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At Holgate Brewhouse our recipes are carefully developed to capture
that satisfying taste and aroma of a full flavoured real ale or
lager and are true-to-style, with the unique flavours and colours
coming from a selection of the finest hops and malt available from
Australia and around the world. |
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The Mill and Mashing:
Back at the brewery, a brew day begins with the milling of the
malted grain to make the "grist" (cracked grain) through a two-roll
mill (pictured right). The Holgate brewery uses a simple single-step
infusion mash where the milled grain is mixed with hot water to
produce the "mash" - a thick porridge like mixture at about 65-66
Deg Celsius. This is where a bit of Mother Nature's magic is
employed to convert the starch from the grain into fermentable
sugars via the natural enzymes in he malted cereal grains. |
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Starch is essentially long chain sugars, or polysaccharides, which
are chopped up into basic sugars by the natural enzymes present in
the malt. Water for the Holgate brews is drawn from the various
local Mt Macedon area catchments.
Lautering and Kettle Boil:
The next stage involves draining all the fermentable extract from
the grain bed by sparging hot water through, and this "wort" is then
transferred to the kettle where it is boiled together with hops
vigorously for about 90 minutes.
Hops are a perennial climbing plant, or vine, and the flowers are
the important part used in the boil. The resins and oils in the hop
flowers are extracted during the boiling process and bring important
bittering, flavour and aroma elements to the finished product. Hops
also have natural preserving qualities which are important for
natural beers brewed in the traditional way without artificial
preservatives.
mmm...sweet, sticky, malty wort |
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After the boil, the wort is rapidly cooled via a heat exchanger and
transferred to a clean and sterile fermentation vessel where it is
pitched with a good quantity of yeast.
Fermentation:
These little yeast critters are single cell organisms which add
another touch of Mother Nature\u2019s magic to the process. The
yeast will eat the wort sugars and produce several by-products
\u2013 including carbon-dioxide (gas), alcohol and a range of esters
or chemical by-products. The carbon-dioxide (C02) is important for
naturally getting the fizz into the beer, and the various esters
produced give many interesting and desirable flavour and aroma
elements to the beer. |
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Lagering:
After fermentation the "green" beer is chilled and transferred to
conditioning tanks where low temperature and time (1-3 weeks) allow
the yeast and trub to settle and the beer starts to brighten and
become ready for consumption |
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Packaging:
To finish the process we run the conditioned beer through a
filtration system to remove all of the old dead yeast and transfer
it to a BRIGHT BEER tank ready for packaging. Our Real Ales are
carefully primed with sugar and fresh yeast in order to kick-start a
natural fermentation in the Bottle or Kegs to give the beer
carbonation/fizz. Our regular beers are force carbonated. The
Holgate packaging line pumps out a carton of 24 bottles every 60
seconds... great to watch!
Well that's about it... except for lots and lots of cleaning!
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