Beer

The day job

So to pay the bills, one of my gigs is beer brewing.
Today I am making a barrel of IPA.

I wanted to focus on an aspect common to all beverages that involve extracting organic matter into water at higher temperatures.

It is all in the grind.

Attention to detail is what separates beer from better beer. Milling the grain is usually the first thing I do on a brew day. I think it is an important aspect of the process to overthink. Often times, minor adjustments will yield substantially different brews.

We use a small electric grain mill to grind all of our barley. Basically two rolling pins.

The intent is to come up with a grind that does not have too much fine particulate, neither too much course particulate. The optimal goal being to break each grain of barley into 4-5 parts.

Unless your mill is better than mine, the ideal will most likely never be realized. Settling is requisite. There will always be a few more whole grains of barley than needed in the final product. This is because with my equipment, were I too crush every grain, the bulk of material would be so fine that I suspect the brewery pumps would clog, and over extraction would occur.

How much of an effect can this parameter have on you final product? Be it coffee, tea, beer, or hot chocolate that you are brewing, it really makes all the difference.

If you are familiar with coffee, you are aware that coffee for espresso would be ground finer than a french press. If you attempted to put coarsely ground coffee into an espresso machine you would get an under extracted brew. On the other hand, putting finely ground coffee such as espresso grind into a french press results in the over extraction of the ground coffee.

Same thing, different drink, only more beer.

Beer is made from barley that is usually sprouted and then ever so lightly roasted or kilned. When the barley arrives to us at the brewery we grind it to a particular size. If we grind it too coarsely, then there is not enough surface area exposed to water. This will result in under extraction. if we grind it too finely there will be so much surface area exposed to hot water that not only will good flavorful compounds become one with the final product, but so will bad flavor compounds. You may think of a cellulose soup.

When the barley comes out the other side of the grinder it wont look quite like its there yet. Alot of the grain still looks in tact. In fact, it is crushed. It just looks in tact. if you were to rough it up a little it would

Super fine barley shavings permeate the whole mass. They are inevitable, and the only thing possible it to decrease their presence. Setting the mill too fine will make so much particulate that the brewery pumps and pipes will get clogged with it













This is what we want. Sure there are a few stray whole pieces of barley here and there, but I can't go any finer, for now.
















Hope you all are having a good Wednesday.
Be good now.