BEER IN THE MAKING

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 1, 12 February 1945, Page 18

BEER IN THE MAKING

A KORERO Report

In the brewery cellar we began to lose our delusions about brewing beer. “ It’s much better than the beer you get across the bar counter,” we said, sampling the cool, clear contents of the keg. “ That’s because it’s free,” said the head brewer cynically. His argument had some foundation, but he did agree that the handling of the hogsheads had a lot to do with the flavour of the beer drawn up from the hotel cellar. That and the cellaring conditions. Here another of our ideas went overboard. We had imagined long lines of casks lying quietly for months while the “ old and mild ” matured. We had even thought to see a cobweb or two. “ It wouldn’t keep,” said the cellarman. “ Besides the demand is too great. A week or so is all it needs and then ” He indicated the endless chain lifting kegs to the delivery platform and the lorries outside. We liked the cellarman, quite apart from his hospitality. He was at least something like our mental picture of the man who tends the casks with loving care. He was lean and old, with a jutting jaw, but a twinkling eye. He

wore a black beret at a jaunty angle. Also he shuffled. The head brewer and his assistant had both disappointed us. The manager, from his modern office, had sent us up to the brewing tower to find not a hearty old man sipping with slow appreciation the contents of innumerable brown beakers, but a young chap with hornrimmed glasses whose khaki shirt and sun tan had only recently, been acquired in the Middle East. His chief was older, but, without his white chemist’s coat, would have looked more like an accountant. Both admitted that by taste alone they could not always tell last week’s brew from last month’s. They relied more on their knowledge of the game and the apparatus of their laboratory. And they assured us that drowning in a vat of beer would not be such a glorious death. Too much CO2 about. So, with our preconceived'ideas about beer drowned deep in a hogshead, we began our search for the truth about breweries. “ I’ll take you over to the malt-house,” said the assistant brewer, and on the way to this white high-gabled building, which

somehow looks like a gaol, he explained to us the profession of a brewer. He is apprenticed for five years, and then, if he is lucky, works his way up to the position of head brewer. Then it’s his job, under the brewery manager, to run not only the technical side, but also the general control of staff. “Not so easy these days either,” he said with a wry grin. , “ We’re not an essential industry, and sometimes a chap we get has the idea that he’s here to drink as much as he can as fast as he can (before he is found out). But the majority are first class—a lot of them returned men—and hard workers as you’ll see in the malthouse.” On the long concrete floor the barley, which is the potential malt, had been spread to a depth of about 3 in. It had been steeped in water upstairs for about three days and then “ couched,” or heaped, for a day before being spread out to germinate on this floor and the one above. During germination the grain behaves as a seed in the ground would. It shoots out roots and begins to sprout while chemical changes are taking place within its cells. It is turned by wooden hand shovels several times to bring the warm grain up and bury the cooler grain on top. Warmth, moisture, and air are, of course, essential to germination. Then, before the sprout has broken away from the grain—a period varying from seven to nine days according to the weather-—the barley is again “ couched ” and the germination retarded or “ withered,” in the brewery terminology. Next it is elevated to the kiln, where it is spread on a fine grid floor through which hot air rises to cook the grain and turn it into “ malt.” The cooking goes on for three days, during which time the temperature is gradually raised to 200° F. and the carpet of barley ploughed once and turned by hand about four times. For a final roasting the thermometer soars to 220° F. And if you have any delusions about the easiness of work in a brewery watch the men in singlets and shorts forking over the shallow layer of grain in this huge oven. The “ malt ” is next screened and carted off to the grist case to await

crushing and its turn to put the body into beer. The screenings, because of their high nitrogen content, are a valuable manure and are being used in quantity on the new bowling-green for the Disabled Servicemens’ Centre in Wellington. Crushing is not exactly the word to describe the next process. The cooked grain is cracked rather than ground to the consistency of flour. This is done the day before it is to be used in a brew. Then the real business of brewing beer begins. “ Be down at 7 o’clock,” said the assistant brewer. “ We’ve a small brew on to-morrow. Three days a week we start at six.” We wondered then how we were going to manage it, and next morning barely arrived in time to see the brewer mix the mash which is the start of all the trouble. The crushed malt is fed with hot water into the mash-tun, a huge enclosed cylinder which has a perforated bottom. This perforated bottom allows the extract from the tun to seep through and run away to the copper. The mash, and there’s a. pound or two of it, plops into the tun with the consistency of a thick porridge. Here it stands for an hour and a half, and then hot water sprinklers are turned on, and the liquor, now known as “ wort,” run off to the copper by way of another tank, where refined and invert sugar (rather like treacle) are added. By 10 o’clock the copper’s full and on the boil. Now the hops, which give the beer its bitter flavour and aroma, are added and the mixture boiled for an hour and a half.

Mixing the mash is one of the most important stages in the process. Teffiperatures and proportions are strictly controlled, but the possibility of something going wrong is often apt to give the brewer a headache. This he can, however, sooth by a 'sniff of the rich warm malt the odour of which fills the mash-tun room. The wort flows down to the copper, and from there on to the hop-back after boiling. Just before this run-off, and during it, the copperman stirs the steaming copper with a long pole to ensure that all the hops go through to the hop-back. Our artist has given you an impression of this process. An obvious comparison is to an outsize witch’s cauldron, though this is a little unfair to the copperman. Clouds of steam swirl up through the building, and, peering over the edge of the bricked copper, you can see the brown mixture bubbling and boiling furiously with a light foam frothing on the surface. Round and round walks the copperman, dimly seen in the mist of steam. A float dropped into the copper records the quantity of the boil on a wall chart

fifty hogsheads this time or 2,700 gallons. A sample is taken, and then the valve is opened to send the wort spurting into the hop-back below. Here it is strained before being pumped to the top of the brewery tower to be strained , and aerated. As the wort streams down through finely perforated vessels the air works through it, so guaranteeing that it has sufficient oxygen to react with the yeast. Next it is cooled to 6o° F. by a refrigeration system similar to those in that most innocent of institutions city milk department. Then it flows through to the fermenting vats. Yeast is added, about 150 lb. to every 100 hogsheads of wort, the wort becomes a brew, and will soon become a beer. During the refrigeration stage the wort is very delicate, as we were told as we stood by the open window— tower is better ventilated than any dormitory and watched the warm liquid flow down the chiller. The brewers had some trouble here a few years ago. The beer was playing funny tricks (even before it left the brewery)', and the difficulty was finally tracked to the yeast. Wild yeast was getting into the beer. The question was how. They then discovered that when the wind was from the north wild yeast bloom from a peartree in the section next door was being blown in through the open window and infecting the wort. The remedy was easy. The brewers grow their own yeast■ a culture they call it — and so ensure its purity. Since yeast is a living, growing organism much more is built up brew by brew than is needed. Some is necessarily wasted, but sufficient is kept to use for the daily needs of the brewery. When processing plant is available a useful by-product can be made from the excess yeast. In the fermenting-tanks the brew works for a day and a half and a fleecy carpet of yellow yeast begins to form on its surface. From now on bottled beer and draught beer part company. A brew for bottling is transferred to huge, open skimming-vessels. A brew destined for hogshead and handle goes off down to the cellar after its initial working and is

held in 108-gallon butts (large barrels) for about five or six days. While it works, the yeast overflows from the open bung-hole in the top of the butt into trays below, and it is the job of the “ topperoff ” to keep the butts brim-full by pouring in beer from a large copper kettle. Meantime the “ cooper ” has trued and repaired his casks, to each of which he adds a small quantity of dry hops before they are filled from the barrels. The “topper-off” and his assistants have also added finings (isinglass) to the butts to clear the sediment from the beer. This forms a jelly which drops slowly through the liquid, bringing the suspended matter with it. Then the 18, 36, and 54 gallon casks are filled from the butts and bunged, but not too tightly, for the head cellarman has yet to add a little isinglass to complete the clearing of the beer before he finally bungs up the barrel. The beer is now ready for the road only a week or so after brewing. Down in the long, low cellar the butts lie on their sides on wooden racks, and while filling is going on some are tilted drunkenly forward while others sit stiffly and soberly to wait their turn. The incongruity lies in the fact that it is the empty ones that tilt in so obviously a tipsy fashion while the full ones are so stolidly steady on the stands. Perhaps a case of poetic justice. There is art in making and repairing casks, as the cooper will readily tell you, and an art in rolling them on their rim along a wet floor. There is also an art in arriving at the brewery in time for morning and afternoon tea. Here the

usual amber brew served in factory and offices is replaced by a small keg of liquid similar in colour but a lot colder, and the employees roll in from all parts of the brewery to refresh themselves for ten minutes in the pleasant coolness of the cellar.

The brewer tests the brew as it arrives each day in the fermenting-tanks for quantity and specific gravity. The Customs officer drops in later to see that everything is according to Hoyle. Water has a specific gravity of 1,000 measured by the sacchrometer. That of the old beer of glorious memory was 1047 ; that of the new is 1036. This reduction in specific gravity means a necessary reduction in alcoholic content because the sacchrometer floats and reads higher in a stronger alcholic solution. It also means that the same quantity of ingredients will go further.

But the business of reducing the alcoholic content was a ticklish one for the head brewer, and the sacchrometer must still give an accurate reading of 1036 or there will be trouble with the Customs Department. No beer is

brewed commercially in New Zealand above that mark. A dry dip with a measuring-stick gives the quantity, and all this is entered in the Customs Book to await the daily inspection of the officer, whose Department sends in a weekly beer duty account to the manager for 3s. a gallon or, in rounder figures, several thousand pounds a week !

Accurate temperature charts are kept during the time the yeast is working. A variation of even one degree is important.

Chemically, if you’re interested, yeast breaks down the sugar in the wort to produce alcohol. Thus a non-alcoholic drink is turned into an intoxicating liquor. The yeast also produces the gas, carbon dioxide, which enlivens the beer. The tanks in which the brew ferments are made of kauri. The prewar kegs were made from Baltic oak ; now from Australian blackwood and Southland Beach.

The only difference in a brew used for bottling is the treatment. After it has fermented for a day and a half in the fermenting-vessels it works for another

five days in the skimming-vessels. The yeast is periodically skimmed off except for the last working, which goes with the beer to conditioning tanks, where it is fined with isinglass. After two days, in the tank it is pumped under pressure through a para-flow and carbon dioxide gas is forced into the beer. In the paraflow, a small machine in which the beer travels about two hundred yards up and down channels chilled by a countercurrent of brine, the brew is brought down to just above freezing-point and is then sent on to cold-storage tanks, where it is kept at 32 0 F. for a week. Then it goes out to the bottling department.

This brewery has a miraculous machine which handles the bottling business. Dirty bottles are fed in at one end by hand and move eight abreast into the washing-machine. Here the bottles are washed with caustic solution inside and out, syringed with clean hot water and finally tipped out after twenty minutes on to a conveyer belt to receive their ration of beer.

The beer meantime has been forced under high pressure through layer upon layer of cotton pulp to free it from any suspended matter. The pulp is washed and pressed each day in the factory. Then the beer is sent on to the filler, a solid rotary machine which takes the bottles from the washing-machine and fills and caps them at the rate of more than sixty a minute.

Another belt picks them up and carries them off to the pasteurizer, where hot water is sprayed on them throughout their hour and twenty minute journey. During this time the temperature is gradually raised to 140° F. and then as slowly lowered. The bottles arrive at the other end of the machine thirty-six abreast and move slowly forward like a platoon until they are picked up by two belts running at right angles to their line of march and, with a quick left turn, are whisked away two deep to the labelling-machine. Before they meet this machine they joggle noisily into line as would a picture queue and then pick up the pace as they are caught by the rotary labeller, which gums and slaps a label on to each, folds

it back, and then shoots the bottle out to the far end of the assembly line to be packed into cartons and crates.

All .this work is automatic except for feeding the bottles in at one end and crating them at the other, and takes about an hour and three-quarters. Men stand guard over various vital points to correct by their intelligent touch the irrational errors of the machine, but the whole process • goes on with few interruptions. Should a breakage occur in

the washing-machine the whole line cuts out automatically. The machine handles 1,200 doz. (14,400 bottles) in less than four hours, but you can't help feeling sorry for the men who, hour after hour, feed its enormous hunger with empty bottles four at a time.

That, except for the session in the cellar, is how beer is brewed and bottled. That last session is undeniably pleasant, but activities down there need no description. The beer beggars it.