“Plateauberfest” is going on until 6 p.m. this afternoon, Saturday Oct. 4th.
We dropped by while the crew at Plateau Brewing Co. set up the festivities.
Today they’re serving up Marfa Light, the closest thing they serve to a domestic. Dunkle dark beer, a light bodied dark beer. Their new low-bitter IPA. And of course, the signature Oktoberfest beer.
Aaron Bush, brewer, shows us the process and a few of the things that make an Oktoberfest beer special.
The process starts here with the grain. Bush says the mixture is malt heavy. With Oktoberfest, you use a special kind of malt called Munich malt. The grain goes from this hopper, augured up through the white PVC in the corner, and into the main brew tank.
From there, it moves into the brew tank, where the temperature is monitored closely, and he said the beginning process is the only part of the brewing where you want there to be oxygen present, so the yeast can begin the fermentation.
That’s especially important with the yeast they’re using. For some beers they might use yeasts shared by Texas Brewing Co. for their India Pale Ale, or perhaps a specialized yeast imported from Deutschland itself, for all the German specialties.
Once the brew is made, it goes to these tanks to ferment. The tanks have to be relieved of pressure build-up from the carbon-dioxide created by the yeast, which bubbles up while the yeast are doing the hard work of making the alcohol.
After storage, the beer is moved into the cold vault. All along the sides run PEX piping that transports the beer from the storage tanks to the bar. Bush admits a lot of his job is plumbing work.
Today, the kegs are moved outside, iced down, and tapped through a special cooler. All together, the beer made an epic journey of about 100 yards: from mixer to tap.
