Equipment

 

Here are the main pieces of equipment that Colchester uses:
(click on picture to make it larger)

 

Grain Mill:
Before the barley is added to the hot water, which is known as the mash, it must be crushed in a grain mill.  Crushing the barley opens up the inside of the grain, allowing the hot water to soak in, which helps to convert the starches into sugars.

 

 

Mash Tun:
Mashing barley is like making tea.  When the tea is mixed with warm water, the water extracts the flavors from the tea.  When crushed barley is mixed with warm water, the water extracts flavors and sugars from the barley.  But when it comes to making beer, a brewer would need one big tea cup.  Instead, we use what is called a mash tun.  This is the container that holds the crushed barley and the warm water.

 

Manifold:
After the mash is over, the water must be separated from the grain.  The device used for this is called a manifold.  Our manifold is made out of copper with little slits on the bottom of each piece; the slits in the copper allow the sugary liquid (wort) to empty out of the mash tun, while preventing the barley from escaping.

 

 

Boil Kettle:
We have two 10-gallon boil kettles in our brewery.  One is used to heat up the water for the mash tun, and the other is used to boil the wort after it's been separated from the mash tun.  While it's boiling, hops will be added to provide the bitterness.  If no hops were added, the result would be a very sweet beer.  The bitterness from the hops is more easily extracted in boiling liquid.

 

 

Immersion Chiller:
After the hops have been added and the boil is complete, the next step is to cool down the beer as fast as possible, in order to add the yeast.  The beer must be somewhere around refrigeration temperatures.  There are several different pieces of equipment to choose from for cooling down a liquid.  Here at Colchester, we use what's known as an immersion chiller.  It's copper tubing that's been wrapped in circles to form a coil, and it gets its name because it's immersed into the liquid.  Cold water runs into one end of the chiller, it circulates through the coils, and comes back out the other side.  The effect is that it cools down the once boiling liquid (the water never comes in contact with the beer).

 

Fermentation:
After the liquid (wort) has reached the correct temperature, it's now time to transfer it to a carboy.  A carboy is nothing more than a food-grade plastic container that holds the liquid.  Once the wort has been transferred to the carboy, the yeast is added, and it is placed into a small refrigerator.  Next, we'll attach a temperature probe to the outside of the carboy.  The temperature probe monitors the temperature of the fermentation.  We have a controller in which we can dial in a specific temperature.  Yeast will perform best when the temperature is steady and constant.  Using a temperature probe allows us to control the fermentation temps at all times.  Surprisingly, when the fermentation begins, it can actually increase the temperature of the liquid by a few degrees!  But a temperature probe will control that and prevent it from happening.  Two important things to remember about fermentation is that we need to prevent anything from entering the beer, including air, and that the process of fermentation gives off gas.  So we need a way to let gas escape, without letting air get back into the beer.  We do this with an airlock.  In the pictures, you can see there is a tube connecting the carboy to a small plastic container behind it filled with water.  The tube connects the carboy to smaller plastic container, and it reaches down below the surface of the water in that plastic container.  The prevents air from creeping up through the tube into the carboy, and it also allows gas to escape from the carboy into the water.

 

 

 

 

 

Contact

Colchester Brewing Company

colchesterbrewing@gmail.com

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