Week 4: Brewing on an industrial scale

Introduction

This week you will learn about how brewing is carried out on a large scale and look at some of the techniques used in post-production.

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This is an image of a pint of beer in front of brewing equipment.

In Week 2 you learned about the brewing process and saw it in action at Hook Norton Brewery. You will now discover how industrial processes are used to scale this up from a single vat process like the homebrew you may be making yourself, to the thousands of litres produced at modern breweries. You’ll learn about post-production techniques and how beer is treated and kept for storage. You will also learn about how low-alcohol beer is made and the techniques used to remove alcohol from beer.

All of this will be set in a historical context looking at how the Industrial Revolution affected the brewing industry and where the future of brewing (and distilling) may be going.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• describe how industrial processes and the Industrial Revolution affected brewing
• explain what techniques are used to store beer
• discuss the methods used post-production, to alter beer such as in the removal of alcohol, and for longer term storage
• describe where the future of brewing may be heading.