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.