Unlike wine, most people are somewhat mystified by the process of brewing beer, yet it has been done since ancient Egyptian times where it was recognised as a very necessary part of daily life (more to the poor water quality due to bad sanitation, but what the heck!!).
Beer is a living beverage, which requires barley and/or wheat, hops, water, yeast and for some of the speciality beers ingredients such as ginger, orange peel, coriander and strawberries. The Five Islands Brewing Company's beers are all chemical and preservative free and contain no added sugar.
The brewing cycle takes anywhere from 14 to 28 days and comprises a number of stages:
Milling - Malted grain is crushed downstairs in our mini mill, ready for conversion of its starch sugars in the mash tun.
Mashing - In the Mash Tun (mixing pot, if you like) crushed malt (grain) and hot liquor (water) are mixed and the malt starch is converted to fermentable sugars with the resulting sweet liquid known as the wort.
Kettle - The sweet wort from the mash tun is transferred to the brew kettle where hops and speciality beer ingredients are added in surprisingly small quantities to impart flavour variances to the beers. The main flavour of beer comes from the combination of grains used. Hops are used to impart bitterness and/or aroma to the brew.
Cooling -The wort cooler, known as a heat exchanger, cools the wort to approx 10-15 C prior to transfer to the unitanks.
Fermentation - Yeast is pitched to the cooled wort in the unitanks. The yeast then starts fermenting or converting the dissolved sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The unitanks are wrapped in the cooling system called glycol, which is the same system used in beer taps. Fermentation takes about 8 days with the residual yeast being cropped off over this time.
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