That’s the way it is with beer, but so far we’ve encountered no actual beer in this brewery. Rather, the tour has stalled before some huge tanks of warm water, flavored (heavily at some breweries, lightly at this one) with malt and hops. (It may be worth mentioning here that the water used in brewing also contributes to the character of beer: for example, hard water — water with a lot of mineral content, such as that in Ireland — lends a muscular nature to a stout brew like Guinness, while softer, less mineral-laced water such as that for which the Czech Republic is famous, produces the paler, crisper style of beer known worldwide as pilsner or lager.)
At any rate, at this point the Beer Fairy, growing a tad impatient, hustled Gracie along to a second, equally large set of tanks: the fermentation vessels. “This is where the rabbit jumps out of the hat. This is where the so-so hits the go-go and lets loose the mojo. This is where beer becomes beer.”
The transformative agent, the freelance sorcerer whose alchemy turns wort into beer, is yeast. Once the wort has cooled and has been transferred into fermentation tanks, yeast is summoned to the tanks and left undisturbed therein for at least ten days to do the mysterious work that yeast and yeast alone can do.
Although she was aware that her mother used something called yeast when she baked bread, Gracie had not the remotest idea what the stuff was (for a time she believed yeast to be the opposite direction from west), so the Beer Fairy had to explain.
“Yeast is a miniature plant, a fungus actually, a cousin of mushrooms and toadstools; but while each mushroom is composed of numerous cells, a yeast plant is so tiny it’s got only one cell to its name. To see a yeast plant, you’d need a microscope, although you’d have no problem locating yeast plants to look at, because they’re floating around in the air almost everywhere; not just in breweries or in the woods and fields, but in your house, the White House, the Vatican, and a rock star’s dressing room. Maybe especially in a rock star’s dressing room.”
In spite of being assured that yeast plants were microscopic in size, Gracie couldn’t keep herself from staring hard at the air around her. Just in case. She didn’t want to miss anything.
“You may be wondering how all that yeast got into the planet’s atmosphere in the first place.” In the event Gracie was wondering that very thing, the fairy went on to suggest that over countless eons of time, yeast spores may have accidentally — or on purpose — drifted down through empty space like friendly invaders from other planets far, far away. “It’s scientifically feasible. They definitely possess the physical capability to do just that. Beer, then, has not only a deep connection to the soil beneath us but also to the stars.” After a brief pause to allow the girl to muse on beer’s possible links to Mars, to Venus, to space travel and little green men, the sprite brought her back down to earth.
“There are people who earn a living cultivating yeast plants and molding them by the tens of millions into cakes or powders. This is the yeast that brewers dump in the wort. There’s nothing yeast likes to eat better than wort. To hungry yeast, wort is like a steak dinner with chocolate mousse for dessert. Well, actually, for yeast, wort is more on the order of pecan pie à la mode with chocolate mousse for dessert, because what the yeast feasts on in the wort is the sugar. And as it digests it, yeast slowly turns that sugar into alcohol. Bingo!”
“Alcohol makes beer beer, and people want beer because they want alcohol.”
“Oh, beer does possess other charms, Gracie; but in the end, you’re correct: that’s what it comes down to. Yeast, like malt and hops and water, influences the character and flavor of beer, but its primary business, its day job, the work that pays its rent and makes it famous — in a funky sort of way — is to give sugar an extreme makeover. The people in the lab coats call that makeover process fermentation. What the Sugar Elves call it is something else again.”
“There’s Sugar Elfs?”
“Never mind them. Sugar is reliable, dependable; you can count on sugar to teach cakes and cookies to sing their sweet little songs, to grin from ear to ear whenever it lands on your tongue, and, when you aren’t looking, to rot your molars and make you fat. It’s all very predictable. But by the time yeast gets through fermenting it, sugar will gradually have turned into something wild and crazy; into that tricky, loose-cannon, charismatic chemical known as alcohol.
“It was the alcohol in beer that set you to merrily dancing, and it was the alcohol that made you puke. Alcohol. It has that power, and we can discuss its good side and its bad side to our hearts’ content. But listen: thirty-six billion gallons of beer are sold in the world every year. How much beer do you suppose would be sold if there wasn’t any alcohol in it?”
The little girl pondered this, but not for long. “About a gallon and a half,” she suggested.
“Gracie Perkel, you are a genius!” the Beer Fairy exclaimed. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”
14
Uncle Moe had told Gracie that once in a strange, distant land (it could have been England, she wasn’t certain) he’d visited a village called Creamed-Beef-on-Toast. She’d giggled, thinking he was probably being silly. Now, however, as from the hilltop on which she and the Beer Fairy had come to rest, Gracie looked down on a village in the valley below; she had a funny feeling that that village was the very place to which Moe had referred. She couldn’t explain it, so she kept quiet, lest the Beer Fairy think she was the silly one, which the fairy surely would had she blurted out, “Look down there! That’s Creamed-Beef-on-Toast.”
Prior to departing the brewery, the pixie had guided Gracie down a spiral metal staircase to another large room filled with yet more large tanks. “These are the conditioning tanks,” the fairy had said. “After the primary fermentation is done, the immature beer travels through pipes down to here, where it’s allowed to age, usually for about two weeks. As part of its conditioning it’s generally filtered to strain out any remaining yeast. Some brewers will leave particular beers unfiltered, however, so they can continue to age in the bottle. Children such as you, Gracie, are best left unfiltered while you age, although some parents and institutions, regrettably, do attempt to filter the young souls in their charge.”
“Uncle Moe told me no institution can be trusted,” said Gracie, not that she completely understood what he’d meant by “institution”. The Beer Fairy nodded but didn’t respond. Maybe she was tired of hearing about that guy Moe.
“The process here is almost over,” she said instead. (Gracie wasn’t too unhappy about that, because the temperature in the conditioning room was only thirty-four degrees.) “You see that giant horizontal tank over there next to the doors? That’s a holding tank. When the beer at last has satisfied all the brewmaster’s expectations, it’s passed into the holding tank, ready now to leave the brewery in kegs or bottles or, if it’s a macrobrewery, in cans, as well. It will journey out into the world as though flying a flag, bearing the brand name of the brewing company.”
“You mean like Re-Re-Redhook?” asked Gracie. Her teeth were starting to chatter.