Very New to the process and I have a bunch of questions

I am not a home brewer but I work for an company that does a ton of engineering work for breweries and distillaries. I have picked up a few things from being around these projects but I am an electrical guy and doing my job doesn’t involve knowing the process directly. Its something I have become fascinated with though. Anything you can answer below would be a great help!

  • Is the whole mash sent to the lauter tun to separate out the mash from the wort or does the wort leaving the mash tun just have pulp in it and the lauter tun is meant to separate out the little bit of pulp from the liquid?

-After the lauter tun when the wort is sent to the kettle. Is the main job of the kettle to cook the hops with the wort or does the wort need to be boiled for another reason?

-After fermentation when the beer is filtered. Is there other contaiminates besides the yeast in the product or is the main reason for pasteurization to kill/filter the yeast?

I am sure I will have more questions as I dig deeper into this process but any help with these would be great. Thanks!

Well, Welcome…
Mash and send to a Lauter-tun(?)…
Most home brewers use either, some hose/pipe IN the mash-tun that keeps 99% of the crushed malt from escaping with the liquid.
Another group uses a bag or basket to contain the malt and simply remove from the mash-tun…
Either way… Gravity works. Pump works.
This is just a simple explanation… It could get very detailed if you keep looking deeper.
Sneezles61

1 Like

Lautering is the process of separating the sweet wort from the grain. The term “ lauter tun”is not something many home brewers will be familiar with because they don’t typically have a vessel between the mash tun and boil kettle. The wort is filtered from the grain through a filter media(sometimes it’s just the grain bed that filters) and straight to the kettle. Due to this a home brewers kettle will have more trub(thick gelatinous gunk, mostly proteins) than a commercial brewery. Due to the volumes, typically 5 or 10 gals vs 1000s, we’re less concerned.

Boiling the wort helps to concentrate the sugars in the liquid and to sanitize the wort of any bacteria or infection, but a long boil of 60 minutes or so is really used to extract buttering from the hops.

Pasteurization is mostly about stopping further fermentation and for sanitization and safety aka CYA. It’s seldom done on the home brew level.

1 Like

Most brewers will use a Mash Tun/Lauter Tun which is a vessel fixed with a false bottom to separate the wort from the grain while sparging. In some systems the whole mash is sent to a separate lauter tun for sparging. Often this is to assist double batching as a new mash can be started.
Boiling in the kettle does several things. As @dannyboy58 says it concentrates the wort, sanitizes the wort, and extracts bittering, flavor, and aroma from the hops. In addition it will precipitate proteins and tannins. It boils off DMS which gives a creamed corn flavor to beer. Finally it creates Maillard reaction which can give the wort additional flavor, but also can darken the wort.
Filtering can provide a clearer beer by removing the yeast, hops, and trub. If fine enough (.5 micron) It CAN filter out some bacteria. The read in this is done is for life of the product (shelf stability).

1 Like

Does darker wort help in creating darker beers or is that strictly a type of yeast issue?

Darker wort is produced by dark malts… If you look at the ingredients our host provides, you will see very dark malt, which mainly is used as a “specialty” malt… The very light stuff is called “base” malt.
Sneezles61

Grains in a grain bill each have a color rating. Base malts are generally lighter in color and larger amounts are used. There are also Carmel and Crystal malts that are darker and can range from slightly dark to black. These are used for flavor enhancement. So, in short, darker wort equals darker beer,

This is such a good discussion. What I can say is… As someone who started as a home brewer, but specializes in automation… Who then has done projects for professional breweries… The only real way to figure some/all of this out is to partake in the activity. Meaning, you need to truly try to brew before you’ll ever really learn the full gamut of information. Even then, there’s so much to learn, it’s pretty insane. But I love it. I suggest you do some research, hopefully try some small scale stuff, and continue to ask questions!

And the process morphs too…
Sneezles61