The life Aquatic Life 12
Rediscovering the first miracle drug
Malt whisky: A new phenomenon?
The Booker 2010
Imagine... If he still lived
Body mind &Soul 8
People 9
Books 10
Pop11
Bangalore, October 10, 2010
Miguel Villagran/Getty Images
If it’s
Oktober, it must be
BEER
Z
one out from the metropolis to its fringes, here on NH-4, at a distance of 27km from Bangalore, Sharma and a clique of 250 industrious workers have upon their shoulders a very solemn no-nonsense undertaking. It is their responsibility to create, craft, store and supply one of the most vital components of Bangalore’s spirit. They toil unstintingly to ensure that the process of making the world’s oldest and the city’s favourite beverage persists without hiccups, unabated, every second of every day. It is here at the United Breweries that the radiant weekend pitcher and the uplifting mid-week pint are born as beer. And catering to 80 per cent of the pub city’s thirst, it could very well be the beer belly of Bangalore. On the brink of a weekend ideal to guzzle down beer, Sharma, Assistant Vice-President, UB gives us, devoted beer drinkers, the privilege to trace their beloved beverage from conception to a labelled bottle. While he patiently explains the process. We embark on the journey at the brewery’s ‘Brew House’. Step in and a familiar faint whiff of the drink invites you. Mounting steep stairs, the odour isn’t completely ‘beer’, but you can tell it’s certainly leading to it. “Hold on to the railings”, suggests Sharma. The reason we are climbing stairs in the first place is because older breweries were built on multiple stories, with equipment on higher floors used earlier in the production process. This way gravity could assist with the transfer of product from one stage to the next. This, however, is changing and newer breweries can accommodate all the processes on one level, he informs. But this brewery however is old enough retain the traditional style. Our ascension leads us to a space with sacks of raw material and gargantuan steel vats or kettles that look like huge domes with windows. A flight of stairs up to the mezzanine, we meet men christened brew masters. They set off the beautiful process called brewing. The basic ingredients for beer are water and a starch source (which can be a combination of raw materials). At this brewery, various combinations of malt, broken rice/rice flakes, hops and sugar come together to become a frothy drink. Permutations and combinations of these ingredients concludes into beer of diverse intensity. Brewing involves three processes — it begins with mashing, moves to lautering and terminates with boiling. The three processes could take around 11 to 12 hours. To understand what all this means, you need to crane your neck and peep into kettle windows. Inside the first of the steel stomachs called the Mash Tun, the ingredients are heated with water to break down the starch into sugars. “All the ingredients need to be converted into sugar, that’s the basic idea of mashing,” explains the brew master. Our next peep has us looking into the Lauter Tun where forceful sprays of hot water are spilling from a pipe. It is here that the extracts won during mashing are separated to make wort, which is the liquid extracted from the mashing process. Slide down a level and you can peer into the third steel kettle or Wort Tun that contains hot beer. It’s here that the beverage seems to look somewhat like you’d know it. Steam rises from a dark ginger fluid on which folds of creamy foam float. You recognise it in an instant. “That’s beer froth!” you scream. And you are right. At this stage Hops, a flower cluster used primarily as a flavouring and stability agent in beer is added. The ingredient imparts to the infusion a bitter tangy flavour and that smell you identify as beer. On our way out of the Brew House is a door with a plate that reads ‘Hops’. Swing the door open and a blast of chill air breaks out. In this freezing section hops sacks sit in heaps. The overwhelming strong aroma of the bitter ingredient pervades the storage space and is the kind that repels. Take the mustiest bar, spill barrels of strong stale beer and leave the room locked for months and that’s your hops room.
October is Oktoberfest month across the globe, and here in Bangalore, the city of fizzy amber dreams, beer plays an important role in the social tapestry. Elizabeth Soumya ventures into the labyrinth of UB’s Kingfisher brewery in Nelamangala to find out how these dreams are made
So after brewing is the beer brewed yet? Near the Brew House is what looks like a field of steel tanks (and steel having replaced copper as a preference since it reacts minimally with the liquid during fermentation). It is in the quiet womb of these fermentation tanks, the cooled down blend so lovingly brewed slumbers, rests, ages, grows, changes and reaches its prime. The process of converting carbohydrates into alcohols and carbon dioxide occurs and adding of yeast to set off fermentation happens at this stage. And for the first time, the liquid can be called beer. This resting stint for beer at this stage can span from 14 to 21 days, depending on the beer being ‘made’. Apart from a number of tanks with the capacity of 330 hectares and 550 hectares, the brewery has five cylindral towers that stand proudly outside. These colossal tanks can hold up to 1,800 hectares or 21,600 cases (12 bottles 650ml per case) of beer. This makes the storage capacity of the brewery close to a million cases. “Lakhs to be precise,” Sharma corrects himself. The beer then undergoes filtration and spends time in a ‘bright tank’. By now the yeast is separated and all that remains is a cold amber fluid with a stabilised flavour. A small tap from the tank is unwound and in what could only be called magic, cold fresh glistening clear beer tumbles down gracefully with a rim of froth. And now can you drink it. At last the liquid is beer in its completeness, absolutely potable. The only problem hereafter is the dearth of adequate technology to directly channelise the beverage into beer-chugging homes through systematic pipelines. To fix this somewhat archaic glitch of distribution, the beverage must be contained and transported — either in beer kegs (huge containers) or bottles. The beer that finds its way into the kegs, travels
through the city’s manic traffic to one of its many watering holes. Here it’s unloaded and voila! It’s the very inspiring pint of draught beer you witness freshly plummeting and frothing into your mug before it’s quaffed and gulped down greedily in your grip after a long day’s work. The difference between draught beer and bottled beer is that the latter experiences the practice of pasteurisation, where it is passed through a temperature of 60C to increase its shelf life and ensure purity. Sharma informs that a large number of kegs (the exact number is never made public) are supplied each day to the thirsty city’s veins — its pubs. Kegs have capacities of 50 and 30 litres and a shelf life of seven days. But the kegs that quench the entire city’s thirst for draught beer return hollow in a matter of a day, he assures with a chuckle.
We embark on the journey at the brewery's ‘Brew House’. Step in and a familiar faint whiff of the drink invites you But it’s in the vast ‘Bottling House’ chock-a-block with the boisterous cling-clangs of glass bottles that the brew so uncomplainingly metamorphosed from sugar to beer comes to life. Here, in this beer factory hangs a notice of warning: Drinking of alcohol strictly prohibited, it announces. And right under it in a synchronised choreography backed by the heady cacophony of machines, a long procession of empty washed glass bottles march smoothly forward on a relentless conveyor belt like a ready army with open mouths. They are then scanned; inspected by machine for
defects. Into the willing worthy bottles the beverage is poured in a split second, till froth oozes out contently. Two circular machines continuously plug 21,000 bottles every hour, with pipes that dip and rise. The machines run for around 12 hours a day. They are then affixed with metal caps in an equally expeditious pace. Nearly 80 per cent of the empties are recycled and 20 per cent are ordered, a glass bottle can be recycled up to 12 times. The train of moving bottles are scanned by human eye and machines. Equipped with ear plugs, workers called ‘sighters’ gaze intently at a parade of bottles lit by light behind to notice any imperfections. Bottles half filled are pulled out from the convoy. The din of several processes in the bottling ‘factory’ is intercepted regularly by what sounds like abrupt quick explosions. These are bottles that burst when the pressure inside is too much to handle. The filled bottles then endure pasteurisation which distinguishes bottled beer from draught beer. The bottles step out warm after pasteurisation and are labelled by machines at a swift pace. They are checked for some printed details by humans and are all ready. What looks like a huge crane lifts rows of the bottles and places them into cartons systematically. The beer cartons end the beer’s journey in the brewery. Trucks wait on the other side. Our ultimate stopover is an imperative unit of the entire process — the lab, where every batch of beer is tested before it is bottled. Here work people who have what can perhaps be called the most privileged job in the world. They test beer through a machine called Alcolyzer which displays details of the beer including its alcohol content. The alcohol content in the strong lager beer needs to be below 7.2% and the light version should record an alcohol content of 4%. The strong beer we test shows a result of 7.1% alcohol content. The occupation of the testers also entails tasting of beer and making a record of its attributes. “The brew masters are also subjected to obligatory tasting of every batch of beer,” informs Sharma firmly. While we walk out from the brew house, the vice-president turns to one of his subordinates and enquires: “Are you a teetotaller?” “Yes,” arrives a shy and hesitant reply. To which he says with a grave expression, “You must be sacked immediately.” And a chorus of sober laughter hits the roof. dnasunday@gmx.com A Veeramani
Beer bottles being checked at UB’s brewery