Learn Our Process
At Mayflower Brewing Company, we brew and package all of our beer at our brewery in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Our production facility includes a two-vessel, 20-barrel brewhouse, fermentation tanks, grain-handling equipment, and packaging lines for kegs, cans, and bottles. Here is our brewing process from grain to glass:
Milling
To prepare our barley malt for brewing, we mill the grain, crushing the husks just enough to expose the starch in the kernels. We send the cracked grain, now called “grist”, into our grist case.
Mashing
We mix the grist with hot water in our 20-barrel mash tun to create a thick porridge called “mash”. Using strict time and temperature controls, mashing converts the starch into natural sugars.
Vorlaufing
The sweet liquid from the mash is called “wort”. Vorlaufing recirculates the wort through the grain bed to help extract more sugar from the barley malt and prepares the mash for lautering.
Lautering
The grain bed acts as a filter to separate the wort from the barley. We “sparge” with hot water and “run off” the clear wort to our brew kettle. Our spent grain then goes to a local farm for feed.
Boiling
We bring the wort to a boil in our 20-barrel brew kettle and add hops. We use different varieties of hops at different times to create just the right balance of bitterness and aroma.
Knocking Out
Once boiling is complete, we send the hot wort through our heat exchanger, cooling the wort to 70˚F for fermentation and in turn, heating our water for the next brew.
Fermenting
We add fresh yeast to the wort in our fermentation tanks. The yeast converts the fermentable sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide and contributes various flavors to the beer.
Filtering
After about two weeks of fermentation and conditioning, the beer is ready for packaging. We start by filtering the beer to remove unwanted yeast and other material.
Carbonating
Before packaging, we store the beer in our bright beer tank, adding the appropriate amount of carbonation for each style of beer.
Packaging
We package our beer in kegs, cans, and bottles. We take extra care to make sure that our packaging processes allow us to deliver the freshest and tastiest beer possible.
All of our beers share this brewing process, but we vary the ingredients, times and temperatures to produce each particular style. We use the finest ingredients available, and our local water adds its own unique character that cannot be duplicated anywhere else. Try our entire family of handcrafted beers and taste the history.