Brewery Diagram
John Harvard’s Brew House makes both ales and lagers using
malt, water, hops, and two types of yeast to make our beers. The
average brew is 650 lbs. of malted barley, 500 gals.of water, 6-7
lbs. of hops, and 20 lbs. of liquid yeast.
Brewing
Malted barley, a cereal grain that provides body and color to
the beer, is milled into the MASH TUN, where it is mixed
with hot water, creating a mash. The sweet, fermentable
liquid from the mash, called wort, is run off through
screened plates to the KETTLE. While the wort
is running off, we spray the grain with more hot water, a process
called sparging. This is a process similar to making
coffee. Once all the wort is run off, the spent grains
are given to a farmer for cattle feed.
When the kettle is at 430 gals, we start the boil, and
add hops, a small, resinous flower providing bitterness and aroma
to the beer. We use a number of different aromatic hop varieties
for lagers and ales. After 1 hour of boiling, we cool the
wort to a FERMENTER.
Fermenting
While cooling into the fermenter, yeast is added and the tank
is closed up. Our ales are made with a top fermenting strain
that actually floats to the top of the fermenter, and our lagers
are made with a bottom fermenting strain that settles during
fermentation. At the end of 3-4 days, the yeast has utilized
sugars from the wort, giving off CO 2 and alcohol.
Storage
At the end of fermentation, the cooling is turned on, yeast settles out, and
the beer is pumped into a CELLAR TANK. Beer flavors mature at
this stage, called secondary fermentation, during the 7-14 days of storage. We
also “dry hop” some ales at this stage, adding hops to the
cellar tank to give the beer more aroma.
Filtration and Serving
After aging, the beer is cooled to 36 deg. in the cellar tank for 24 hours. Under
pressure, the beer is transferred through cellulose sheets in our FILTER PRESS to
remove protein haze and yeast to a SERVING TANK. Serving tanks are
counterpressured, for service directly to our taps at the bar. Our beers
are poured without preservatives, fresh and unpasteurized.
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