Beer. Many college students drink the legendary brew, but not many stop to think about all the energy that goes into making it.

So how do you make beer?

Mac & Jack’s Brewery sells four main kinds of beer only found in the Northwest: African Amber, Serengetti Wheat, IPA and Blackcat Porter.

“We are playing around with some special cask beers for the 2008 Cask Beer Festival that will occur March 22,” said Jim Hardesty, the general manager for the local Mac & Jack’s Brewery in Redmond.

“There are four main ingredients: water, hops, barley and yeast,” Hardesty said. “It’s [Mac & Jack’s] a very English-style beer with a lot more fruity flavors.”

The first process in beer making is malting the barley.

“The raw barley looks just like a seed, and it’s kind of like a holding capsule for the plant, and turns itself into food,” Hardesty said.

The malting process uses waterto trick the barley into turning into food starch, and then the water is drained and the barley is dried in order to capture the essential enzymes.

Malting companies roast the malted barley to create the flavors, almost like roasting coffee beans. The first stage of malting is the pale malt — when the barley tastes almost like a flavored cereal. They can also make caramel, chocolate and black malts. Most of the alcohol comes from the pale malt, but the special flavors come from the continuance of the malting process.

The pale malt moves from a large silo, used to a smaller silo to mix in flavors. The weight and amount of malt creates a unique flavor for each brewing recipe.

Next, they mill the malted barley to crack it open while keeping the barley’s husk intact. This cracked barley then moves through a machine called the mash tun where they begin the essential steps to making the beer.

In the mash tun, the barley is mixed with warm water. “This mixture has a similar consistency to oatmeal,” Hardesty said. “This wet and warm environment allows the enzymes to convert starch into food sugars.”

Next comes a resting period, where the liquid is drained at a certain temperature and turns into a sweet liquid called wart.

“Everybody can be a sensory tool with the proper education and training,” Hardesty said. “Brewer’s palates are excellent at tasting the bitter and sweet flavors of the process.”

The wart is then separated, and the husks left intact help aid as a filter. This process is called sparging, and it rinses the sugars away from the grain. The sugary liquid moves to a boil kettle and the grain is removed and recycled into food for dairy cattle.

After boiling the wart to sanitize, add flavor and color, the brewers add hops. The hops are then processed, shredded and mixed into pellet form; when mixed with the wart they help to bring the bitterness and aroma to beer.

“This is where the real flavor of beer comes in,” Hardesty said.

Adding more hops at the end of the process is called the aroma addition.

“This is what you smell when you sniff a beer,” Hardesty said. “Here is where we really try to capture the elegance of the aroma.”

Next, the wart is cooled to allow the yeast to react properly.

The wart and brewers yeast are combined to start the fermentation process, which takes several days to complete.

This creates the alcohol and carbon dioxide, and the result is beer.

After fermenting, the beer is cooled and sent to a conditioning tank where the carbon dioxide is monitored to the right amount. Mac & Jack’s beers are draft only, so the next step is to fill and store the kegs.

“That, in a nutshell, is our brewing process,” said Hardesty. “Recipes vary, temperatures vary, and yeast types vary to make each beer unique.”

“One of the most important things is controlling and producing a consistent product,” Hardesty explained. “Every batch will have small variances, but the brewery tries hard to manage and control that to make a good beer.”

Hardesty explained that two strains of brewer’s yeast exist: lager and ale.

“Ales ferment in warmer temperatures and have more flavor compounds coming from the yeast,” Hardesty said. “Ales are also much more fruity and hearty in flavor.”

The lager yeasts ferment in cooler temperatures, like to live at the bottom of the tanks, and can take up to several weeks to mature. This contributes less esters and flavors but often tastes much more crisp and clean. Ale yeasts ferment in just a few days.

Hardesty’s passion for brewing goes beyond the obvious. “I like the historical aspect, man settled to make beer.”

[Reach reporter Lia Pittman at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]