Our Process

Mashing

Mashing is the process of getting the sugars and flavours from the malt. Due to our set up, we use a traditional single-temperature infusion mash, where the crushed malted barley (which is called the grist) is mixed with hot water in the mash tun and held at a step temperature. The temperature of this mixture is between 64°C and 68°C depending on the style of beer. This temperature range is ideal for activating the enzymes, mainly beta-amylase and alpha-amylase, which will convert the startches in the malt into fermentable sugars.

Our single-temperature mash keeps things a lot simpler and is in-keeping with the English brewing tradition. Our mashes are held at this steady temperature for 90 minutes, allowing the enzymes to do their thing. The final sugary water is called wort.

Sparging & Lautering

Once the mash has rested for the 90 minutes, the process moves on to a continuous sparge (also known as German sparge). The sparging water is heated to 78°C, and is slowly and steadily sprinkled over the top of the mash over the course of 2–2.5 hours. As this hot water flows through the grain bed, it gently rinses out the remaining sugars from the spent grains. Simultaneously, the produced wort is drained from the bottom of the mash tun at the same rate, and is transferred to the boiler.

With our very slow and traditional mashing process, we are achieving ~92% brewhouse/mash efficiency. This means we extract ~92% of the total fermentable sugars possible using this kind of method based on a theoretical model. Using different industrial methods, the 100% limit can be exceeded however that requires doing things which are well beyond our capabilities.

Boiling

The boiling stage is one of the most important steps when making beer. The collected wort is brought to a vigorous boil in our boiler/kettle/copper (there are many different terms for this). Once it is at this stage, we add the hops. We boil between 60 to 90 minutes depending on the style and what we want to achieve from this stage of the process.

The boil has many different functions that we utilize. The main purpose is adding of hops to add bitterness, flavours, and more. The heat of the boil causes the alpha acids to isomerise, which means they add the bitterness to the beer. The longer the hops are boiled, the more bitterness they contribute (to a certain limit).

Another aspect of the boiling process is that it acts as a sterilisation stage which kills of any of the wild yeasts, bacteria, etc that could spoil the beer. Technically the wort (not the final beer) is already well pasteurized due to our mashing process, but the boiling sterilises it further.

Another important stage which happens nearer the end of the boiler is called the "hot break". This is done by adding something called "Irish Moss" which helps use cause the proteins and prexisting polyphenols to clump together and precipitate out of the wort. This helps improve the beer clarity and stability, allowing us to get a brighter beer earlier on in the process.

Chilling & Transfer

Once the beer has been finish boiling with all of the numerous hop additions we add, we need to cool the beer down to about room temperature in order for use to pitch our house yeast.

Fermentation

Compared to many other breweries, we use open fermentation, a historical method where beer ferments in wider, shallower vessels, with no sealed lid. This allows us to get a better interaction between the wort and the environment, encourgaing the development of our unique flavour profile. Crafting our unique fruity signature yeast.