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