Whether a beer actually achieves the quality it is expected to, all comes down to what happens in the brewhouse. The Bitburger Brewery owns one of Europe’s most modern brewhouses; important when you consider that today, brewing beer involves both state-of-the-art technology and a high degree of precision. The first thing to happen in the brewhouse is the mashing process: ground barley malt and water are carefully mixed to obtain the 'extract' from the mash. During this process, valuable components of the malt dissolve in the brewing water. At the next stage, the mash is passed through the lauter tub, where the dissolved ingredients are separated from the insoluble residues. Constant stirring and the addition of high-quality brewing water purify the mash. The leftover solid residues, or draff, are sold as high-quality animal feed and only the wort, the liquid obtained from the process, is used in the rest of the brewing process.
The wort is then clarified again and cooled until it reaches the fermentation temperature. All most of the latent energy generated by the process is retained.