Beer and wild ferments

Beer is its own microbial marvel that proposes a multitude of ways of entangling the visible and invisible world around us with culture

This is a list of the basic steps involved in making beer with a view to this being expanded as a practice beyond the simple (but important) act of making beer.

basic steps:

• sanitation : cleaning all the gear
• the brewing : assuming full grain process:
  • The Mash ie activating enzymes in the grain to change starch to sugar (food for yeast) also base body/flavour/colour of beer ()
  • Lautering separating the mash from the grain, this includes sparging (heating some more water to hotter and pouring over grain) all to get maximum sugar out of the grain
  • The Boil, boiling at a higher temp to kill off remaining enzymes, remove O2 and lower pH for stability. Hops are first added here
• Cool Down as fast as possible (room temp in 20min)
• Transfer to primary fermenter (gravity reading)
• pitch yeast and aerate
• 1st fermentation (yeast converts sugars to alcohol)
• 2nd fermentation (if doing)
• rack