A visit to Molson Coors' Franciscan Well brewery

After the Murphys visit I popped back to the hotel. Which was just as well really as my room had been totally cleared out: bag, jacket and even toothbrush gone. I figured I hadn't been hit by an unusually thorough burglar but instead it was a hotel cock up. The woman on reception had no idea what had happened but said "we'll find it" and was true to her word which was a great relief. I'm glad that one got sorted whilst it was early and I was sober, would have been a lot more agro when I rolled in at midnight. 

It was then on to Molson Coors' Franciscan Well brewery down on the quay. 

It's in a spacious building with lots of shiny kit. A lot of money has been spent on the brewery. which with an annual production of 16-20 thousand hl a year Molson Coors won't be getting back for in a hurry. But hey, it's nice to see a brewery that's not cramped and has decent equipment. A third of the beer made goes to the UK.

The brewhouse is a Braukon 50hl four vessel system, currently run at 4% evaporation after optimisation with the help of the parent company. A brew every four hours is possible. The vapour condenser on the copper stack recovers 12-15hl of water at 60°C. 

The site has a soft water supply which is carbon filtered to remove manganese and iron.

The centrifuge can handle from 12-16hl an hour for dry hopped beers (200g/hl) up to 35hl an hour for non-dry hopped beers. Dissolved oxygen pick up is negligible. 

The 20-22 tonne malt silo only has 17 tonnes added at a time so they don't have to flatten it with a shovel at the top! I guess not all the kit is flash!

There's a one tonne grist case and a 4-roller mill. 

The tanks are Dual Purpose Vessels used as FVs, CTs and BBTs and go up to 200hl in size. 

15% of the beer is canned. Printed cans with a minimum order of 480hls worth are used! That's a lot for a canning line that will run at 36-37 cans a minute. The keg line will do 100 x 30L kegs an hour. 

After the Franciscan Well brewery we went on to the Franciscan Well brewpub which rather confusingly is independently owned. It was rammed and took us a long, long time to get fed. The pizza was good when we got it but I'd still rather eat at 5pm if I can. 

I did manage to check out some more of the Cork nightlife after that. The bar serving a beer famous for its long largering time and not for the overwhelming taste of diacetyl we got won't be named but my cousin Rosi's recommendation, Sin É (That's It), will. It was cracking and good beer too:

After that I'd had enough CPD for the day so it was back to my belonging filled hotel room.