The pungent smell of malt fills the air in and around the building of the Bowling Green Brewing Company.

Inside, Dale Burden, director of operations and Ryan Crosby, brewmaster, are making the local company’s new brew of beer – Pale Ale.

The Bowling Green Brewing Company, located on Veterans Memorial Lane, has been in business since last April. The company was opened in partnership with Robert Evans, one of the co-owners of Chuck Evans Liquor Outlets in Bowling Green.

Brewing beer is a lengthy process, Crosby said.

He has been brewing his own beer for seven years and now gets to perfect it by working at a brewery, his “dream job.”

The beer is made when grain (crushed in a grist mill) is added to hot water in a mash tun (a big steel barrel).

This activates the enzymes and breaks up the starches into simple sugars, creating a liquid called wort, he said.

It is then put into a boil kettle to sterilize and condense. This is where hops are added. This is also where the oils and acids come out and the beer bitters down, he said.

Then the wort is cooled. It is fermented in a process called open-top fermentation, which can take a week and a half to two weeks. Here, the yeast “eats” sugar, leaving carbon dioxide and alcohol as byproducts.

After the process is done, the alcohol is then filtered in “brite” tanks, conditioned further and carbonated. The end product is bottled or kegged.

For many in Bowling Green, the process of making beer can be an interesting one.

Western alumnus Michael Cowan, of Russellville, from said he loves to brew his own beer.

Cowan has made five batches since March. He said he’s always had an interest in the different types of beer, even before he was able to drink.

“I love the complex flavors you can get out of one beer,” Cowan said. “There’s endless possibilities. You can infuse it with fruit. You can put peppers in it. There’s so much diversity in taste.”

Working at a brewery like Bowling Green Brewing Company is a dream of Cowan’s. He said it would be amazing to learn how to produce better quality beers and formulate better beers on his own.

Bowling Green Brewing Company is an important asset to the community, he said.”It’s good for this area, because the majority of beer drinkers in this area drink what me and my friends call ‘Nascar beers,’” Cowan said, referring to popular, inexpensive domestic beers. “There’s so much more to beer than that.”

He said he hopes that people will see the local commercial beer, try it because it is from their hometown and get drawn into all the different types of beers.

The science of brewing beer and the history behind it has become so interesting for some that a Biology honors class will be offered next semester entitled, “History and Science of Beer.”

Only students who are at least 21 years old can take the class. The class will be taught in conjunction with the History class, “A Cultural History of Alcohol.”

Assistant Biology Professor Rodney King and Associate History Professor Andrew McMichael will be teaching the classes.

The purpose of the class will be to focus on the history of beer in America, how it impacts the culture and how it continues to impact it, King said.

“I hope it will enrich their view of the drink,” King said.

Students enrolled in the class will learn about how different ingredients and different strains of yeast can create different tastes, he said.

They will also brew their own beers. After the students get “a feel for the process,” King said he wants to take a field trip to the Bowling Green Brewing Company and have the brewmaster judge the students’ recipes.

Cowan said the class could be a great way to educate people about the complexity of beer.

“I just wish I was enrolled so I could take it,” he said.

For now, Cowan will settle for watching the guys at the Bowling Green Brewing Company do their job.

Currently people can get the local beer at Montana Grill and Rafferty’s as well as all of the Chuck Evans Liquor Outlets, Burden said.

The Bowling Green Brewing Company might consider themselves a mini microbrewery for now, according to Evans, but they have big aspirations for the future.

Evans said that within the next five years, they hope to be brewing five or six beers continuously, with a seasonal beer every three months.

One day, Evans hopes they will have a brew pub.

“Then students will be able to sit here, buy a pint and take a growler home,” he said.

Reach Heather Ryan at diversions@chherald.com.