Great company
Main page  /   How we brew our beer

How we brew our beer

Traditional technology of brewing beer consists of the following key stages:

 

 

Making
malt

 

Brewing
wort

 

Fermentation and
maturation

 

Quality control
and bottling

 

 

 

 

Making malt

 

Grains of barley are steeped in water at 12-17°C. The grains absorb moisture and start to sprout. During germination process specific levels of humidity, temperature and aeration are carefully maintained, as they impact the quality of malt. After that the sprouted grains are dried in a kiln.

There are different modes of drying grain, and they determine different types of malt, e.g. pale, caramel or black malt etc. Besides, to get some types of malt the grain additionally undergoes partial baking.

 

 

Brewing wort

 

Next stage – brewing wort – takes place at the brewery. The malt is milled, mixed with water in a large vessel known as a mash tun, and heated with brief rests at certain temperature levels. This process is called mashing. During mashing, natural enzymes convert the starch in the malt into sugars which will later play a vital role in the fermentation process.

The next step after the mashing is called lautering: the mash is put into a lauter tun, where the solids remaining in the mash are separated from the liquid wort.

After lautering the wort is put into a large tank known as a copper or brew kettle, where it is boiled with hops. Hops give beer its peculiar flavour, aroma and bitterness.

At the end of the boil, the wort is put into a vessel called a whirlpool, where the more solid particles in the wort are separated out. After that the wort is cooled.

 

 

Fermentation and maturation

 

At the next stage the wort is put into fermentation vessels. Because of their shape these are commonly referred to as cylindro-conical tanks or CCTs. In CCTs yeast is added to the wort, and it undergoes fermentation.

In the course of fermentation the yeast metabolizes the sugars present in the wort into ethanol and carbon dioxide. This way beer gets a certain percentage of alcohol and “bubbliness”.

The fermentation process takes place at 10-14°C during several weeks, depending on the type of beer. This stage is called an initial or a primary fermentation.

After it comes the stage of maturation, which takes place at temperatures from 0°C to -1°C during at least a week. For maturation the beer can either remain in the same vessels where it underwent initial fermentation, or it can be put into separate tanks.

Following maturation, the beer is filtered to remove yeast particles, protein residue etc. For this stage we use kieselguhr filters. Kieselguhr is the fossilized remains of diatoms, a type of hard-shelled algae that existed on Earth millions of years ago, in the times of the dinosaurs.

 

 

Quality control and bottling

 

After filtering beer goes through the final quality control. If the result is positive, the beer is packaged into glass bottles, aluminium cans, PET bottles and kegs, and transported to trade outlets.

Every batch of beer undergoes multiple rounds of quality control at each production stage, to ensure compliance with quality standards as well as with the standards of international systems of quality management and food safety ISO 9001 and ISO 22000. The final product undergoes thorough physicochemical, microbiological and organoleptic tests, to ensure a full match with the individual taste profile of a given brand. In case the sample doesn’t meet any of the quality standards, the whole batch is considered substandard and undergoes utilization.

This means that you can always be sure of great taste and excellent quality of beer from Efes breweries!