Wednesday 12 February 2020

A visit to West Berkshire Brewery

The latest IBD mini-seminar was at West Berkshire Brewery, where we got to hear about lots of lovely shiny things we'll never be able to afford. Then it was time for a tour.


They've spent £12 million on the brewery so they'd been able to afford a few shiny things.


We were shown round by the Production Manager,


They have a 24 head bottling line.


And a 24 head canning line.

 .
And lots of space.


Space is the absence of time and of matter


They've a way to go to get that 12 million quid back. This was a yeast propagation vessel and I definitely want it:


Here's some fermenting vessels:


And here's a hop rocket. I want one of them too.


Racking port not 12" about the bottom of the cone:


Combined cask and keg racker depending on if god or the devil is winning:


Some filter housings and a centrifuge at the back. I wouldn't mind one of them too. 

 Stuff:



More stuff:


The brew house is continental style with a Mash Conversion Vessel and Lauter Tun. They have a 60hl brew length and since the addition of a pre-run vessel (extra tank for wort collection) do up to four brews a day.



The brew house was branded as "Renegade", which was their crafty sub-brand. But no one seemed to care so they've dropped it.

4 comments:

  1. Nice to see those pics of it up and running - when we visited, two or three years ago, they were still installing. Did you get to meet David Bruce? Apparently a lot of that £12m was his, quite a bit of it from his share of Elysian when ABI bought it out. Did they look busy? As I recall, the aim was to use all that kit to do a *lot* of contract canning, bottling and presumably also brewing.

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    1. Didn't see David Bruce. There was a lot of empty warehouse space so I don't think they're as busy as they'd like to be.

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  2. With such a large plant, how come we rarely see West Berkshire beers? They are as rare as "hen's teeth" in this part of the world.

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    Replies
    1. I guess they've got the kit in place but not the market share as yet.

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