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A brew starts in the grain room where the malted barley is weighed to roughly 1500 pounds per batch. The malt is run through the malt mill, which crushes the grain. This exposes the internal starch (the white part on the inside of the barley kernel) and partially removes the husk. The crushed grain is then transferred by the grain elevator to the grain hopper above the mash tun. As the crushed grain falls out of the hopper and 300 to 350 gallons of hot water is added, the two combine to form mash, which has the consistency of oatmeal. The mash is held at the same temperature (150 °F) for 90 minutes. During this time, alpha and beta amylases (naturally occurring enzymes in the grain from the malting process) are activated and the starches are broken down into simple sugars. Starches are simply series of sugars chained together. The enzymes just break these chains down. After an hour and a half, the resulting sugar water, called sweet wort, is drained off the bottom of the mash tun and sent to the brew kettle. At the same time, another 700 gallons of hot water is sprayed on top of the grain in the mash tun. This removes the final sugars from the barley and combines in the brew kettle to make 1000 gallons of sweet wort, which is then brought to a boil. During this 90 minute boil, hops are added to supply the final product with bitterness and aroma.
At the end of this boil, a whirlpool is created in the brew kettle, causing the spent hops and coagu- lated proteins from the malt to settle in the center. The wort, now called bitter wort due to the addition of hops, is then pumped through a plate heat exchanger to drop its temperature from 212 °F to 70 °F as it travels to the fermentation tank.
The yeast is now pitched, or added, to the fermentation tank. The dormant yeast begins to reproduce and feed off the sugars. The natural by-products are alcohol and carbon dioxide.
After fermentation, the beer is cooled, filtered and transferred to a bright beer tank to await packaging. A small amount of carbonation is added here to bring the beer up to the levels of carbonation required for that style of beer. After carbonation, the beer can then be sent to the kegging or bottling machine.
All told, the brewing process takes around 9 hours, followed by a 7 or 10 day fermentation period for ales. It takes about three times as long to produce a lager as it does ale. Therefore, to capitalize on production ability, Thirsty Planet’s original beers will all be ales, with an occasional specialty beer being the exception.
