Since we had already done the wine tour thing, we decided to learn about how beer was made while we were in Charlottesville!
We headed out to what seemed to be the middle of nowhere to the Starr Hill Brewery. It looked like an old rundown factory, but I was brave and ventured inside to check it out. Eventually I tracked down David, who was very ready to give us a tour and let us taste some Starr Hill beers!
I was SO impressed with David’s knowledge of the beer making process. This particular brewery was started by a biologist- and he definitely used that knowledge to get his business going. Who knew?!
First we learned about the malted grain that goes into the beer. This is where the source of sugar comes from. Differently flavors are produced by different degrees of roasting, much like coffee beans. There’s a whole range of roasts, from light to dark. (By the way, “chocolate malt” refers to the amount the wheat was roasted- it has nothing to do with chocolate itself!)
Apparently malted grain can be pretty expensive. There was even a huge shortage 2 years ago. Most “big company” beers aren’t even made with just malted grain- that’s how beers like Bud & Busch can be sold so cheaply, and microbrews are more expensive. Budweiser is actually made mostly with corn, and Busch is made mostly with rice. Interesting.
Next the beer is flavored with hops. Hops add a bitterness to beer, to help balance the sweetness from the grain sugar.
Anybody know that Miller Lite “triple hops brewed” ad campaign? Interesting fact: ALL beer is triple hops brewed ;). (Well except like 2 breweries in Scotland.) The hops are added three different times in the brewing process because they are so delicate: the first time for flavor, the second for color, and third for aroma.
I’m skipping a bunch of steps here, but after all the processing, the beer goes into fermentation tanks. The type of beer being made determines the fermentation process. After the beer is properly fermented, it’s time for packaging into kegs or bottles.
Starr Hill uses a mechanical bottling line, but most of the work is actually manual. The workers load the glass bottles onto the line, they are cleaned & pumped with CO2, then filled with beer. Then they’re pumped with some more CO2 to make the beer foam and immediately capped. (That’s why there’s space at the top of the bottle.) The line workers then pull the bottles off the line and box them up for shipping!
What a lot of work!!
After the tour we got to taste a bunch of their beers: an amber ale, a hefeweizen, a stout, and a few seasonal brews.
I think my favorites were The Love & Northern Lights. (Although I had Northern Lights at Brixx last week and hated it!)
What’s your favorite beer?!
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