The basics of beer

The crisp air of autumn seems like the perfect backdrop for tipping back a well-crafted beer. Maybe something with a hoppy bite and a little kick at the end, just like the weather . . . mmmm.

In Munich, the Oktoberfest celebration has been rolling for a couple of weeks, extolling the virtues of love, of beer, and of love of beer. Locally, the biggest beer festival in the region happens this week, and a few Oktoberfest celebrations have yet to roll out the barrel.

Colorado has long been a hotbed of microbrewology, and thanks to Coors and Budweiser, it also holds the title of top beer-producing state in the union.

In this neck of the woods, Bristol Brewing Co. is the biggest, and arguably the best, brewery. Founder Mike Bristol gave us a peek behind the scenes at the stainless-steel wonderland where beer is born. Ever wonder how exactly he and his brewmasters create the easy drinkability of Laughing Lab or the hearty taste of Winter Warlock?

To celebrate the season of beer, here’s a look at how the magic happens.

How beer is made - Six basic steps make up the brewing process

1. Milling

The grain silo at Bristol holds 50,000 pounds of two-row barley. The barley is crushed in the mill and mixed with specialty malted barleys that imbue distinctive color and flavor. The mix is about 80 percent barley, 20 percent malt.

2. Mashing

A batch of 1,200 pounds of milled barley is poured into the mash tun (vat) and mixed with hot water, like a giant cup of tea steeping. The brew master must use the right amount of water, at exactly the right temperature, to control the natural process of enzymes converting the starches in the barley to sugars. Then the sugary liquid (wort) must be separated from the grain (mash), through a process called lautering. The wort is recirculated through the grain bed as a natural filter and then runs off through a false bottom in the tank.

3. Boiling

The wort is pumped into the kettle and boiled for 90 minutes. This is when the hops are added, their bitterness counteracting the sweetness of the malt. The hops added at the beginning of the boil add bitterness, while the hops added near the end of the boil add complexity and aroma. Bristol uses 12 varieties of hops in its beer to coax out different characteristics.

4. Fermentation

The wort is moved through a heat exchanger to cool it down, then into a stainless steel storage tank to ferment. It takes about six days at Bristol for the yeast to eat the sugars and convert them into alcohol and flavors and carbon dioxide. Now it is beer.

5. Aging and Filtering

Bristol turns down the temperature on the storage tank to about 40 degrees and ages most of its beers one to five weeks. When aging is done, the beer is pushed through a filter on its way to “bright tanks,” which even out carbonation. “We’re really just trying to make the beer look pretty without pulling any flavor out of it,” Bristol said. It’s time to put the beer into kegs and bottles.

6. Packaging

The bottling line at Bristol usually runs twice a week — sanitizing bottles, filling with carbon dioxide to allow a fast pour, filling with beer, forming just enough head to keep out oxygen until the cap is slapped on, labeled, and boxed. Enjoy.