Breweries Near Me

A brewery is a company that creates and sells beer. The art of beer brewing has been around for over 5000 years. In the past few hundred years, though, the process has become more and more industrialized and automated.

In the earliest breweries, the different stages were placed on multiple stories, and gravity was used to transfer the product down from the early stages to the later ones. Historically, copper vats were used inside the brewery itself, and fermentation and packaging was done in wooden containers. Today, almost all of the equipment is made from stainless steel. Search for breweries near me to find your closest brewery!

Breweries Near Me – Find it on the Map

Breweries Near Me – Breweries Trivia

How is beer made?

The simplest beer is made from four ingredients, barley, hops, water and yeast, although barley can be substituted with other grains like wheat or rye. The first step is to malt the barley, by harvesting it from the crops, heating, drying and cracking it. The grains are then seeped in hot water (but not boiling) for an hour. The hot water activates the enzymes in the grains. These enzymes break down the grain and release its sugar. Then the liquid is drained away from the mashed grains. This liquid is made from the water and the barley sugar, and is sticky and sweet, and known as wort. The wort is then boiled while hops and spices are added to the mixture. These hops provide bitterness to counteract the sweetness of the sugary wort, and also act as a natural preservative. After the hour of boiling, the liquid is cooled, strained and filtered. It then has the yeast added to it and then stored. The storage is done for a few weeks at room temperature to produce ale, or many weeks at cold temperatures to produce lager. The yeast reacts with the sugar in the wort and produces CO2 and alcohol. The alcohol is flat and not carbonated. It is either artificially carbonated, or the CO2 from the yeast is allowed to naturally carbonate it. After a few weeks to a few months of ageing, the beer is ready.

Modern breweries are made from stainless steel and feature highly calibrated machinery and instruments, to carefully control the brewing process.

When did breweries first appear?

Beer was known to the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians back several thousand years ago. For thousands of years, it was produced in domestic quantities. Early beer production was done in the home, and was considered to be the work of women. However, about one thousand years ago, some European monasteries began to produce and sell beer, as a form of currency. This led to the shift in responsibility for beer production from women to men. After the Industrial Revolution, domestic beer production all but died out, and the creation of industrial breweries took over entirely. The oldest still-functional brewery in the world is the German government-owned Weihenstephan Brewery in Freising, Bavaria. This brewery can trace its history back to 1040 AD. The development of advanced measuring devices and machines has meant that the production of beer can be very closely controlled, so as to improve the quality and efficiency of the final product. Modern developments such as refrigeration techniques, the discovery of microbes and the invention of the steam engine have all contributed to increased beer production efficiency.

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Breweries Near Me – Breweries Facts

Stainless steel replaced wood as a material for breweries for several reasons. First, steel does not impart a flavour into the beer, whereas wood can. Steel does not absorb or react with most chemicals, meaning that it can be easily cleaned. And, importantly, steel can handle the high pressures involved with creating beer inside vats.

It is believed that in every instant, about fifty million people are drunk. This represents 0.7% of the world’s population! Cenosillicaphobia is the name given to the fear of an empty beer glass. Beer can be ranked according to its percentage of alcohol content. The strongest beer in the world is 67.5% alcohol! This is several times stronger than regular beer, which tends to have around 5% alcohol!

In Amsterdam, alcoholics can be paid in beer to clean up the streets. They are paid five cans of beer per day, plus 10 euros and some tobacco. In Thailand, the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple was constructed with over one million bottles of beer!

In 1922, the Danish scientist Niels Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on atomic structure and quantum mechanics. The Carlsberg Brewery awarded him a further prize. They gave him a house located next door to their brewery, which contained a pipeline from the brewery directly into the house. In 1814, a London brewery’s vat ruptured, and 400 thousand gallons of beer flooded several London streets.

The workers who built the Great Pyramids are thought to have been paid about a gallon of beer every day!

The study of beer-making has its own official scientific name, zythology. This comes from the Greek word zythos, meaning beer.

The country that drinks the most beer in the world is the Czech Republic. Czechs consume an average of forty gallons of beer per person per year! The world’s most expensive beer is the Vielle Bon Secours, from Belgium. Each bottle costs about $1000 US. Belgium also has the most individual beer brands of any country. There are around four hundred distinct types of beer in the world today.

Oktoberfest is an annual German beer festival. It runs for sixteen to eighteen days during September and October, in Munich. During the festival, over two million gallons of beer is consumed! The festival features amusement rides and games, and also many german dishes such as roast pork, grilled ham, roast chicken, sausages and pretzels. The original Oktoberfest was held in 1810 to celebrate the Crown Prince Ludwig’s marriage to Princess Therese. The fields where the festival was held were known as Theresienwiese (Therese’s Meadow), and today the word Wiesn is sometimes used as a slang for Oktoberfest itself.

To find where your local breweries are, simply search for Breweries near me!