At Big Rock, batch brewing works like this: we notice there's a thirst in the community for a particular beer – let's say Grasshopper – and we assign a brewer to make a batch. That same brewer nurtures that same batch from the raw ingredients all the way to the final tasting.

 

 

Step 1.

Raw materials arrive by truck – almost all from local sources. The brewer touches, smells and tastes the ingredients to make sure the supplier sent us the good stuff. 

 

 

Step 2.

Working from a recipe, the brewer blends together malts (naturally processed barley, wheat or rye). (What is malt?)

 

 

Step 3.

The malt is crushed in a mill to make "grist."

Step 4.

Grist is mixed with water to form "mash" in a big, big vat called a "mash tun," where the starch inside the malt is converted to sugar in liquid form. 

 

 

Step 5.

The mash is pumped to a "lauter tun" where the sugary liquid, called "wort," is separated from the grain.

Step 6.

The wort is pumped to a brew kettle and the leftover spent grain is removed and saved to recycle as gourmet feed for dairy cattle and livestock feed.

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Step 7.

The brew kettle is a busy place, where countless biochemical changes occur in the brew. The wort is brought to boil, at which point hops are added. After boiling for about 90 minutes, aromatic finishing hops are added to give a pleasing nose to the beer. (What are hops?)

Step 8.

The wort is piped to the whirlpool tank where residual proteins are spun out of the brew.

 

 

Step 9.

Excellent step right here. The wort is pumped through a wort chiller into stainless steel fermentation tanks, where yeast is added. Fermentation begins and CO2 (natural carbonation) and alcohol are produced. What was wort has become beer.

 

 

 

Step 10.

The yeast is allowed to settle on the bottom of the tanks and removed. 

Step 11.

After fermentation, the beer is sent straight to filtration if it's an ale, or aged if it's a lager. ("Lager" is German for storage. "Schmeckts" is German for "tasty." Just saying.)

 

 

 

Step 12.

Let us pause here to reflect on the marketing craze called "cold filtering." Big Rock has been cold-filtering for over 20 years because traditional pasteurization alters the flavour so it no longer tastes as fresh. Come to think of it, we filter our beer three times:

• First by injecting tiny fossils called "diatomaceous earth" to collect any remaining yeast and proteins
• Next through a sterile filtration system to remove any cavorting microbes who don't belong.
• Third by passing the beer through a final sterile filter, just in case – so Paul can sleep at night.

 

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Step 13.

Taste test. If it tastes exactly like it's supposed to, the beer is piped next door to the packaging facility to be bottled, canned or kegged. 

 

 

 

Step 14.