Grain Storage: The most abundant grain in our beer is pale malt, which is stored in two 60,000 lb. silos next to the brew tower. In our brewing process, specialty grains are used in lesser amounts and are added by hand to the milling process. These grains include crystal malt, wheat malt, dextrin malt, chocolate malt, and roasted barley. These grains are packages in either 50 lb. or 25 kg. sacks.
Grist Hopper: Malted Barley and other specialty malted grains are crushed into grist in the grist mill and fed by a bucket elevator into the grist hopper. Milling the grains opens them to allow maximum conversion of starches and extraction of sugars.
Bright Beer Tank: Beer is stored here for final conditioning, including a week's storage on 'dry hops' that are added to the tank to give the beer hop aroma. Here, the beer is krausened just prior to packaging.
Hot Liquor Tank: This tank reclaims hot water generated by the brewing process and stores it until it is ready for use.
Mash Mixer: This vessel is where hot water is added to the grist to create the 'Mash'. The vessel is heated for precise control of mash temperature that allows the brewer to control alcohol content and body of the final beer.
Fermentation Tanks: Here wort is converted to beer through the fermentation of yeast. The yeast metabolizes wort sugars and other nutrients to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide, as well as other flavor compounds.
Brew Kettle: The wort is pumped from the lauter tun to the brew kettle where the wort is boiled with whole flower hops. The boiling extracts bitterness and flavor from the hops, sterilizes the wort, and helps coagulate non-soluble proteins.
Lauter Tun: In this step of the brewing process, the mash is transferred to this vessel to separate the grains from the sweet liquid, called 'wort.'
Whirlpool: The hopped wort is pumped to the whirlpool where the coagulated protein, called 'trub,' settles out and is removed from the wort.
Hop Back: The hopped wort travels to the hop back, or hop separator, where the whole flower hops are separated from the wort mixture.