KEO Beer taste of Cyprus

Early in the 50’s, on the 17thof May 1951, KEO plc launches its beer brand. A locally produced lager, that became Cyprus’ local beer ever since.

KEO Beer has been designed by Czech brew masters based on famous Czech traditional beer recipes well-adjusted to local climatic temperatures with great emphasis on strict hygiene during production. So much importance is given to total sanitation, that the beer needs no pasteurization.  KEO is the only beer produced on the island, which is bottled unpasteurised. This same recipe and brewing process is strictly followed to date, preserving KEO Beer’s utmost quality.

KEO is brewed from the finest malt and the choicest hops, traditionally matured, bottled fresh and unpasteurised, gold in colour and unique in taste.

The Ingredients Malt: Malt is barley specially treated for the brewing. KEO uses selected varieties of barley and imports malt of the finest grade Hops: The hop is a climbing plant cultivated for brewing purposes. Its bitter resins and essential oils, give beer its characteristic taste. KEO uses a special blend of superior hop varieties, the quality of which is of great importance to the beer. Maize: Maize (corn) is used as a compliment to malt, and gives the beer a lighter colour.

The Process

Milling: The malted barley is lightly crushed into a coarse powder to allow it to absorb water.

Mashing: Starch and proteins, are broken down and converted to fermentable sugars. Dissolved in water they give rise to a liquor called “wort” which is then filtered through the bed of husks, allowing it to settle down. It then passes through the perforated bottom of the mash tun to the wort kettle.

Boiling: The clear wort in the kettle is boiled in stages with hops in order to extract the essential oils and bitter resins.

Mashing and boiling processes are completed in eight hours.

Trub separation and cooling: Boiled wort is pumped at high velocity to a tank called “whirlpool”. This action creates a centrifugal effect by which all protein; trub and spent hops are collected in the centre of the whirlpool, in the form of a compact “cake”. The clear wort is collected from the edge of the Whirlpool and pumped through a chiller to the fermenting tanks.

Fermentation: A process by which about 80% of the fermentable sugars of wort are converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide by the natural action of yeast added to the wort.

Fermentation takes about a week and is carried out under strict temperature controled tanks.

Lagering (Maturation): The “young” fermented beer is transferred to the lager cellars where it spends about six weeks in closed storage tanks at temperatures below zero.

The rest of the sugars are fermented and beer is saturated with carbon dioxide.

Filtration: Beer passes through polishing filters where all precipitates and yeast are completely eliminated. Then, through sterilising filters, all microorganisms are removed thereby avoiding the need for pasteurisation.

PASTEURISATION is a process that resorts to heating the beer prior to packaging for the purpose of microbiological stability. High temperatures however, affect the taste and aromas of the beer. Through strict hygienic controls, KEO Beer needs no pasteurisation, and it’s the only beer on the island bottled unpasteurised.

Packaging: KEO Beer finally reaches a state of the art bottling line, with computerised flow control producing 36,000 bottles per hour. Beer is also packed in cans and kegs.