Inside the brewery
Brewing Process
Beer is made from barley malt, hops, yeast & most importantly, good water.
In short, you first crush barley malt and soak it in warm water (65C-70C) to extract sugars. Then drain this sweet water (called wort) and boil to disinfect it. During boil, you add hops to balance the sweetness. Boiling extracts bitterness from hops. Hops also add aroma to the beer if added late in the boil. After boiling, the wort is cooled to 18C and yeast is added. Fermentation is carried on for 7-10 days and then after another 7-10 days at 2c, the beer is ready. Well, nearly ready- its human flaw to reduce something so magical into something so mechanical.
At GBC, process begins right from the time we think of how we want a beer to taste and what we want it convey to the drinker. Then we write and re-write recipes, constantly brewing them in small batches and tweaking them meticulously to get the final product to what we want it to be. Each of these beers have been brewed in small batches to perfect the recipe before they reach you.
Sourcing Locally
Beer and alcohol, around the world, have always been influenced by local raw material availability, weather conditions and regulatory laws. These influences created a cultural environment that defined what types of beer were made and what was consumed. For example, before the industrial revolution, barley malt was dried at high temperatures. This led to the production of dark beers. Only when technological innovation led to drying of malt at lower temperatures and production of clear glassware was perfected that pale beers became a preferred choice.
We too choose to be influenced by local constraints (an advantage if you ask us) so that the beers you drink are unique. We source our malt locally, re-use our yeast and are trying to buy locally gown hops. Apart from ensuring that we are protected against the ups and downs of global commodity markets, our reliance on local ingredients ensures that small associated industries thrive. We even roast our own specialty malts as an option to otherwise importing these from other countries. Something no other brewery probably does. All this makes us feel better and helps us produce beers that we believe you will enjoy.
How is our Beer Different?
Apart from the sheer detail that we put into each beer we make and the fact that we use locally produced barley malt and also roast our own speciality malts, our beers, by design, are far from being mainstream. Costs do matter but taste prevails. We only use malted barley & malted wheat. We don’t use cheap sources of sugar that dilute flavours. We use hops generously to give you a balanced, a bitter, a very bitter, an aromatic and an over the top hop bursting beer as well. Basically, we have no constraints when it comes to making flavourful beers.
We age our beers longer, unlike commercial beers that are probably bottled within 5 days of being brewed. We spend a considerable amount of money on our logistics to ensure that our beers reach the restaurants when they are at their peak. Our beers are transported cold and stored cold right till the time they are tapped at each restaurant. This is very important because no beer, or rather, no good beer can survive being transported in this city’s weather unless they’ve been loaded with chemicals and stabilizers – none of which even enter our brewery. Further, we don’t use colours and foam enhancing chemicals.
But above all our beers are made by, well, us – people who are insanely passionate about hand-crafted beer. Time to explore & savour?
