentation.
The yeast and wort come together in the primary fermentation tanks. This is where one can actually start to call the combined ingredients beer. The actual combining takes about five days. That is followed by an approximately 21-day stretch for a secondary fermentation cycle and aging.
Finally, after taste tests and lab analysis to wipe away proteins and yeast residue, which can give the beer a hazy look as it cools, the batch is ready for packaging.
From there it ships to market and a tailgate event.
Football and beer. Good alone -- better as a team.
- Photo Credit Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images Courtesy: New Belgium Brewing Sean Gallup/Getty Images News/Getty Images Courtesy New Belgium Brewing
