Guinness CAN organise a piss up in a brewery

Shortly before I went round Guinness' Open Gate brewery in London The Guardian did a hatchet job on it. For some reason restaurant critics put the boot in more than any other type of reviewer. Though as the only restaurant reviews I ever read are when a scathing one goes viral on social media I guess the reason why is pretty clear. 

I was going to the brewery as part of the CIBD Southern section's AGM, but first we had to do the business part to do at Diageo's HQ. 

It's as posh as a posh thing, but at the bar Guinness is only £2.80 a pint. Don't get ideas though, you have to get past security to get in. And anyway, at CIBD events I normally pay nought pounds and nought pence per pint so it seemed a bit steep to me. 

Before business, Steve Wilkinson, who's worked with and for Guinness, went through a fascinating history of Guinness and his own part in it.

There was a bit of juicy gossip that the Guinness family had wanted to sell the company before Ernest Saunders became the chief executive. But they hadn't controlled enough shares to make it happen. I had read previously that after the takeover of The Distillers Company their shares were diluted to the point they no longer had a seat on the board. They're still immensely wealthy though, the current head of the family lives on an estate over 35 square miles in size. That's 2.6% of Suffolk. I don't think my house is even 2.6% of the bleedin' road!

After business and little light networking (two pints worth for me) we hoofed it over to the Open Gate Brewery. There's quite a lot to it. The parts we saw were the porter's loft, and of course the brewery. 

The brewery is enter AND exit via the gift shop. The brewery is a marketing exercise more than anything else. But hey, marketing budgets are massive!

The 15hl/9bbl brewery from BrauKon had all the bells and whistles. It's four vessel brewing system, but we didn't get near it, so no pictures of the inside of the lauter. They mostly use pellets but have a hop back too if they want to use whole hops. They can also move mash backward and forwards so can do decoction if they want to spend eight hours mashing instead of one. They're currently brewing twice a day, but could double that. 

Brewing vessels at the back there, yeast tanks behind the brewer

There's a four vessel CIP (Clean In Place) set, and an effluent plant for controlling temperature and balancing pH. 

CIP vessels behind the brewers

They have 4 x 15hl, 6 x 30hl and 4x60hl fermenting vessels. Though there is a core range of beers the focus is on innovation and the brewers have a lot of freedom in deciding what is brewed. 

There's a flash pasteuriser (11-15 pasteurisation units), a lenticular filter, a centrifuge and buffer tanks. So unsurprisingly there's no beer served as god intended, it's currently all kegged and will be canned once the canning line is commissioned. 

The centrifuge

There's reverse osmosis treatment for the brewing liquor, with mains water blended back in and salts added as required.

They're currently using the Guinness ale and lager yeasts, but they can propagate yeast from slants if they want to. 

Despite the brewery being large for its modest brewlength it was more a stand and point than a tour, and we didn't stay there long. 

Then it was up the escalator and back to the gift shop. The building used to be an H&M and they've kept the escalators. First time I've seen them in a brewery!

After the brewery tour it was time to see if Guinness could organise a piss up in a brewery. And the answer was of course, yes. 

I don't know what deal the CIBD had done with Diageo or if we were subsidised, but we paid a tenner. This gave us pie and mash, which was nice, and a pint of Guinness (brewed in Dublin). I was keen to have somethng brewed on site though, so I had a hazy IPA next, which was nice enough. I think the ABV was a bit hefty, as on top of the three pints of Guinness I'd had I was defintely feeling pissed by the time I'd fininished it. So there you have it.

The Guardian journo's main complaint seemed to be that you had to take a lift to the toilets. Which did make me wonder what she'd think if she ever went to a Wetherspoons. The building we were in had the fourth floor button in the lift labelled toilets. But the first floor bar we were in had a toilet, so I had no trouble getting rid of the beer I'd rented without using the lift. 

I don't know how my experience and tour at the Open Gate Brewery compared to the ones for you pay for, but I enjoyed myself. Which I guess blows my chance of becoming a restaurant critic. 

A visit to White Peak distillery

My first visit of the year with the CIBD was to White Peak distillery. It was a bit of a trek for me, but it made sense as it fitted in with a trip to the Lake District, and in a strange twist of fate I work more with spirits than beer nowadays.  

The distillery was founded in 2016 and is currently making 50,000 litres of pure alchol (LPA) per year.  That sounded quite a lot to me at first, until I remembered it was litres not hectolitres. They're not actually making pure alcohol, but LPA is the commonly used measurement for distillers. They make whisky, rum and gin but it's defintintely whisky they're really interested in. The neutral spirit (which is almost pure alcohol) for the gin is bougth in. 

If they're filling their whisky casks at 63.5% ABV (the standard in Scotland) it works out around 394 American Standard Barrels (approx 200L) a year. 

Dave Symes, the distillery manager, gin still back left

They use a mixture of distilling malt and peat malt to make lightly peated whiskies. Mostly they get malt from Crips but they have got some local barley malted at Warminster, and they have also used Chevallier malt. 

They mash in a semi-lauter tun at 63.5°C for only 20 minutes. As they're making a whisky wash there's no boil and starch conversion carries on after mashing as enzymes, including limit dextrinase, are still active. 

Semi-lauter tun because the rakes don't go up and down

They usually recirculate the wort for 20 minutes to give a clear wort, as less cereal notes in the spirit means more fruity notes can come through. When using the locally grown barley they got malted they ran the rakes continuously instead as they wanted as much from the cereal as possible!

They make 3000L of wort at 1.060 which ferments down to 0.997 giving an ABV of 8%. Dried MG+ distillers yeast and brewer's yeast from Thornbridge is used. Fermentation lasts a week, which is long for whisky, but it allows more lactic acid to grow which leads to more esters and fruity flavours in the sprit. Fermentation starts at 19°C but it can rise to as high as 42°C! The small amount of rum they make from cane sugar and molasses takes ten weeks to ferment. They have also done some unpitched "spontaneous" fermentations (started at 25°C) which also takes weeks. 

Washback (fermenting vessel)\

The 3000L wash (fermented wort) still is heated by steam coils, and the condenser is cooled with river water. Distllation continiues until the spirit collected is 2% ABV, giving 1000L of low wines at 24% ABV. The wash still lyne arm slopes slightly downwards towards the condenser, in the spirt still it slopes 3° upwards, increasing reflux back to the still for re-distillation. 

Wash still

In the spirt still heads (foreshots) are collected for the first 15 minutes of good flow and the body (middle cut) is collected until the ABV drops to 67%. After that the tails (feints) are collected, and the heads and tails go in to the next distillation. The spirit still starts boiling at 77°C and ends at 85°C. 

Spirit safe

350Litres of new make spirit are collected at 72% abv, which is used to make light, fruity whiskies. Long maturation increases ester levels and gives more fruitiness. Maturation takes place in a range of casks, including: bourbon, red wine, port, maderia, some sherry and some virgin oak. Wine casks are shaved, toasted and recharred. They also use some finishing casks, such as Amarone wine casks, for the last nine to 12 months. The sizes include 125L quarter casks, 200L American Standard Barrels, 235L wine barriques and 500L butts. 

Initally they used to fill at 63.5% ABV but have moved to filing bourbon casks at 60% and wine casks at 70%. To give you an idea of what they want to get from the casks, more wood components are soluble in water than alcohol so lower ABV is considered better for getting flavour from casks. 

Most casks are stacked on their side, three high, like in a traditional Scottish dunnage warehouse (though without the dirt floor). Some are stacked upright on pallets though. 

Then it was on to the tasting. As I was driving it's for the best it was small measures, something I don't normally approve of at CIBD events. 

We had Caduro (1/3 bourbon casks, 2/3 STR wine barriques) at 46.8% ABV, Bourbon Barrel at 53.4% ABV and Necessary Evil at 51.3% ABV, aged in Thornbridge beer casks. Then it was on to Langdale for me. 

The next day: OP at the ODG

Jubel: my part in their victory

It's always interesting to see beers you've been involved with out in the wild. So the rise of Jubel is something I've been keeping an eye on. I had a very minor role in the beer right at its start, back when I was working at the now sadly closed Campden BRI brewing site in Nutfield. 

Draft Jubel: it's bigger than Punk IPA you know

We occasionally got people wanting to launch a drink brand getting in touch, I suspect after finding us through google. We had a pilot brewery there, along with extensive laboratory facilities and a sensory department, so were well set up for New Product Development. Some of the enquiries were non-starters,  but I always invited people down to discuss them, as talking to people about brewing is easy and enjoyable work, and you'd get a buffet lunch laid on if you had visitors. 

The people behind Jubel were a couple of posh boys who'd liked a peach flavoured beer they'd drunk on a skiing holiday, and wanted to launch something similar over here. We discussed how this might be done, and how we could help, and off they went. 

Slightly unusually, they later asked if they could come back to discuss some more things. I didn't see what else could be added with another chat, but free sandwiches are free sandwiches, so I arranged another meeting. I think only one of them came this time, and as I'd suspected I was blatantly being used as a unpaid consultant. I was a busy man, so much as I like burbling on about beer I didn't feel I could justify any more of this. I proposed doing a trial brew for them, and mentioned that you can get innovation vouchers that mean the government pays for your research. I even filled the forms in for them. Sure enough, we got accepted, but then we hit the catch. You have to pay the money up front and then claim it back. 

There's only a month to pay too, so it was a bit irritating when it all went quiet from Jubel at that point. I tried chasing them up but got no response and the voucher expired. This made it more than a bit irritating when I got an email from them a few months later asking if they could visit again as they had more questions. "You can sod off" I thought as I hit delete. That was the last contact I had with Jubel, and so forever gone was my chance to claim I was the first person to brew Britain's fourth biggest selling draught craft beer. 

I believe they got brewing trials done at Nottingham, and it was produced for a while at Hepworths, the brewery I'd recommended. I did end up working at Hepworths myself later, but Jubel had moved on by then. 

Golden Pints 2025

Golden Pint, texture like sun...

Think I may have used that song to start a previous Golden Pints post, but I saw The Stranglers for the first time in ages this year so what the hell. 

I'm also ditching some of the categories I can't be bothered with, as the Golden Pints are a bit more free form nowadays compared to when it started. 

Best UK Cask Beer:

This year the stand out pint was Theakston's Old Peculier at the Old Dungeon Ghyll. 

OP at the ODG

The pub is very handily placed for a pint after a hard day's heroism high on the hills and sometimes cask beer can reach highs that other lesser forms of beer dispense cannot. Speaking of which:

Best Overseas Cask Beer:

Landlord in Germany! Yes! YES!

Was it better than any of the keg beers I had at Drinktec or elsewhere in Munich? Too right it was!

Best UK Keg Beer:

Can't be doing with this. Yes, I drink it when I have to but I just prefer cask.

Best UK Bottled Beer:

Let's go with Tynt Meadow English Trappist Ale. 

Best UK Canned Beer:

My favourite sister got me Siren's breakfast stout, which I had for breakfast on xmas day. Bit sweet for my taste but a breakfast beer was fun, even if I'm not going to be making a habit of it. 

Best Overseas Bottled Beer:

St Bernadus Abt 12. 

Best Overall Beer:

It'll have to be the OP

Best UK Brewery: 

Thurstons Horsell Gold is by far the beer I've drunk the most of, but that Theaksons OP was great so them.

Best Overseas Brewery: 

Timothy Taylors ;-)

Pub/Bar of the Year:

Still The Crown of course. 

Beer Festival of the Year:

Got to be the last stand of the GBBF. The trek to Birmingham was more expense and effort for me, but I got home fine so it was no big deal. Sadly the turn out was no big deal either so the festival made a big financial loss, to the extent CAMRA have even sent out begging letters and laid off staff. The festival was much as ever for me though, met up with loads of people and drank far too much beer. 

Supermarket of the Year:

Hmmm...mostly been Waitrose for me when I've needed supermarket beer. The ceiling on premium bottled ale prices may have been finally broken but they do at times have Fuller's Golden Pride going at a bargain price, and ESB is often in a multi-buy discount.

Independent Retailer of the Year:

Cobbetts is still the place I got to if I need something special. 

Best Beer Book or Magazine:

I haven't yet read, and don't even have a copy of this year's winner. Anther break from tradition there. Sadly there's no fooling Santa and he knew I'd been too naughty to put Martyn Cornell's Porter and Stout: A Complete History in my stocking. But I know when I do get the book it will be great. 

Martyn had a positive influence on my life, as it was his questioning details of hop history I'd put on my blog that made me write my magnum opus on the the Farnham Whitebine hop as a properly referenced article, which the Brewery History Society (BHS) then published in their journal. I then joined the committee of the BHS, and became a member of the British Guild of Beer Writers (BGBW), though which I've met many wonderful people. And I'm glad to say I as able to give at least something back as he came on a trip to the Czech republic I organised for the BHS, and got to tick off the Pilsner Urquell brewery amongst others. 

Picture from the BHS Czech trip

His meticulous research has done much to dispel myths about beer history and replace it with actual facts. Much as I enjoyed some of the myths I still prefer facts. At times he did seem to get into pointless arguments, and perhaps unsurprisingly when I pointed out he'd got something wrong he wasn't having it. Though he did of course have a (fallacious) reference to support his claim. I last saw him at last year's BGBW dinner where he didn't look well, and he was not best pleased he didn't win anything. But I'm glad I was able to tell him how much I valued his writing compared to one of the writers that had! I'll miss him. 

Best Beer Blog or Website:

Boak and Bailey's are the winner, their weekly roundup of beer writing is still a welcome fixture every Saturday morning and I enjoy their other posts too. 

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer Blueskyer

Most of beer twitter seems to have migrated to bluesky so fuck that fascist prick's site. I've been impressed by Beer Today, so them.

The end of a heresy

I find christian heresies fascinating and can happily spend time clicking through wikipedia reading about them. Those early christians really knew how to have major spats over obscure points. More modern times have brought such delights as sedevacantism, the gloriously bonkers belief of some traditionalists that the pope is in fact not a catholic. I am unaware of their views on whether bears shit in woods. 

But when a heresiarch founded a protestant beer sect called the Campaign for Really Good Beer (CAMRGB) in opposition to our mother church I was not filled with pleasure that I get from say, reading about nestorianism. I must confess that in my arrogance I had come dangerously close to advocating for something similar to the CAMRGB in the early days of beer blogging. Back then whinging about CAMRA was something we all enjoyed...until I realised some of the people were not whinging about the home team but were in fact the opposition. I repented my sins then, and despite my occasional confusion over theological matters and distaste for modernism, my faith has not been shaken.

The CAMRGB was explicitly named with the aim of annoying CAMRA, which seemed a bit of a dick move. It never looked like an actual organisation to me, though Boak and Bailey included it in one of their books as they thought it was. The CAMRGB blog was just one bloke reviewing beers as far as I could tell, though it also offered free membership. I never took up the offer, so can't say what you got out of it but it can't have been much. There were some CAMRGB t-shirts, and I suspect I even saw the antipope wearing one once...at CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival. I recall then craft crusader Matthew Curtis wore a CAMRGB t-shirt there: 

"I had hoped that by wearing that t-shirt I might have found myself having some interesting conversations with CAMRA members but none of them seemed to either notice or care."

And I see there were some CAMRGB "twissups", pub crawls arranged over twitter. 

But crafties have never really got grassroots organisation going. Craft beer has always looked like a petty bourgeois movement to me, i.e. a movement of small business owners. Craft beer fans did at times provide unpaid labour for craft breweries' beer festivals, and I think there are one or two non-CAMRA beer festivals organised by craft beer fans. But I not really sure what crafties could campaign for. When craft beer was new and exciting sales and availability rose rapidly so it didn't really need campaigners. In fact, crafties would at times get upset when craft beers appeared in supermarkets. Some of the upset may have come from the same source as that of indie music fans when a band signs to a major label, but part of it was definitely concern that cheaper supermarket craft beer would mean margins would fall for their brewery owner mates. See, told you it was a petty bourgeois movement!

Having something to be against can be just as important as being for something, which was certainly part of the CAMRGB's reason for existence. But the appeal of campaigning against the Campaign for Real Ale must be limited. 

CAMRA went thought a slow and tedious process to placate the heathens craft keg fans, and craft beer now seems spent as a revolutionary force. Craft beer is widely available in supermarkets, but a lot of it is made by multinationals that bought out some of the darlings of the craft beer world. Not so much to get excited about, or campaign for, there.

Doing a bit of heresy snooping I saw the CAMRGB has vanished from the internet. I don't know when it went but but it looks like it fizzled out years ago. Matthew Curtis now writes regularly for CAMRA. 

Mind your Ps and Qs

I have been delighted to see the return of beer served in quart measures, albeit in plastic skiffs at concert venues. 

Quart of beer sighted in the wild

But sadly the word quart has become archaic in British English, and there was some confusion when I asked for two pints at the bar. Did I want two separate pints or two pints in one container? If we bring back the work quart this wouldn't be a problem. 

The quarts were advertised by a sign behind the bar encouraging people to "Upgrade to a two pint cup".

The sign behind the bar

My humble suggestion is that they could start the re-education by simply adding "(quart)" to the sign after "two pint". I'm sure people would soon catch on, after all we've managed to get by a random mix of metric and imperial measurements for decades. 

Time to put the dog down?

The rise and fall of craft beer in Britain has been an interesting, and at times irritating, thing to watch. The same could be said about Brewdog, the company that made the most noise, and money, out of it. 

They seem to be circling the drain now though. A recently spate of bad news started with the (rather belated) report that they'd lost 2000 on trade accounts. Losing out to Heineken's Beavertown I suspect, as Heineken also own thousands of pubs. And speaking of pubs Brewdog have also closed a lot of theirs recently. 

The still shift a lot of beer in supermarkets, but they're not getting premium prices for their beers there. In fact, they're cheaper than the other multinational corporations offerings. I recently saw Guinness' premium product at £8.75 for a four pack...

... compared to Brewdog's stout at £4.50.

Price per litre was £3.92 for the Guinness and £2.56 for Brewdog. There was a less premium version of Guinness there too, which like the Brewdog stout was going for a sale price, but even that was £3.41.

There's a similar big gap when Brewdog undercut Molson Coors' Doom Bar, the original at £5.30 a litre...

... whereas Brewdog's coastal 4.3% ABV amber ale is £3.55 a litre. The craft beer revolution was all about making a knock off version of Doom Bar, right?

And even when Brewdog aren't undercutting the companies they claim to despise they're still the budget option in the craft section, their beers being the discounted ones:

Now it is possible I've just looked when it's Brewdog's turn in the discount cycle, but I still can't see any way this is good for them. They're still making losses and have stagnant sales. Brewdog are by far the most successful of the British craft breweries but they're still small compared to the really big breweries. Competing with them for the tiny margins of supermarket discounting is not going to solve their problems any time soon.