From grain to glass
3 Cordilleras, Barrio Colombia
3 Cordilleras opened in 2008 in Barrio Colombia, a former industrial zone just south of El Poblado that has slowly become Medellín's craft-and-design quarter. It is one of Colombia's oldest craft breweries and produces a working range of around eight beers — pale ale, IPA, blonde ale, oatmeal stout, plus rotating seasonals. The brewery's tap room is open to the public; the rest of the building is the working brewery. The right way to understand the bar is by walking through how the beer gets to the glass. Six stages.
1
Grain
Malted barley from Boyacá
The brewery sources malted barley from the Boyacá altiplano — Colombian-grown rather than imported European malt, which is the brewery's most distinctive supply decision. Different grain types go into different beers; the pale ale uses two-row, the stout uses chocolate and crystal malts alongside the base.
2
Mash
Sixty minutes at 67°C
The grain is steeped in hot water in the mash tun, converting starch into fermentable sugars over about an hour. The resulting liquid — sweet wort — is the base of every beer. The brewery runs around four mashes a week.
3
Boil
Ninety minutes plus hops
The wort is brought to a boil and hops are added at staged intervals — bittering hops at the start of the boil, aroma hops at the end. 3 Cordilleras uses a mix of American hops (Cascade, Centennial, Citra) and a small amount of Colombian-grown experimental hops from the coffee-growing zone.
4
Ferment
Two weeks at 18°C
The cooled wort is pitched with yeast and held at controlled temperature in the fermentation tanks for ten to fourteen days. The yeast converts the sugars to alcohol and CO₂. The brewery uses a house ale yeast strain across most of the range; the stout uses a slower second strain.
5
Condition
Another week at 2°C
After fermentation, the beer is cold-conditioned for a week — clarifying, mellowing, dropping any remaining yeast. The conditioning tanks are visible from the tap room, behind glass.
6
Pour
A glass at the tap room
The beer is kegged and tapped at the bar — the same building, twenty metres from where it was fermented. Order the pale ale first (the brewery's flagship, citrus-forward, around 5% ABV) or the oatmeal stout (smoother, lower-ABV than expected, the right cold-weather choice). The flight of four — around 25,000 pesos — is the best first visit.
3 Cordilleras runs brewery tours on Fridays at 5pm (free, in Spanish; English on request) ending at the tap room with a flight. The tap room is open Thursday through Saturday from 5pm to midnight; food service runs through 10pm. Reservations not taken; the room fills from 7pm onwards.
