Brewing

Brewing, if you ask the question: what is whisky? The answer is simple: it’s the distillation of a beer! Simple question, simple answer but by the way, how do you make a beer?

To be able to talk to you about whisky, we will have to understand how we make a beer. This is what we call brewing… beer.4 steps to Brewing :

1 – Malting: we quickly pass on this stage for which we had devoted an entire article. You can find out by clicking here. To summarize this step, malting is barley that we will wet with water, germinate and dry. This is an essential step in the production of enzymes which will transform sugars into alcohol during fermentation.

2 – Brewing: Ah … here we come! The malt obtained will be crushed to give what is called a grist. Grist is a kind of coarse flour that will be mixed with water. We will heat all this mixture and stir it.

Did you know ? It takes 17g of sugar per liter to make a 1% alcohol.

3 – Hopping: we will skip this step if the final brew is to be used to make whisky. This is one of the big differences between a brew intended to become a beer and a brew intended for distillation. At the time of heating, we will incorporate hops and other spices, depending on the desired recipes. We will then bring this brew to a boil. If we skip this step for whisky, well it is essential for the beer which will develop its aromas at that time.

4 – Fermentation: it should not be forgotten that the distillation of spirits is first of all a distillation of alcohol! A distillery can of course manufacture its alcohol, but its core business is distillation. Fermentation is yeasts, microscopic single-celled fungi, which transform sugar into alcohol.

Your beer is almost ready since it will be necessary to carry out what is called a froth in the bottle to make it sparkling…. But that’s another story !

Another difference between a brew intended to become a beer and a brew intended to become a whisky in addition to hopping is the heating temperature of the brew. Indeed in order not to alter the aromas of future whisky well it will not be necessary to exceed and rise above 65 ° Celsius during this heating.

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If you are intersted by mixology, then this is it!

If you are intersted by our spirits, then this is it!

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Photo credit : Jeff Frank on Unsplash