The Art of the Brew

By Angie Johnson-Schmit

Beer has been around for thousands of years, with the earliest known recipe found inscribed on clay tablets in Mesopotamia. Those 3,900-year-old tablets contained a poem to the Sumerian goddess of beer, Ninkasi, as well as the basic instructions for how they brewed beer. That Sumerian beer was essentially made by soaking sugar-rich bread in water, allowing it to ferment, and then straining the mixture and drinking the resulting beer.

Brewing beer has come a long way since then, with technology playing a role in those improvements. Beer is currently more popular than wine or whiskey, trailing only water and tea in terms of consumption. While most people recognize the basic ingredients – malt, water, hops, yeast – many have no idea how the delicious carbonated alcoholic drink is made.

Fortunately, LazyG Brewhouse’s brewmaster Travis Smith broke down the steps for us.

“The process starts with malt,” said Smith. Like most breweries, LazyG buys their malt for beer making. While malt is typically barley, it can be just about any grain. After wetting the malt, it is allowed to germinate. During germination, the seeds “form all these enzymes and release all these nutrients...where before, it’s all locked up in a protein matrix and it’s not very accessible,” he said.

Once the malt sprouts, it’s dried out and ground up, “not like a flour, but more like a coarse ground coffee for a French press,” said Smith. The ground up malt is infused with water that has been heated to a specific temperature, roughly between 145 and 155 degrees. This is an important step because Smith needs to “activate enzymes that naturally occur in that malt from that germination process.”

Because two of the most important enzymes are more active at slightly different temperatures, getting to and maintaining the right temperature is vital. These enzymes are necessary to break down starches into the simple sugars that will eventually become the alcohol. “It’s a critical process,” said Smith. “Otherwise we’ll just have barley flavored water.”

The infused water, or “mash,” is allowed to “rest” for an hour, more or less, while the enzymes are working to break down the starches. Then the sugary liquid, or “wort” is separated from the grain by a process of lautering. “There’s a false bottom, like a stainless steel screen that supports the grain,” said Smith. “So the liquid flows through the grain bed and into the bottom where we can then move it on over to the next vessel.”

The liquid is then put into a very large, heated vessel called a kettle, where the wort is heated to a boil. It’s in this stage that hops are added. Hops are aromatic plants that, due to their bitterness, are almost exclusively used in beer brewing. Hops added at the beginning of the boil add bitterness, which “helps balance some of the sweetness from the malt.” Hops are added again near the end of the boil. According to Smith, hops added at this point are “more about aromatics and flavor.”

Hops play a huge role in the flavor of the beer. When the hops are added, how much is added and the type of hops used all have an impact on the flavor and flavor intensity. “You need to know your hops,” said Smith. “And there’s always new hops varieties coming out.”

Smith likes to experiment when he comes across a new variety of hops. “Here at LazyG, if we want to try a new one out, we’ll use exclusively that one variety all the way through the process,” he said. This allows him to see what flavors are being released at each stage so they can decide if it’s a variety they would like to use moving forward. OF HOPS. “HERE AT

For the next step, the kettle of near boiling liquid needs to be cooled. The wort is passed through a heat exchanger and then the wort is captured. It’s still not beer at this point. “All I’m left with is this nasty, bitter, cold wort,” said Smith. It’s not until the wort goes into the fermen ter that the magic happens.

When the cooled wort is put in the fermenter, yeast is added. “We can’t just put the hot water in there,” said Smith, as the heat would kill the yeast. Since the yeast is what consumes the sugars and creates alcohol and carbon dioxide, keeping it happy and healthy is important. “Dry hopping,” or adding hops after fermentation is complete is also used for certain types of beers like IPAs. Throwinghops in after the boil is “where the aromatics really come from,” said Smith.

The length of the entire process from malt to ready-to-enjoy beer depends on the type of beer being made. And, it takes time to do it right. “Ultimately ales take between two and three weeks, and lagers are between four and six weeks,” said Smith.

As with many of the best things in life, great craft beer is made with a bit of art, a bit of science, and a healthy dash of passion. It’s not enough to have a great palate or to have a flawless understanding of the science. It also takes ongoing curiosity, a willingness to experiment, and a drive for excellence. You’ll find all three in Travis Smith at LazyG’s Brewhouse, and he’s got the beer to prove it.