BrauManufaktur Härke GmbH

Your tour begins in front of the brewery gate. Here, you’ll experience step by step how the Härke Brewery’s specialty beers are created from the four basic ingredients of malt, hops, water, and yeast, in accordance with the German Purity Law.

In the Brewhouse
In the brewhouse, the wort is produced using malt, hops, and water. The malt required for production is sourced from malthouses, which deliver the malt made from spring barley to us for storage in our silos. After being cleaned and crushed, the malt (4,000 kg per “brew”) is collected in the “mash tub.” This is where the flour and the husks are separated. The malt grist is mixed with water at a specific temperature in the mash tun. This mash is then subjected to various temperature changes. During these temperature changes, enzymes convert the starch into maltose. The husks are added back to the mash before it is pumped into the lauter tun.
The liquid in the mash is then removed. The remaining solids are poured over with 78°C hot water to wash out the remaining maltose. The solids remaining in the lauter tun are called spent grains and are commonly used as healthy and natural animal feed.

The resulting liquid is called wort. This is collected and boiled in the wort kettle. Finally, the hops are added. This gives the beer its wonderfully bitter character.

After boiling, at the Härke Brewery, the wort is pumped into the whirlpool to separate the so-called cooking trub (protein and hop trub). Due to the special way the wort is circulated in this vessel, the trub settles to the bottom in the middle of the vessel (centripetal forces).

The process for one brew takes a total of 7.5 hours. Due to the available capacity and the ability to perform various operations simultaneously, batches of 240 to 250 hectoliters (1 hectoliter = 100 liters) are produced in a period of 2.5 hours – the exact quantity depends on the desired beer type. The Härke Brewhouse can produce up to 40 brews per work week.

Author: Caroline Porsiel