BREWING PROCESS

How our beer is brewed.

Our friends in Switzerland, Tina and Robert Wettstein kindly authorized us to publish following description and the photos. www.lindenbergbraeu.ch

Step No.1 Composing the malt mixture
According to the recipe you weigh exactly the different malts and compose the final mixture.

Step No.2 Milling of the malt mixture
The malt mixture will be milled in a special grinding mill. Each single grain has to be crushed in order to get bound with the brewing water.

Step No.3 Mashing in
The crushed malt will be added now to the pre-heated brewing water in the cooker. The mashing will be started now.

Step No.4 Mashing
Whilst mashing the malt has to go under permanent stirring through different temperature steps, the so called rests. In frame of that process the starch will be converted by the enzymes of the barley malt to malt sugar. After approximately 2,5 hours the whole starch has been transformed to malt sugar.

Step No.5 Lautering
The finished mash will be pumped with a temperature of 78 °C into the lautering tun. At the floor of that tank there is a special false bottom. During lautering the sugar water, now called wort, is been separated from the crushed malt. The cleared wort is flowing thereby into the whirlpool beneath the lautering tun.

Through an inspection window you can control whether the wort is clear.

Step No.6 Sparging
As soon as the grains bed is visible you sparge the grains with hot water (78 °C), in order to wash out also the remaining malt sugar.

Step No.7 Wort boiling
The wort stored in the whirlpool, will be pumped now back to the cooker. There the wort will be boiled and after 10 minutes you add the hops. Now you boil it for more than one hour. Whilst boiling the proteins are dropped out and the aroma as well as the bitter substances are released.

Step No.8 Whirlpool
The ready boiled wort will be pumped now with high speed back to the whirlpool. Through the emerging rotation the residues as proteins and hops are concentrated in the middle of the ground and are herewith separated from the wort.

Step No.9 Cooling
The still very hot wort (80 °C) will be cooled down by a plate cooler (2 stages) within 15 minutes to approximately 18 °C and is been pumped into the fermenting tank. The cooling water of the first stage of the plate cooler will be used again for a further mashing process or as cleaning water. The second stage of the plate cooler is chilled with icewater.

Step No.10 Pitching the yeast
During the pumping the cooled wort is been aerated with sterile compressed air to provide optimal conditions for the yeast, which will be added now.

Step No.11 Fermentation
The fermentation is finished after approximately one week and the green beer will be chilled to approximately 2 °C and further pumped into the storage tanks. The yeast grows in the wort as long as oxygen is available. From now on the yeast starts to convert the existing sugar into alcohol and CO2. After approximately two days the plug valve will be closed to hinder the CO2 from disappearing. The pressure will be kept on a constant level to allow an optimal distribution of the CO2 throughout the green beer.

Step No.12 Storing
The beer is stored in the tank at approximately 2 °C and 1 bar pressure. The maturation takes between two weeks till several months, depending on the beer type.