Magic of Making - Beer!

There was a time in old England when the water was so dirty that the only safe thing to do was drink beer. Barley is what you need to make beer. Water is needed too, of course. But as the beer is brewed the water is made safe by boiling and kept sterile with alcohol. Before being sent to the brewery the barley seeds are turned into malt by the maltster who softens them up with a gentle heat to help the goodness come out. Each 25 kilogram sack of malt will go to make one barrel of beer and this chap has to take it to a hole in the floor that leads to a powerful machine called a grinder. He has a very healthy job providing of course he doesn't fall down the hole. And there goes the malts to be ground into a powder that brewers call grist. The grist is mixed with water at a scalding hot 65 degrees Celsius. Almost boiling it falls into a giant tub called a mash tub and this chap has to check that the mixture is just right. To help him he's using a thermometer a bit different from the one you see at the doctors but this one needs to measure very high temperatures indeed. Now this is where brewing is rather like making a nice cup of tea. The goodness and the flavour and the colour of the malted barley is absorbed into the water and after an hour or so the resulting liquid is drained off. The malt is left behind like tea leaves in a pot. At this stage the mixture is known as wort spelt w-o-r-t not to be confused with the warts that we occasionally get on our hands. There are no warts here though which is just as well for our man as he checks the specific gravity. From the mash tun at the top the wort has been flowing steadily along the pipes into this great copper kettle and here's our friend again with his next job. He has to pour a sack of hops into the kettle just like a chef putting herbs into a boiling pot to impart a little extra flavour. Inside the hops and wort will boil away together and the kettle is sealed up. There goes all the steam. A few more hops and it's time to stand well back while the boiling kettle is emptied. Eventually the hop-back as the brewers call it is full and more of that hoppy flavour is absorbed into the boiling wort. And now for the clever bit Fermenting. Slate vessels handmade by Welsh craftsmen are filled with the wort and the final ingredient yeast a type of fungus that loves eating sugar and the wort is full of it. The yeast produces bubbling carbon dioxide gas and alcohol. It's the alcohol that gives the beer its strength and after a few days fermenting it's time to fill the barrels. When the barrel is full a squirt of finings made, would you believe, from the innards of fish keep the beer nice and clear. As the barrel rolls off the finings go hunting about inside looking for any stray bits of yeast there may be left over clumping them together in heavy clods so they don't make the beer horrible and cloudy. Deep down at the bottom of the brewery in the cool of the cellar the beer is pushed a little further into the massed ranks of barrels made ready for dispatch to clubs, pubs and restaurants all over the planet. And there you have it. The brewer's ingenuity has worked with barley, water, hops and yeast to make one of the world's most popular drinks.