A visit to Bathams brewery

There was more excitement the day after the BHS AGM. I was going to Bathams! I'd been to a couple of their pubs yesterday bringing my total to 3/12. They're all within a nine mile radius of the brewery so ticking them all now seems a real possibility in a weekend. 

Dave behind the mill, Alice Batham in front

They have a four roller mill, which rather surprisingly is on the ground floor. The bagged malt comes from Crisp and is milled into 50kg bags which are hoisted to the top of the brewery. 

The mash tun

The cast iron mash tun takes 600kg of malt (four quarters!). 

The beer recipes date from the 1960s and were made by current Head Brewer Alice Batham's granddad.

They use mains water. Liquor treatment is Bathams salt mix, which is really optimised for mild, though 95% of production is bitter.

Blocks of invert sugar

They use six blocks of sugar per brew, No. 1 and No. 2 invert. The same wort is used for mild and bitter, but they have different sugars.

Cage for sugar blocks

The copper 30bbl copper is heated by a steam coil and direct fire. 

The copper

Alice was kind enough to briefly turn on the gas heater under the copper for us.

Gas burner

Both types of hop are used, Fuggles AND Goldings. 

Whole hops of course

The hop back was designed by Alice's dad. It needs to be deep enough that the hops can act as a good filter bed. There was a problem this year as some Goldings were rather poor with low alpha acid, and some were better but the had a high alpha acid, which could cause problems with filtering out the trub.

Hop back at the back, paraflow on the right

The paraflow dates from the 80s. 

Hop back CIP set

Having spent a year working with CIP sets that are bigger than the brewing vessels at Bathams I was delighted to see the home made CIP set for the hop back. 

The open wooden fermenters are plastic lined. The smallest one is used for mild. Parachutes are used to crop the yeast. Yeast is filtered through cheesecloth. Top heat is 72°F (22°C) and they chill to 55°F (13°C). Fermentation is rapid: a brew from Tuesday can be on chill by Thursday afternoon. 

The dual strain yeast originally came from Hansons brewery. They still us 36 gallon barrels for most of the Bitter, and have some 54 gallon hogsheads too! 18 gallon kilderkins are used for the free trade and the mild goes in to 9 gallon firkins. 

Look at the size of 'em!

Beer goes in to the racking tank with auxiliary finings and priming sugar the day before racking. 

Unsealed cask

The don't seal the cask on filling, adding isinglass and sealing with a wooden shive before delivery. And looking at that picture they dry hop in the cask too. The casks may be conditioned for a week in the pub, but will drop bright within six hours. 

The have an external cask washer:

And the inside of the casks is cleaned with steam:

It a fantastic visit, it was amazing to go round two Victorian tower breweries in two days! The midlands are rally growing on me. £3.05 for a pint of mild in the first pub I visited too!

Alice Batham receiving the coveted Brewery History Society certificate

A visit to Sarah Hughes brewery

Having been a fan of Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild since I was a teenager I was determined to visit the brewery when I heard that the Brewery History Society AGM was being hosted by Bathams. Sarah Hughes and Bathams are only six miles apart so it seemed like an ideal opportunity. It took a bit of organising, and I was so looking forward to it I was nervous something would go wrong. But the people at the brewery were very helpful and it all went fine on the day. 

As it's a small brewery we were taken down in several groups and I wasn't in the first group. This did make me a bit twitchy as I waited for my turn. But it wasn't for long. 

I had looked longingly at the brewery door last time I was there, so it was great to go through it this time. 

The door to the brewery from inside the  pub

It's a Victorian tower brewery in the Beacon Hotel, dating from 1848. The brewery closed in 1957, but was reopened in 1987. 

Grist case

810kg of malt go in the Ruby Mild.

Mash tun

The Hot Liquor Tank is heated with a gas burner and the strike heat is 72°C. They mash for 65°C for 90 minutes.

The malt is mixed in by hand

The mash takes two hours to run off. The copper is eight barrels and also heated with a gas burner. 

Bet the safety rail isn't original

The copper is filled to the polished rivet. Filling to a rivet is a traditional brewing technique that I have also used!

Looking in the copper

Bittering hops go in at the start of the one hour boil, and aroma hops 15 minutes from the end. Fuggles, Bramling Cross and Goldings hops are used in the core beers. Number three invert sugar is used in  Ruby Mild, which has a gravity of 1.058. Snowflake is 1.078. The dome bottom of the copper traps a lot of hops, the rest are removed in the hopback below. 

The hop back

Wort in the hopback is 85°C. It's cooled further through a paraflow, with the hot liquor going back into the HLT. It takes one hour to empty the hop back. 

The old customs and excise box

Fermentation is in grundy tanks, two per brew. The yeast comes from Hook Norton and is re-used for four months or so. It ferments down in three to four days but spends a week in FV. 

Grundy tanks used as FVs

After fermentation the beer goes into a racking tank, where more yeast can settle out, for 24 hours. 

The racking tank

They still use some 36 gallon barrels, as well as 18 gallon kilderkins. 

The cask washer

They usually do three brews a week, but if making Snowflake will do four. 

They've still got the old Baudelot cooler, but unlike at the Augustiner brewery they don't use it. 

Baudelot cooler

After having finally seen the brewery what to do next? Well, as the door leads back into the pub it was an easy decision!

A visit to Witchmark distillery

After the excitement of Warminster Maltings it was on to Witchmark distillery. They're very whisky focussed, but being under three years old they don't have any to sell yet!

They have a mash tun from Northern Monk brewery and use locally grown Laureate malt in half tonne bags. It's malted at Warminster and milled at the distillery using a four roller mill. They do two brews a day, using a tonne of malt each. This gives them 100hl at 1.059-1.060. The local chalky water is treated by reverse osmosis to soften it. They mash Scotch whisky style, with three waters, the last of which is used for mashing the next brew.

Mash tun on left

As they have to wait three until they can sell their whisky they're very cautious. The use peracetic acid on the mash tun after use and do a weekly CIP. The plate heat exchanged is cleaned every day. 

Washbacks (fermenting vessels)

They have temperature control on their washbacks, with a maximum temperature of 30°C. Fermentation with WHC Hercules yeast takes 96 hours, which is long for whisky. The vessels are agitated at the beginning of fermentation to mix in the yeast, and at the end so the sediment is removed. Everything then goes to the wash still.  

Wash still

The wash still has a capacity of 5,000L, so two distillations are needed per washback. The wash is preheated from 30 to 70°C by a heat exchanger cooling the pot ale from 95°C. The wash at 8-8.5% ABV makes low wines at 30%. The low wines, as well as heads and tails from the spirit still go into the low wines tank. In terms of efficiency they get 800 litres of pure alcohol from two tonnes of malt. The 3,200L spirit still is pre-heated with water from the hot liquor tank, which is itself heated with water from the condensers. Gas from the green diesel industry is used to heat the distillations. 

The pot stills are out of balance, as five wash distillations need six spirit distillations. Spirit at 71-73% ABV is cut to 65% ABV for casking. Casks are ex-bourbon and Shaved, Toasted and Recharred wine casks. They have filled 1,000 barrels and have another 120 in tank. Production is currently 1,000 casks a year and they're aiming for 2,000 next year. The first few casks were stored dunnage style, on their side and three high, but most are palletised. 

Dunnage style cask storage

Bottling is done by hand, with one person able to doe 3-400 a day, though if they have four people working on it they can get up to 1000 done. 

Heads from the spirit still at 40% ABV can also be used in the column still to make Grain Neutral Spirit, six distillations make 1000L for the still. Typically they get 330L of GNS at 96.3% ABV. The two columns in the still each have 21 plates. Distillation takes at least 11 hours and can take up to 14.  The still has a vapour basket for when  making gin. Hardy botanicals go in the pot still, fluffy botanicals go in the vapour basket! 

For vodka a carbon filter, with three sections of carbon and silica sand is used. 

Long and narrow carbon filter

Then it was time for a tasting, though as I was driving only small sips!

A visit to Warminster maltings

Disturbingly it's over ten years ago that I last visited Warminster Maltings. This time with the CIBD it was considerably less rushed. Which is just as well, as owner Robin Appel, now in his 63rd year as a corn merchant, talked to us at great length about the place. I'm sure he could have gone on a lot longer if we'd had the time. 

Robin Appel

He says there's only two floor maltings left in England, and eight in Scotland. Though he then cast aspersions that probably only one of the Scottish ones does much more than look good for tourists. I have to say it does sound quite likely though. Britain stuck to floor more than many other countries. The tax on malt meant we couldn't even consider using the then new pneumatic malting until the so called 'Free Mash Tun' act of 1880. Pneumatic malting arrived here in the early 20th century but floor maltings were still built until 1953. From 1960 large pneumatic malting took off, it's a cheaper way of making malt. 

Guinness leased Warminster Maltings and it supplied Park Royal brewery. Guinness did have plans to build a much larger maltings nearby but the take over of The Distillers Company and associated scandal gave put paid to that. There was a management buyout of Warminster in 1984 but the company failed to thrive and in 2001 their largest supplier, Robin Appel, bought the company. And as luck would have it Progressive Beer Duty was brought in in 2002, which was a shot in the arm for small breweries and a certain small maltings.  

The best soil for malting barley is light loam over chalk. It can be worked easily and the chalk soaks up water so retains moisture. Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset are the best places. Plumage Archer, the world's first barley variety bred by crossing, rather than a landrace, was bred at Warminster in 1905. Plumage was from Sweden and Archer was an English landrace. It was launched commercially in 1914. Guinness produced Spratt Archer soon after. Then Proctor followed by Maris Otter were bred. 

Steeping tank

When tax was paid on malt it would be measured in the steep, in the couch and on the germination floor. An average of the three was then taken. Steeps had to be flat bottomed for the measuring. Barley at 14% moisture starts to germinate at 32% and will get to 45%. A typical Warminster steeping cycle is:

6 hours wet (moisture rises to 21%)

18 hours air rest

10 hours wet (moisture passes 32%, reaching 33-34%)

14 hours dry

12 hours wet, then to the germination floor. No couching nowadays. 

Plumage Archer can take longer and Rye is quicker (a day and half in total). There is no aeration of the steep water.  

Two layers of germination floors

The malt goes via an auger to the top floor and half of it is dropped to the lower floor. It has to be half and half so the depth of malt is even and malting progresses at the same time. They have there own well. There are four sets of double floors at Warminster. There used to be four steeps and four kilns too, but there's only one kiln now. The buildings are built in a slight V shape with a courtyard between them, which forces air in the windows. The Victorian builders and maltsters might have thought they were clever doing this, but to be honest they're not a patch on the people who planned Woking town centre. 

To prevent matting, cool the malt and release CO2 the malt is turned with a Robinson turner:

And a malt plough:

There's also a big fan! Germination continues until the grain has reached a stage that you can squash it flat and smear the white contents: "maltster's chalk"! Maris Otter takes five days to reach this stage, Plumage Archer can take six. 

We didn't see the kiln, but they had a new one installed in 2017-2018. With the new kiln they can make malts paler and darker than before. We did however go into one of the old kilns which has been turned into a mini-malting museum.

Traditional kiln floor tiles

From ten tonnes of barley they get eight tonnes of malt. We were told floor malted barley had better flavour and extract. It can be controlled better than in 350 tonne modern maltings and on germination floors, but not large vessels, bacterial growth creates lactic acid. 

In the mini malt museum

After the museum we moved on to a distillery. 

Big fish in a little sea

Writer and Manxophile Katie Mather's latest piece on the Isle of Man for Pellicle is the first time I've seen her mention Okell's brewery, and it was rather dismissive. I briefly worked at Okell's a few years back. The job was one of the worst I've had, a cesspit of office politics. But the beers were the best on the island. The brew kit and laboratory were over spec'd for the brewery's output of 5 or 6,000 barrels a year. It had levels of quality and consistency that the other breweries on the island didn't.

Okell's brewery

They had three regular beers: bitter, MPA (Manx pale ale) and IPA, as well as monthly seasonals. The hop store was over filled with the latest fashionable hops, and this was certainly reflected in what went in the beers. Rather improbably the brown bitter included Nelson Sauvin in the hop grist, for example. 

I don't know why Katie seemingly has little interest in Okell's, but I do know is that on the island it plays the role of the evil corporation. A small surviving regional brewery might be celebrated elsewhere, but not on the Isle of Man. The parent company Heron & Brearley own half the pubs on the island and cynically bought and shut down the island's other historic brewery in Castletown in 1986. 

I got first hand experience of the distain some Manxie beer geeks hold Okell's in when I attended an event at the Hooded Ram brewery. It was a microbrewery run by a lovely guy called Rob Storey. He'd invited Okell's staff over to the event so I  went with one of the lads from work. I had an inkling of the view some held about Okell's, but I thought it better to be up front about where I was working so wore a branded work t-shirt. 

The Hooded Ram brewery in 2017

I was still a bit put out that someone booed when I arrived though! I've always thought the viewing of employees of breweries you don't like as evil was a bit ludicrous. Particularly as I was working at a small regional brewery, not a giant multinational's factory. But it seems everything is relative, even who the big bad guy is. I didn't get any more grief after that, and in fact had a cracking night. 

I'm not quite sure what happened to Hooded Ram, but it didn't survive lockdown and Rob now runs Odin brewery. And I've not had beers from the Kerroo brewery that Katie writes about, but I met the couple behind it at the last SIBA do. I also spent loads of time at Port Erin where they're based, the best climbing on the island is at The Chasms nearby. As to Okell's, the wrong'uns there were ousted a year or so after they'd seen me off, so I hope current Head Brewer Kevin Holmes is enjoying the job more than I did!

A visit to Camba brewery

I must admit I was hitting the wall by this point. Before the study tour I'd have several industry events and a couple of weeks of networking and CPD were talking their toll on my body. But your friend may ask: "Couldn't you just not pour all that free beer down your neck when it appears?" To which I can only reply: "Don't be ridiculous". 

Camba brewery is the show brewery for Braukon, the brewery equipment manufacturer. They have a 10hl and a 50hl brewery on site, both fed by the same mill. I thought the 10hl brewery was equipment stored on racking, but no, it was all plumbed in. 

The 10hl brewery

They make around 100 different beers a year, many as their own brand but a lot of contract brewing too. 

The main 50Lbrewhouse is only two vessels, which was a bit of a surprise. Though that does have to be qualified that Germans don't count whirlpools, and I suppose they're not always in the brewhouse. At the time we were told it's because whirlpools replaced coolships, which made sense then but doesn't now. Whirlpools are for separating wort from trub and hop pellet debris, not for wort cooling. The other vessel in the pictures that doesn't count is a Hot Liquor Tank. 

The 50hl brewery

The two vessels that do count are a mash/wort kettle and a Mash Conversion Vessel. 

They use liquid calcium chloride for liquor treatment, so have a bit of plastic pipe at the addition point to avoid the metal being corroded!

The beers at the bar were a mixture of traditional and modern styles. Braukon sell kit all over the place so it makes sense to demonstrate that you can make a wide range of beers on it. 

That was the last brewery of the study tour. We did visit the factory of our besties Profipack in the evening to keep our beer and pork levels topped up. And we were all given litre steins which was really nice. I doubt I'll be getting much use out of it, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it at some point.