There is a common misconception that beer is brewed using chemicals rather than natural products. This is probably as a result
of the industrial look of most breweries, which compares unfavourably with the mental picture of a dusky maiden treading grapes!
Breweries are indeed industrial, but this is a result of the volumes of water and barley which must be moved around the brewery through several different stages of the brewing process. And there are additional processes required in brewing beer as in wine the sugar is freely available in the grape, but in a grain of barley the sugar is held in the form of starch and is not readily accessible to the yeast.
So, does brewing use chemical products to release the sugar within the barley? No, the natural enzymes available in the barley grain are used by beginning the growing process, so that the barley grain starts breaking down the starch into usable sugars. Then it is malted in a kiln to stop the growth and add to the flavour, and once dried it is rolled to break the coating of the grain and allow the sugars to be dissolved.
The basic steps of brewing are shown below:
Barley is steeped and germinated
Barley is malted in a kiln
Malt is milled
Malt is mashed with water
Mash is separated to
produce wort
Wort is boiled
Hops are added to boiling wort
Wort is clarified and cooled
Yeast is added
Fermentation takes place
Cask conditioned beers are packaged
Brewery conditioned beers are filtered and packaged
