NBA LABEL
CEREAL COOKER

CEREAL COOKER PICTURE

Some cereals first need a special "cooking" treatment to turn the starch into a suitable liquid form. When added to the mash, soluble, fermentable sugars are then produced by the same malt enzymes, whichever source the starch came from.




Addition of Cereals and Sugars

These require a variety of treatments in the brewhouse:

  • Torrefied wheat and wheat pellets are added before the mill to be crushed, and join the crushed malt in the grist case.
  • Flaked maize and wheat flour are added to the grist case, but miss the milling process.
  • Maize grits need to be cooked before being added to the mash. This process is carried out in a cereal cooker, and the hot slurry produced is added to the main mash. During the cereal cooking process the temperature is raised above 95 degrees Celsius. With liquids and slurries at such high temperatures, it is most important to observe all the procedures which ensure that the operation is carried out safely. Not all breweries are equipped with a cereal cooker, in which case they have to buy maize in a ready - cooked form as flakes which are more expensive.
  • Later on in the process we may add wort syrup and liquid cane sugar. These do not contain starch and are readily fermentable. They can therefore be added directly to the wort.

There are sound economic reasons for using sugar sources other than malt, and practical brewing reasons too, since they improve the shelf life of the beer. No single brew uses all these sources of sugar, of course.

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The Brewing Process
[Console] [Yeast] [Malting] [Milling] [Mashing] [Cereal Cooker] [Mash Mixer] [Lauter Tun] [Copper] [Whirlpool] [Wort Cooler] [Fermentation] [Maturation]



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