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(we help it make itself)
It’s a fact. The Sicks’ Rainier Brewing Com
pany does not make Rainier beer. The beer
makes itself. All we do is bring fine ingre
dients together under ideal conditions and
then let nature take its course.
We don’t have schedules, for example. When
tests show that the beer has finished one step,
we send it on to the next. And not before. By
artfully waiting on nature, instead of inter
fering with it, we end up with a light, mellow,
delicate beer of splendid taste and bouquet.
Shhhhhhhhhh! Dortt Wake The Barley
Then how does our Old World Brewmaster
occupy his time? He watches out for the
beer’s interests. For
one thing, he makes
sure the ingredients
are utilized in a nat
ural manner. For
instance, the freshly
harvested barley that
goes into Rainier beer is "rested” for two
months before it’s made into malt. Rested
barley makes better beer so we let it nap.
Then the finished malt is rested for a third
month. That makes three months of doing
absolutely nothing and it’s one of our most
significant contributions to the beer.
We Love Rainy Days
When it’s been properly rested, the malt is
carefully measured out and mixed with
water, a very important ingredient in beer.
Our water source is the Cascade mountain
range in Washington. Much of the sweet,
icy-cold rain that falls up in these mountains
eventually becomes Rainier beer. It is prob
ably the best brewing water in the world.
(We do add a pinch of salt to this amazing
water, however. As any good cook will tell
you, salt, used in mod
eration, brings out the
flavor of other ingre
dients without adding
any of its own.)
To the water and malt
is added a third ingre
dient: selected grains. We add a small
amount of grain because, in our brewmas
ter’s opinion, an all malt beer wouldn’t be
quite right for American taste. Together, the
malt and "rain are mashed in the water.
Gently. Just enough to extract the flavors
and bouquet, not enough to draw out any
harshness or bitterness.
When the mashing is done, the liquid (called
wort by brewers, pronounced wert) is drained
off, leaving behind the hulls and husks of the
malt and grain. The wort is then pumped
into a kettle for boiling—and the fine hand of
the Brewmaster appears. At a precise point in
the boiling, hops, the spice of beer, are added.
The Ideal Hoppyness
Hops add a pleasant tartness or tang to beer,
a distinctive quality that can be described by
only one word. Hoppyness. In order to
achieve ideal hoppyness we use two kinds of
hops: the Yakima and one we import from
Bavaria, the Hallertau.
The Yakima hops, incidentally, are grown
on our own farm. This gives us control over
hop quality that we
couldn’t get any other
way. We consistently
get the “cleanest pick’’
in the business, mean
ing that very few
leaves or stems get
mixed in with the delicate cones, or flowers,
of the female hop plant.
Ah, That European Culture
The boiled wort is finally pumped to a large
tank where it settles and cools. It is time for
the last major ingredient of Rainier beer to
be added, the yeast. Rainier has a rather
unusual yeast. The
original culture was
imported from Co
penhagen. This par
ticular yeast lends
itself to Rainier’s
slow, natural fermen
tation and we’re extremely careful about
maintaining the purity of the strain. So care
ful, in fact, that we sterilize the air of an
entire building and even have the wall tiles
set in a special anti-bacterial cement.
When the yeast is added to the wort, the
slow process of fermentation begins, the
natural act of living cells that creates alcohol
and bubbles. And turns wort into young beer.
The Expectant Brewmasier
At this stage the Brewmaster paces before
the aging tanks, waiting. He waits while the
young beer becomes clear and sparkling, its
color a pale golden hue. He waits while all
the individual flavors unite more thoroughly
into one. He waits until all tests indicate that
the beer has finally finished making itself,
and then he stops pacing and draws a glass.
“Ahhhhhh,” he says, wiping the foam off his
moustache. ”What a great beer we didn’t
make!”
And this is not modesty. After all, we didn’t
make the beer. Natural processes did. And
the secret of our success is
our brewmaster’s special
talent.
For leaving well enough
alone.
Rainier Beer