Saving mild for another year

People think it's all milk and honey 'Spoons vouchers and discounts being a CAMRA member. But as CAMRA is a campaigning organisation there are responsibilities and obligations placed upon the membership. 

One that I struggle with each year is the requirement to drink mild in May. It's not that I have anything against mild in itself, it's just I seldom see it on the bar. So each year the search begins again and often I have to make a detour via the Royal Oak when on a trip to London to fulfil my obligation. This year I started May in Ireland, a country that fell to evil keg where few pubs serve cask beer so I didn't rate my chances. When I tweeted this I was admonished by The Beer Nut for my defeatist attitude and he valiantly tried to help me in my quest. What a coup that would have been! To have saved mild in Ireland! But sadly it was not to be and I failed to find mild poured from the devil's drainpipe on keg, let alone served as god intended. 

Back in Britain I could constantly feel the pressure from my undischarged duty. As it can be surprising how quickly a month can fly by I was determined to get the saving done soon. Advances in technology were my salvation as the beers on at The Crown are regularly updated on Real Ale Finder. 

Having a quick nose on Saturday afternoon I was delighted to see that the unambiguously named Dark Mild was on the bar so I hot footed it over for a pint. 

Very nice it was too. Mild, and my immortal soul, are saved for another year. 

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. 

A visit to Heineken's Murphys brewery

As someone who takes my Continuing Professional Development very seriously it was without hesitation that I booked on to the IBD Study Tour of Ireland. We started in Cork, a city I liked the look of:

Connolly was a Wobbly too and the influence of the IWW could still be seen on the side of the building...

... along with some nationalist drivel.

But on to the studying. The first stop on the tour was Murphys brewery. The brewery dates from 1854 when a distilling family bought a hospital and converted it to a brewery. The company was bought by Heineken in 1983. 

It can be a difficult task getting into breweries owned by large companies and they can be restrictive on what you are allowed to see. In this case for Health and Safety reasons we couldn't get in the brewhouse which was a shame. They can do 12 six tonne brews a day in it in two lauter tuns. Heineken, Coors, Fosters, Tiger, Moretti, Lagunitas, Murphys and Beamish are brewed there, the stouts being perhaps four brews out of a weekly 35-40. Cider is also made there from sugar and concentrate.

They can mash every two hours and ten minutes, lautering takes three house. They have a holding vessel between the lauters and the copper, and unusually the yeast propagation plant is in the Hauppmann brewhouse. Overall extract losses are less than 7%.

They have heat recovery on the stack on the copper and a heat recovery tank holds hot water which is used to pre-heat the wort via a Plate Heat Exchanger. They have four 120 tonne malt silos and two wheat malt silos (though it's used at less than 5% so presumably they're smaller). Chocolate malt and roast barley are used for the stouts (Murphys and Beamish respectively) and colour adjustment. Maize goes in the Moretti. They have CO2 recovery and are self sufficient in it. They used to do a lot of filling of gas bottles do but not only do a small about of 20L gas containers. 

Heineken has a mashing profile 55, 64 and 78°C and is brewed at 17°P to 7.5% ABV before being cut to a sales strength of 4.3%. I'm also got something down about them mashing at 60°C not 55. For the stouts maybe? It's to prevent ferulic acid formation so they don't get a phenolic taste from 4 Vinyl Guaiacol. Mash pH is 5.5-5.7 and copper pH 5.3-5.5. Calcium carbonate is added in the Mash Conversion Vessel and phosphoric acid in the copper. 

Their 20 head keg filler can fill 850 x 30L kegs an hour. 

Maximum brew length is 330hl. Six brews of Heineken will go in a single Fermenting Vessel. Horizontal FVs have to be used for Heineken as they only allow a maximum height of 4m so they get the right ester profile in the beer. Wort is oxygenated to 20ppm. Fermentation is at 12°C for 10 days and it takes 28 days in total to make Heineken. Cider takes three weeks and stouts are filtered after 10 days. The stouts are carbonated to 1.5-1.8 volumes of CO2 in tank and nitrogenated just before packaging.  

Pentair cross flow filters are used and for lagers (but not stouts) PVPP is used for stabilisation. Total production is one million hl a year, at a push they could do 1.2 million.