Brewing Process

How Do We Brew Damn Good Beer?

It is the precise recipe and timing of the brew that gives one beer taste different from another – even though the main ingredients of beer making have remained the same over the centuries. Damn Good Beer starts with the choicest natural ingredients: barley malt from the fertile prairies of Western Canada and the USA, hops from the American Pacific Northwest of the USA, B.C. of Canada and from Europe and finally, pure pristine water. These ingredients are craft brewed in small batches of 200 to 350 barrels to ensure its quality and attention to detail.

Grist Mill

The malted barley is crushed and ground in the Grist Mill, which cracks open their husks and exposes the starches within. After milling, it is gravity fed into the Mash/Lauter Tun on the floor below.

Mash/Lauter Tun

The crushed grain is steeped in hot (but not boiling) water usually at 140°F – just as you “brew” tea by steeping in hot water. The resulting porridge-like mixture is known as “mash”. The malt is added to heated, purified water through a carefully controlled time and temperature process to make the mash. The malt enzymes break down the starch to sugar, flavors from grains are absorbed and the sweet liquid is filtered out of the mash, using the perforated “false” bottom that lets liquid fall through, but not grain husks. It is also equipped with rotating arms that agitate the mash. A technique called “sparging” is also used where hot water is sprayed over the mixture to ensure that every bit of sugar is extracted from the grain. The liquid called “wort” is sent out to the Brew Kettle and the spent grain rich in nutrients is delivered to the dairy farmers in the area for feeding their cows.

Brew Kettle

The wort is boiled in the Brew Kettle for more than an hour usually at more than 212°F. We now add the hops, blossoms of a climbing vine, that impart herbal aromas and flavors to the beer and add “bitterness” and “the distinct spiciness of the beer” to balance the wort’s malty sweetness. Boiling helps transfer the characteristics of the hops into the wort. Hops also provide natural components that protect the finished brew against spoilage. We also add herbs and other ingredients to the Brew Kettle – depending on the recipe. The Brew Kettle has steam coils on the inside, designed to create a rolling boil. The boiling process darkens the color and caramelizes the wort to give caramel, toffee and liquorice notes.

Whirlpool

The hopped wort is now pumped to the Whirlpool at a tangent to start swirling action inside. The centrifugal force generated causes hop residue and other unwanted material (like proteins and sneaky husks) to settle towards the center of the vessel’s bottom. This results in clear wort.

Cooler

The hopped and clarified wort needs to be cooled now as the yeast we add in the fermentation tanks gets uncomfortable if the wort is too hot. Yeast is just like us – it needs nutrients, air and perfect temperature to do its magic. The wort is now cooled in a Plate and Frame Heat Exchanger, usually to about 60°F for ales or to 50°F for lagers. It should be pointed out that throughout the beer making process, we use energy and water conservation procedures to be kind to the planet we inhabit.

Fermentation Tanks

The wort is now sent to the Fermentation Tanks – we have 12 of these tanks with a capacity of 7,000 barrels. Our proprietary yeast and air are injected inline as the liquid enters the Fermentation Tanks. Yeast is a single-cell critter found in many varieties, from the wild stuff in apple orchards to the packaged kind loved by bread makers. But it all works in the same way. A yeast cell “eats” a molecule of sugar and gives off, as by-products, alcohol and carbon dioxide (fizz!). The yeast takes the sugary products in the wort and converts them into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Beer yeasts basically come in two types. “Ale Yeast” works at warm temperatures (60°-70°F) and usually produces “fruity” flavor compounds as by-products of fermentation. “Lager Yeast” prefers a cooler environment (50°-60°F) and works more slowly, yielding fewer distinct flavors. The fermentation process takes about a week. The beer at the end of fermentation, called “Green Beer”, would be recognizable to anyone as beer – it has bubbles from the carbon dioxide and it has alcohol. The taste is harsh, however, and the beer requires cold aging to allow the flavors to round out and mature. The spent yeast drops off the bottom and is sold to companies for recycling and for use in other industries.