It’s a big weekend for beer lovers in Charlotte. The Queen City Brewers Festival is on Saturday and this year, the festival’s Beers for Life initiative is back. Each participating brewery was asked to feature a brew that will support a regional nonprofit. One of those breweries is Primal Brewery and they selected us. That's right, WFAE is proud to announce the release of a fruited pale ale called Ale Things Considered. And Primal didn't just make it for us. They made it with us. WFAE’s Marshall Terry reports.
Jaime Cain is Primal’s assistant brewer, who will be doing most of the work today.
“So this is our brewhouse,” Cain said. “Right behind me is going to be our mash tun, our kettle, and our whirlpool. This is where, in a brew day, we’re spending 90% of the day.”
The mash tun that Cain just mentioned is a giant tank where grain, mostly barley, has been soaked in hot water to extract sugars and starches. My first task is to scrape the spent grain out of the mash tun and into a big rubber trash can. It definitely works your arms.
The spent grain is set aside for a local farmer who feeds it to cattle. The sugary liquid created by the grain soaking is called the wort. It’s the base that will eventually become the finished beer. The wort gets moved next door to a kettle about the size of a small car.
“Right now it’s at 200 degrees Fahrenheit,” Cain said. “We want this to be up to 212 to start boiling. So the boil is going to be an hour long, and that’s when you’re going to be adding anything that gets added, really, in the brew is during that boil.”
I ask Cain how much of brewing is more art than science.
“I was a chemist before I was a brewer,” Cain said. “I love the science part of it. I would say it’s more baking over cooking, where you want to be a little bit more exact. You want to be more precise. Personally, I go home, you’d think I’m doing this all day, I’d be a good baker. I have never used a recipe when I’m cooking; I’m just throwing things together. It’s never the same. But you can’t really do that with brewing.”
After about an hour of waiting, the wort is finally boiling in the kettle and it’s time for me to add the hops. Cain shows me the proper way to pour them in by slowly tilting the bowl. It’s only a couple of handfuls of hops, so I ask if that’s enough for the giant kettle.
“Yeah, it’s a spice,” Cain said. “You put only like a pinch of salt on your potato. Now the boil has officially started and it’s going to be exactly one hour until it’s done. More waiting.”
After being filtered, the wort gets sent to one of the fermenters lining both sides of the brewhouse. Fermenters are those big tanks with the cone shape on the bottom, you’re probably used to seeing at a brewery. It’s here where yeast converts the sugars to make alcohol. It’s also where the fruit flavors — orange, grapefruit, and pineapple — will be added to this particular beer. Then, after about two weeks, the beer will be transferred downstairs.
“Where we then carbonate it up and then package it before it’s shipped out and people are drinking it,” Cain said.
If you want to get your hands on Primal Brewery's new WFAE collaboration, Ale Things Considered, it will be available on tap at Primal's two taphouses in Huntersville and Belmont beginning Saturday. A dollar from every pint sold supports WFAE. You can also find it at WFAE’s upcoming chocolate event on Feb. 19.
