Brewing Process
Grinding
 Each brew requires pale and specialty malts. Our malts are stored upstairs in the loft of the brewpub. The malts are poured into our grain mill, which gently crushes the malt to facilitate the conversion of the starch to sugar during mashing. The crushed specialty and pale malt, called grist is moved by auger to the grist hopper that hangs from the ceiling of the pub, from there it is augured to the mash tun. Here the grist is dropped into the premasher where it is mixed with water to form mash. From the premasher the mash drops into the mash tun.
All brewing water is treated to reduce the alkalinity and hardness to specific levels depending on what type of beer is being brewed. In addition the water is carbon-filtered to remove chlorine.
Mash
 In the mash tun, the mash sets for about 60 minutes, allowing the conversion of starches to sugar. After the conversion phase, voriaf begins. During voraf, the “wort” is circulated in the mash tun to permit the mash to “set”. During the next process called “sparging”, it is important that the sparge water flows through the mash at a proper rate to insure extraction of all the sugars.
Lauter and Sparge
The wort in now moved by pump from the mash tun to the brew Kettle. In a process called lautering, hot water is used to sparge the mash to leach out the sugar extract. The volumes of water are carefully monitored to insure that the correct gravity (Plato) of the wort is achieved. Gravity relates to the amount of sugars in solution, and is important, since beer is ultimately produced by the conversation of sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Boil
 As wort is added to the brew kettle, steam is used to bring the wort to boil. During the boil, which lasts for some 90 minutes, hop is added at different intervals to impart bitterness, flavour, vlavoe and aroma to the beer. At the end of the boil, the wart is passed though a wort chiller, which reduces the temperature from about 121 degrees to 50-70 degrees. In addition the wort is oxygenated while being pumped over to the fermenter. The oxygen is required by the yeast for cell growth.
Pitching the Yeast
Several days prior to brewing, the brewer propagates one of the several different yeast strains we use in making our beers. The beer is transferred to the fermenter where fermentation occurs. Depending on the type of beer being produced fermentation takes place at temperatures ranging between 55 to 7 degrees for a period of about 1 week.
Fermentation and Conditioning
 When fermentation is complete, the yeast slurry is collected and/or run off while the beer is transferred to a conditioning tank. During conditioning, finings are added and the beer is allowed to mature and additional yeast and proteins precipitate out of the solution. After conditioning, the beer is carbonated and pumped to the serving tanks located in the basement of our pub. From these tanks the beer is served directly to the pub customers or used for kegging.
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