Low-alcohol Beer - Brewing Process

Brewing Process

According to the Birmingham Beverage Company, the basic brewing process of traditional brews consists of eight basic steps, nine for brewing non-alcoholic brews.

1. Malting- Malting is the first step, during this step barley is prepared by soaking it in water and allowing the grain to germinate “sprout”. This allows the tough starch molecules to be softened and begin to convert them to sugars. Next the sprouts are dried in a kiln; the temperature at which the sprouts are dried will affect the flavor of the finished brew.
2. Milling- Next the malted grain is ground to a corn meal like consistency, which allows the sugars and remaining starches to be more easily released when mixed with water.
3. Mashing-Mashing is when the finely ground malted grain is mixed with water and pulverized. By pulverizing the slurry most of the remaining starches are converted to sugars due to enzymes present in the malt and the sugars then dissolve into the water. The mix is gradually heated to 75℃(162℉) in what is called a mash tun. The slurry is then filtered to remove the majority of particulates. This filtered sugary liquid is called Wort.
4. Brewing- During the actual brewing the wort is brought to a boil for roughly 1–2 hours. During this time, other grains that will contribute flavor, color, and aroma to the brew are added. Boiling allows for several chemical reactions to occur and reduces the water content in the wort, condensing it.
5. Cooling- The wort is filtered to remove the majority of the grains and hops and then immediately cooled to allow the yeast to survive and grow in the next step.
6. Fermenting- During the fermentation step the cooled wort is saturated with air and yeast is added within the fermentation tank. Different strains of yeast will create different styles of beer. This step takes around ten days.
7. Maturation — The freshly fermented un-carbonated beer is then placed into a conditioning tank and, in a similar process to wine making, is allowed to age. If this step is rushed the beer will have an off flavor (acetaldehyde) that beer experts sometimes refer to as "green beer" because of its resemblance to green apples. During this process of aging, the majority of the residual particulates will settle to the bottom of the tank.
   1. Between the seventh and eighth step, the brew can be converted to non-alcoholic beer.
8. Finishing — Finally, the brewer is ready to finish the beer. The beer is filtered one last time; it is then carbonated and moved into a storage tank for either bottling or kegging.