The Journey from Brewing to Tasting Your Favorite Craft Beer
When you think about craft beers, what comes to mind? The taste of the beer? How good was it with dinner last night? Or maybe the brewery that makes your favorite drink. There is a story before all that, though. It starts at the source: brewing. Most people don’t know how much work goes into making their favorite beverage and all of its ingredients before they enjoy it for themselves.
Let’s take an inside look at what happens in between where your craft beer is brewed and when you finally get to enjoy it.
Brewing Stage
The first step in the journey of making your favorite craft beer is at the brewery. The brewers take all of their ingredients and mix them into a liquid called wort, which will later ferment into the drink you know and love.
During this stage, it’s crucial to get everything just right so that there are no off-flavors or smells when fermentation begins. Brewers use a process known as sparging to get the right mix of water and barley malt, which is what ultimately ends up in your glass.
Fermentation Stage
Once the wort has been brewed, it’s time for fermentation. This part can be compared to cooking: there are both excellent cooks and bad cooks.
The same goes for brewers: some are good at creating the perfect mix of ingredients, and they know how to ferment them into a drinkable beverage, while others can ruin all of their hard work by spoiling one part or another.
During fermentation, yeast is added, and it eats sugars from the wort, transforming them into alcohol. This process takes about a week to complete, and the brewer needs to be sure that it’s done without any problems or off-flavors.
Bottling Stage
The final step in creating your favorite craft beer is bottling. This can also be compared to cooking because you need all of your ingredients measured out, so they go into the bottle just right. We’re witnessing the rise of cans as preferable options to store and preserve the quality of beers but that’s for another story.
Brewers carefully measure everything so that the right amount of carbonation is produced and there are no off-flavors. Brewers then take a small sample from each batch before it goes into bottles to make sure everything tastes just as expected. Once this step has been completed, your craft beer is ready for you!
Pricing Stage
In between all of these steps, there are a lot of things that need to be done in regards to different beer styles. Brewers have to make sure the beer is fermenting without any problems, and they also have to monitor their bottling day, so everything goes as planned. Because brewers spend so much time making your favorite craft beers, you can expect them to charge a little more than the average beer you can buy at the store. According to Untappd, there are so many factors considered when setting the price of craft beers.
Craft Beer Tasting Stage
Now that you know all about how your favorite craft beer was made, then comes time to enjoy it. There are different flavors and aromas that you may notice while drinking, which come from various ingredients.
Some beers are made with fruit like raspberries or blueberries; others might use coffee beans to create a distinct flavor. The possibilities for what can go into making craft beers seem endless; essentially, anything could be used to make the perfect drink for each person.
Now that you know what happens behind the scenes in a brewery, you can appreciate your favorite drink a little more. Next time you have one of your craft beers from the store or at a restaurant, try to think about all that goes into it before it is in front of you and enjoy every sip
