The brewer's art
 

What is beer?

Beer is an alcoholic beverage made from grain. An all-natural beer has four basic ingredients: grain, water, hops and yeast. Some beers are also flavoured by added spices.

How is beer made?

The first of the five steps of beer-making is brewing. A mixture of water and cereal grain is heated to transform the starch into fermentable sugars, which will end up as alcohol, and infermentable sugars, which add body. The resulting liquid is called wort. The solid residue of spent grains remaining after the wort is drawn off is recycled as food for livestock.

In the second step, hops and any spices are added to the wort and it is brought back to the boil. This process brings out and fixes the aromas and bitterness of the beer.

Yeasts are then added to the wort to ferment the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The process of fermentation and maturation takes about three weeks. Finally, the beer is filtered and then bottled or kegged for delivery to the point of sale.

What is malt?

Beer can be made with various cereals but the grain of choice is barley, a cereal domesticated by humankind thousands of years ago. For brewing the barley grains are malted – soaked in water to cause sprouting and then dried by warm air.

The result is pale malt. If the malt is roasted as well, it colours and develops flavours of caramel, toast or even roasted coffee, depending on the temperature. The addition of these specialty malts produces the unique and complex colours, aromas and tastes of Boréale beers.

The pure malt difference

Pure malt means 100% malted barley, a gauge of quality.

Most breweries reduce costs by using substitutes for malt – rice, corn, refined sugar. Since the replacements also reduce taste, Boréale uses no substitutes. All of the sugars used to make our beers come from malted barley, which alone can produce the signature qualities of our six ales – rich flavours, velvet textures, enticing aromas.

Our beers are pure malt, with two exceptions:

• Boréale Dorée, whose flavours are enhanced by the silky texture of honey in close harmony with the malt.
• Boréale Blanche, whose character comes from a blend of barley malt, wheat and oats. The additional proteins of the wheat and the oats contribute to the natural haze of its appearance.

Boréale: Quality without compromise

At every step from brewhouse to bottling line, every batch of Boréale is subjected to a battery of laboratory and taste tests for quality assurance.

To preserve the full complexity of aromas and flavours, our beers are cold-filtered rather than pasteurized.

For protection from light and sun, Boréale is carefully bottled in brown glass.

And in the interest of full flavour and information, unlike other breweries, we show a best-before date on every package and bottle label. The date is not coded – the week, month and year are clearly shown by three cutouts that anyone can read at a glance.

Note that our beer can still be consumed after the best-before date with no health risk. It’s simply that the taste may no longer meet our standards of quality even if it has been stored under normal conditions.

Beer keeps best when cool – not cold – and away from light or wide variations in temperature. For extended enjoyment, avoid the fridge door, not to mention the trunk of your car.