Our fine hand crafted European style beers have a distinctive “Lightning Finish” with a crisp, clean aroma, pronounced maltiness and a prolonged and slightly bittering finish. Our beers are good to drink on their own, and great with food. We have proven that you don’t need to travel to Europe to enjoy beers of these styles and caliber!
Peter Rowe, writer of “Brewery Rowe” for the San Diego Union Tribune has given Lightning Brewery favorable revues, including a rare “4 Bottle” rating for our Elemental Pilsner!
At Lightning we brew “Better Beer Through Science.” We believe that a good beer can be the result of chance and that a great beer is the result of an in-depth understanding of the beer making process. We take care to control each stage of the brewing cycle, we never skimp on time and process and we only use the highest quality ingredients: malted barley, hops, yeast, plus a healthy dose of science.
We know that you will be able to Taste The Premium Lightning Difference!
- Jim Crute, Ph.D. of Biochemistry, Lightning Brewer
Lightning Philosophy
Our goal is to make the best beer possible using traditional, finely-honed brewing and fermentation processes. We have taken a different approach in setting up the Lightning Brewery!
First, we decided to focus strictly on premium beers made from only the finest available ingredients, of mostly European styles. We take great pains to internationally source our malts, yeasts and hops. Second, we have decided to invest in a brewing system that allows us to recreate distinctive European beer styles locally. Third, we have decided to use selected strains of yeast for each of our beer styles. We do not have a “house strain” of yeast. Instead we use separate yeast strains to ferment our Kölsch, Lagers, Hefeweizen, Porter, and Ales. Finally, we ferment and age each of our beers with their own yeast long enough to allow the yeast to uptake and smooth out many of the rough aromas and tastes associated with young beer.
At Lightning, we are focused on being a brewery that does not follow-on the great beers made by other breweries in San Diego County, rather, we pride ourselves on extending the spectrum of great beers made here. Added throughout, in the implementation of our philosophy, is the adage of “Better Beer Through Science.” We strive to make truly great beers in a way that is robust and reproducible.
Inside The Lightning Brewery
We have invested heavily in our brewing equipment. We modified our brew kettle so that it also serves as our mashing vessel. This allows us to perform what is called “Step Mashing,” a more labor-intensive brewing process that requires taking the mash mixture to predetermined temperatures where specific biochemical reactions are favored. Our techniques further add flavor and character spectrum, to our beers.
We’re the only local brewery that has a separate decoction vessel for boiling up part of the mash made by mixing milled malted grain and water. This allows for more release of the starches from the malt and further enhances the body of the beer by extracting some starches that are not metabolized by the yeast. These starches persist in the beer after fermentation, dramatically enhancing and prolonging the finish.
Finally, we have complemented our brewhouse with a boiler to provide steam heating. Steam heating prevents scorching of our mash mixtures or over boiling wort. Coupled with the size of our 50 barrel mash and brew kettle, this allows us to boil upwards of 35 barrels of wort per brew cycle to make up to 1000 gallons of hopped wort ready for fermentation.
Style Directions at Lightning
We make beers that focus more on the malt and yeasts used in our beers rather than the aromatic and bittering hop components. Thats not to say that we do not fully hop our beers and that some of our beers are not fairly bitter, but, we work hard to create a fine balance in our beers.
The Science of Brewing and Fermenting Premium Lightning Beer
We have a sharp focus on the brewing process, where the sugars are extracted from the grains used to make the beer and the hops are added prior to fermentation. We have invested a great deal of time and energy in developing a clearer understanding of the biology of the yeast associated with the fermentation process and then the biochemistry and chemistry required to finish and package the beer.
In order to further explain our position, we would like to share a little brewing history. The first physical evidence that man has made beer dates to about 3,500 BC. Since cereal crops were grown thousands of years earlier, close to the end of the last Ice Age, it is usually presumed that the first primitive beers were brewed shortly after that.
One of the attributes that has likely contributed to the success of beer as a common beverage is the fact that beer is stabilized. That is to say, beer is one of the first beverages identified that does not readily spoil. Instead, beer is stabilized by the fermentation process. By a partial and limited “spoilage” by yeast fermentation, beer becomes resistant to action by many other microorganisms. This is particularly true when air is excluded from the beer by storage in air-tight containers.
If we fast-forward 5,000 years to the European Middle Ages beer making has seen a remarkable revolution. By this time, incremental improvements in the brewing process have resulted in the implementation of the German Purity Act of 1516 (the Reinheitsgebot). This allowed beer to only contain water, malted grain, and hops. (Malted grain is grain that has been sprouted and then kiln-dried. This allows the starch in the kernels to be partially broken down, then the kilning stops the process allowing the sprouted grain to have an extended shelf life.) Hops were used as an early anti-bacterial agent to extend the shelf life of newly fermented beer when brewed under the relatively unsanitary conditions used at the time.
Interestingly, yeast was not originally mentioned in the Reinheitsgebot since it was provided as a residue from the wooden vats used for beer fermentation. After yeast was discovered to be the organism responsible for fermentation, the act was amended to include the addition of yeast.
Other countries, including the United States, allow for the use of clarifying additives, shelf life extenders, body-enhancing compounds and foam stabilizers. At the Lightning Brewery we only use water, malted grain, hops, and yeast.
In fact, instead of adding a mineral acid (phosphoric acid or sulfuric acid) to acidify our wort for making German-style beers, we make our own acid. This sounds like a “fifth ingredient,” but under the German Purity Act we perform exactly the same procedures as German breweries.
We take unhopped wort and add to it a strain of lactobacillus that naturally occurs on the surface of malted grain. By combining them and allowing fermentation to occur the sugar in the wort is converted to lactic acid. We then take a predetermined amount of this mixture and use it to acidify our German-style beer worts. The residual bacteria is removed by boiling and the beers that result have a crisper and freshening finish.
Like many of the European breweries, we further harden our water with gypsum for making Ales. With all of our beers, we naturally carbonate by trapping carbon dioxide evolved through the fermentation process and allow it to dissolve into the beer. This natural carbonation process makes for a finer and cleaner tasting carbonation and a soft persistent foam head.
© 2009 San Diego Brewers Guild