Estes Park Brewery

Beer Manual

BEER HISTORY

Recent evidence suggests that Sumerians were making beer for home and ritual consumption almost 4000 years ago. More recently, beer is known to have played a part in ceremonies of Central American and Anglo-Saxon cultures. In short, people have been home brewing for thousands of years. With the rise of cities and poor waste treatment facilities, beer became one of the few safe drinks available.

The pub brewery was one of the first social institutions in colonial America. As such, brewing is one of the oldest industries in America. This industry flourished with the development of hundreds of small breweries throughout the United States. Then came prohibition. Only the larger breweries survived prohibition due to diversification to other malt products and near beer. World War II caused a shortage of raw products for brewing, so brewers had to resort to more common grains like rice and corn. Consequently the beer being produced was a lighter, less flavorful product. Today these are referred to as American Lagers and are still by far the most popular beers in America.

BEER STYLE

In pre-prohibition America, as in the rest of the world, each valley, region, or distinct geographical area used to have its own particular favorite beer style. These developed over long periods of time. The styles were affected by such things as the availability of different types of hops, grains, and yeast.  The mineral content and hardness of the water of a particular region would also play an important role. We now know enough about the brewing art and science to be able to closely duplicate the technique (art) and ingredients (science) of the classic styles.

     BEER TYPES

        LAGER  ALES

Yeast    Saccharomyces Uvarum   Saccharmyces Cerevisiae

Action      Bottom fermented                 Top fermented

Temp.          Cold, 48-55                             Warm 65-75

How long          3-6 weeks                         2-3 weeks

All of the beers we make except the Staggering Elk are ales. There are many different types of ale yeast, but generally they impart more flavors such as a slight fruitiness or sweetness, then lager yeasts. Lagers often have a faint sulfury odor to them.

Both lagers and ales contain light and dark beers. The list below shows many of the common beer styles encountered.

ALES                                    LAGERS

      Pale ale           pilsner

      Porter       bock

      Stout                                      Munich

            Hefeweizen                         Octoberfest

THE BEER MAKING PROCESS

Ingredients: Beer contains four main ingredients: Water (90 to 95% of beer), barley, hops, and yeast.

Water- Our water comes from the local Rocky Mountains. We run it through a carbon filter to remove the chlorine. For many of our beers we make the water a little harder by adding calcium sulfate (gypsum).

Grains- Our beers are made with malted barley and malted wheat. No cereal grains (rice, corn) are used. The malted grains supply the beer with body and sugars for the yeast to convert to alcohol. Specialty grains are used in various ways to color the beer and give it certain flavors.

Hops- Hops grow in tall vines which produce flowering buds. These buds are harvested and compressed into bales or pellets. Hops serve two main functions; the first is to give the beer some bitterness to balance the sweetness of the malt. The second function is for the aromas that they can give a beer. Hops have been grown for hundreds of years and there are many different varieties with differing characteristic.

Yeast- The job of the yeast is to convert sugars to alcohol. There are many types of yeast which have different characteristics. Our ale yeast will ferment a batch of beer in 5 days. Our Lager yeast will take 7 to 9 days. We reuse the yeast in subsequent batches for anywhere from 10 to 15 generations.

HOW TO MAKE BEER

The brewing process can be broken down into four distinctive steps: mashing, boiling, fermenting, and aging.

The mashing process involves mixing hot water with barley that has been ground in a mill. This is mixed to the consistency of oatmeal and allowed to sit for 70 minutes. At that time we run more hot water over the grain which is on top screens which prevent the grain from transferring into the boiling kettle.

After extracting all the sweet liquid from the grains into the brew kettle we boil the liquid (called wort) for 90 minutes. Boiling sterilizes the wort which is important for the yeast to have a bacteria free environment.

Boiling also breaks down proteins which if carried over to the fermenting stage could inhibit yeast performance and make the beer cloudy. The final thing that happens during the boil is that this is the time when the hops are added. Hops added early in the boil are called bittering hops, hops added later are for flavor, and hops added just before the end of the boil are for aroma.

After the boil is complete the wort is run through a chiller which cools it down to a temperature that the yeast finds best. For our ales its 68 degrees and for our lagers its 52 degrees. The yeast work there magic converting sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Once the yeast is finished we cool the beer down to 38 degrees to help the yeast to settle to the bottom of the tank and to start the aging process. During conditioning the flavors mellow and blend. After conditioning we filter many of our beers to make them very clear and clean looking.

Some beers such as the stinger and raspberry are not filtered so they will remain hazy. To carbonate the beer we inject carbon dioxide through a carbonating stone so it percolates through the beer and is absorbed to give the beer its bubbles.

FACTS- Our brew house is 14 barrels or 427 gallons. It takes about 7 hours to brew a batch. From start to finish it takes 10 days for the ales to be ready to drink and 28 days for the lagers.