Porridge? I stop walking and take another deep breath. It still smells delicious. Like sunny kitchens, lazy mornings and warm quilts. I shake my head disbelievingly. Seriously — porridge? Over here?
I’m at United Breweries’ (UB) 70-acre Kingfisher compound at Sangareddy, about an hour away from Hyderabad. Through a large open window, I can see the cheerily green Carlsberg building. Further down the pothole-infested road on my way here, I had passed SABMiller’s brewery. My mission du jour is to deconstruct beer, and get answers to the many questions people have about this popular, but relatively mysterious drink. (Relative to wine, that is, which has been written about extensively over the last decade thanks to enthusiastic PR, a slew of movies and scenic vineyard tourism.)
To begin with, I’m ushered officiously into a large conference room, and seated at an oval table along with the company’s all-male team. (Presumably, beer is still seen as a man’s domain.) We go over the most important issues first. Glycerine? “Of course not,” says Brewmaster A. Tamilarasan, handing me three glass discs filled with the three main ingredients: malted barley, rice flakes and hops (a flower used to give a distinct flavour, and stability.)
General Manager Harmanpreet Singh, flips open his laptop to provide a historical perspective. “Our beer was first brewed by the British in 1857 in Aruvankadu in the Nilgiris. By 1879, they began a brewery in Ooty, and in 1885, they opened in Bangalore.” Today UB has 19 breweries across the country, plus 11 more under contract.
We then head to that corridor, redolent with the scent of porridge. “It’s the malt,” chuckles Tamilarasan. “Think of a hot cup of Horlicks... I tell people that’s what beer basically is — alcoholic malt!”
The process begins in a room gleaming with machinery. “Malt and rice are mashed here. We then add minerals, calcium and enzymes.” He adds, sincerely, “So when you think about it, beer is just proteins with vitamins, and no fat. It’s got about 2.5 per cent carbs and 100–120 calories per 330 ml bottle. Which means it’s actually good for you.”
I chuckle at his description of beer as a health drink. Till I realise he’s completely earnest. Harmanpreet chimes in, “Also, there’s no such thing as a ‘beer belly.’ Or at least, it’s not the beer that makes you fat — it’s all the food you eat with it!” They’re clearly enthusiasts. So not surprisingly, we dive into a conversation on the technicalities of brewing for the next four hours.
The tour begins in a room filled with gargantuan machines, in which cloudy ‘Wort’ (a German word for what they dramatically describe as the ‘mother liquor’ of beer) whirls around busily. Hops and sugar are added at this point, after which the wort goes into a centrifuge machine that separates solid particles and liquid, at a temperature of about 98 degrees Celsius. The output is clear wort, and solid ‘trub,’ which is used as cattle feed.
The whole process is done by machines from beginning to end, and we meet hardly any workers as we walk through, besides a couple of engineers overseeing the operations keenly from their computer screens.
Still interested? Here are the minutiae. Wort is cooled till it’s about 10 degrees Celsius, after which yeast is added to convert all the soluble sugar into alcohol. It’s ‘aged’ for about a week in massive beer unitanks for controlled fermentation at 11 degrees C. Eventually, carbon dioxide is added to make it fizzier, and then antioxidants to prevent oxidation. I sneakily read all labels, peek into computers and stick my nose into strange machinery in an attempt to find obviously unhealthy additives, including that infamous glycerine. But find nothing beyond what’s stated. I also question the team on the need to add ‘antioxidants,’ as I’m inherently suspicious of any compound ingredients, and am told they’re required to prevent oxidation, which leads to spoilage.
The whole process — from malt to beer — takes 14 days in total, after which the beer is piped into a high-speed packaging line, which churns out 36 thousand bottles of beer every hour — all neatly packed in cartons. This is undoubtedly the most fun to watch: the empty bottles rush down a conveyor belt, where they’re rapidly filled with a spurt of foamy beer, before being capped and wrapped in labels. The labelling machine in particular is dizzyingly hypnotic, working through 600 bottles every minute.
We settle down for glasses of perfectly chilled draft beer beside the brewery’s futuristic lab, piled high with unpronounceable machinery, from an Alcolyzer to a Spectrophotometer. It’s my most surreal alcohol setting yet — we’re served by scientists in white coats, who solemnly troop in with glasses of beer and bags of generously salted chips. “Try the draft first,” says Tamilarasan, so we obediently take a sip. “Draft is beer that is not pasteurised. Bottled beer is passed through a tunnel of temperature-programmed hot water (up to 60 degrees) to increase shelf life.” Does it make a difference to taste? He shrugs, “Not really.” But there’s a definite perky freshness to the creamy draft beer. We work our way through a spectrum of beers with varying alcohol levels, nibbling crackers in between to ‘clear our palettes’ as Tamilarasan calls out tasting notes.
When everyone looks suitably cheerful, I ask my final question. “So, do all the employees get to drink everyday?” Harmanpreet looks horrified. “Of course not! In fact they’re tested for alcohol every day on the way out. Also, I buy beer just like you do — from a store.” Perks of the job? “Look at gardens… We wanted to prove to the farmers that beer doesn’t hurt the soil — so we grow Banganapalli mangoes, coconuts, cabbage… and fabulous herbs!” Oddly, the perks of working at a beer factory turn out to be generous handfuls of fresh coriander!
