A lot goes into that handcrafted brew you slam down at your local brewery. To edumacate you, we helped stir the pot with Mountain Tap brewer Jarret Askin as he prepared their new Best Day IPA, tapped in October to kick off the launch of the Best Day Ever Fund helping getting youth outdoors in honor of the late Pete Van De Carr. Here’s how it’s made (impress your friends!):
Milling and Mashing: First he grabs grain from 55-lb. sacks of two-row malted barley and runs it through a mill to crack open the husk. For something hazy like this, he mixes that with another 50 percent mix of wheat and oats. “You need protein from other grains to make it hazy,” he says. It takes about 30-40 minutes to mill all the grains, then it’s a 20-minute process to pipe it all into the mash tun via an auger, where it’s mixed with hot water for the natural starch in the grain to convert to sugar and dissolve into liquid. “All we do is make sugar water, which we then feed to the yeast,” says Askin, eyes jumping from his clipboard to the clock on the wall. Next, they drain the “sugar water” (called “wort”) from the bottom of the mash tun and pump it back to the top of the grain bed to help clarify the wort.
Lautering: After that recirculating or “vorlauf” process and a few valve position changes on the brew deck pipe manifold, the wort then flows by gravity to the brew kettle for the next hour and fifty minutes until the brew kettle is full. During that time, additional water is sprayed on top of the grain bed (“sparging”) to rinse all the goods over to the brew kettle, leaving behind the grain husks that get shoveled into tubs and picked up by a local rancher to feed his pigs.
Boiling: About 250 gallons of wort is now in the brew kettle, where, for this batch, it’ll boil for 90 minutes at 201 degrees F. (remember we’re at altitude, science class anyone?). He’ll also add just a tic of hops for flavoring at the beginning of the boil (by the end he will have added about 5 lbs. of hops at different stages). “The longer you boil the hops, the more bitterness,” he says. “For this, we don’t want a bitter beer.” Then they’ll stir it in a process called “whirlpooling” to get some of the proteins and hops solids to clump together, then let it “rest” and settle out for 30 minutes before pumping it through a heat exchanger “to cool it down quickly.” Most lagers, he says, cool to 50-55 degrees F., and ales to 65-75 degrees F. for primary fermentation. “It depends on the type of beer style being made and yeast.”
Fermenting: After cooling, the cooled sweet wort feast goes into the fermenter to meet the yeast (“How you doin’?”). Here he adds more hops because this one’s a hazy. Then more hops during fermentation. In general, the later you add hops, the more aroma you get (similar to cooking with fresh herbs). It’ll ferment here at 67 degrees F. for seven to 14 days, after which they’ll drop the temperature to just above freezing to put the yeast dormant and have it drop out. The yeast, he adds, “will multiply like bunnies” during this time, allowing them to collect the excess yeast to use in subsequent brews.
Packaging: From there, it goes into the packaging or “bright beer tank,” where this batch, since it’s a hazy and not intended to be clear or bright, will only rest for three days before serving, either straight from the tank to the taps at the bar, or into kegs or cans. “Lagers on the other hand, take about four to six weeks in the packaging tank after fermentation to settle out,” he says. From this Best Day IPA batch they’ll get seven barrels, or approximately 14 kegs (1 barrel = 31 gallons = 2 kegs), which equates to about 1,700 pints.
Our job in all of this? All they’d trust us with was scooping out the leftover spent grain from the mash tun into trash cans, where it’ll get donated to a local rancher to feed pigs, goats, and chickens. Cheers!
Inside the Best Day IPA
“Pete was always big on how many sports you can you do in a day,” says Mountain Tap co-owner and brewmaster Rich Tucciarone. “For this we went with how many grains and hops can you brew in a day. We went with seven different grains and five different hop varieties, including some grown right here in Colorado. Our Best Day IPA is a hazy, smooth, dank, and crushable IPA, brewed with a variety of tasty grains like malted barley, malted wheat, raw wheat, flaked wheat and oats to give a hazy appearance from the grains’ protein. This complex grain bill also lends a smooth body and the perfect canvas to paint a very resiny, aromatic and hoppy picture (club car anyone?). It’s brewed to share and celebrate all those we know and love.”
Want to donate to the Best Day Ever Fund? Click here: https://yvcf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=5818
