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How Newlan makes beer
The beer-brewing process varies wildly depending on what kind of beer you’re making. Instead of using grain extracts, Newlan uses the all-grain brewing method to make his beer, which adds an extra step or two.

Step one:

Newlan mills the grains he’ll use to make the beer.

Step two:

He puts the milled grains into a water-filled keg on his heat exchange recirculating mash system. The grains steep in the water, which is heated to 150 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, to create a mash. The heated water coaxes the sugars out of the grains.

Step three:

Newlan filters the grains out of the liquid, now called a wort.

Step four:

He boils the wort for 60 to 90 minutes, adding hops and other spices such as coriander or orange zest. The ingredients added during this step create the beer’s flavor profile.

Step five:

Newlan cools the wort to below 80 degrees as quickly as possible using a copper-tubing system on his HERM. Bringing the temperature down quickly wards off bacterial growth.

Step six:

Newlan adds yeast to the wort, then pours the mixture into a glass vessel called a carboy.

Step seven:

After one or two weeks, he transfers the beer to a second carboy for another fermentation. This second fermentation could be as short as one or two weeks for an ale or as long as several months for a lager.

Step eight:

Newlan puts the beer into bottles or kegs. Sometimes he adds priming sugar to the beer so it can undergo another fermentation inside the bottle or keg. This means the beer is “alive,” or changing, until the day it’s poured.