Machesney Park’s Pig Minds Brewing showcases the art of craft beer

MACHESNEY PARK, Ill. (WTVO) — Pig Minds Brewing Company in Machesney Park gave Eyewitness News a look at their brewing process.

Head Brewer Chris Langguth showed us the process from start to finish.

“This is where the brewing process starts,” he showed. “This is the mill room here. So, what we’re doing is we’re crushing the malted barley to expose the starchy end of the sperm within. That starch is going to be converted into sugars that our yeast is going to ultimately turn into alcohol and CO2, the fun stuff in beer.”

“This goes into the mill where the rollers crush and expose the starchy end of sperm with the grain,” he explained, “and it travels on up our auger, where it will wait until the next morning when we’re ready to mash in.”

Langguth has been with Pig Minds for almost five years. He said he loves the brewing process.

“Here, we’re setting the temperature and the flow rate on our touch screen which controls the entire brew house here. So, what we’re going to do is the grain that we’ve just milled is sitting in this holding tank over here. And we’re going to run it up this auger and mix it with running water.”

He continued by saying, “We’ve got our mash, our malted barley mixed with hot water in here. All the starch is currently converting into sugar. And shortly we’re going to transfer it over into our mash tun. This has a false bottom in it that allows us to extract the sweet wort – that’s going to be the fermentable sugars – while leaving the grain behind. Ultimately then it will transfer into our kettle. And this is where we’ll boil the beer. We’ll add our hops, we’ll add sugars, maybe, if we need some more, and we’ll boil it in here anywhere from 60 minutes to 3 hours.”

“We’re taking a sample of beer right off the fermenter,” while holding a cup. “This is as fresh as it gets. This is a cylindrical conical fermenter. So this is where the beer goes after we’ve brewed it. It’s shaped with this cone at the bottom, because we’re able to collect the yeast at the end of the fermentation. So that’s what we’re doing over here. We’re dropping yeast into a modified keg. And we’ll use this yeast for subsequent batches of beer. We’ll use up to 8 to 10 generations of yeast.”

He then moved to the canning area. “Here we are filling cans. This is the final process of packaging beer. We’re filling cans here of our Kloude No.32. It comes fresh off the conveyor belt right into cases and ultimately into your mouth.”

He said that’s basically it. The secret to the whole process is the recipe, which he won’t divulge.

Next he took us to where the beer is stored.

“Here’s where all the finished beer sits and waits to go out into distribution to hit your favorite pub, bottle shop, liquor store and ultimately make it to the consumer,” he said.

All that’s left to do is smoothly pour some cold beer from the tap.

“There’s nothing I’d rather do. Making beers is a super fun job,” he said.