A visit to West Berkshire Brewery

The latest IBD mini-seminar was at West Berkshire Brewery, where we got to hear about lots of lovely shiny things we'll never be able to afford. Then it was time for a tour.

They've spent £12 million on the brewery so they'd been able to afford a few shiny things.

We were shown round by the Production Manager,

They have a 24 head bottling line.

And a 24 head canning line.

 .
And lots of space.

Space is the absence of time and of matter

They've a way to go to get that 12 million quid back. This was a yeast propagation vessel and I definitely want it:

Here's some fermenting vessels:

And here's a hop rocket. I want one of them too.

Racking port not 12" about the bottom of the cone:

Combined cask and keg racker depending on if god or the devil is winning:

Some filter housings and a centrifuge at the back. I wouldn't mind one of them too. 

 Stuff:

More stuff:

The brew house is continental style with a Mash Conversion Vessel and Lauter Tun. They have a 60hl brew length and since the addition of a pre-run vessel (extra tank for wort collection) do up to four brews a day.

The brew house was branded as "Renegade", which was their crafty sub-brand. But no one seemed to care so they've dropped it.

The Ballad of Reading Ale

On Saturday we had a research trip to Reading, something I've been meaning to do for some time. We started at The Ale House, a pub which lived up to its name with plenty of hand pumps. It's a small place, but we managed to find some seats in a cosy little alcove and settled in with pints of Mr Chubb's Lunchtime Bitter, an old favourite. We were waiting for another friend here so we had time for two. The lovely Lisa stuck with Mr Chubb, but as I used to work with Mr Bingham I moved on to his Twyford Tipple, which rather surprisingly had a touch of the Harvey's about it.

Zerodegrees was the next stop, it's part of a small chain of brewpubs. Though having said that it's more a bar than a pub and had loud beepy music playing so it wasn't to my taste. The beer's are some sort of CAMRA kosher keg but my hazy pale ale was fine and the smoked beer and wheat beer seemed to go down well too.

For some strange reason above the urinals they have pictures of women mocking  your manhood, not sure what that's all about.

It was time for a pie after that so we called in at Sweeney and Todd's, a restaurant with four beers on hand pump which mightily impressed me, even if the beer range was on the unexciting side. The food was very reasonably priced too.

Ready for more research after dinner I was delighted to discover another protestant sect as we waddled towards the last pub. This lot were homophobic Anglicans. I've never looked into C of E splits before but I've now got a whole new series of schisms to read up on. 

Our last stop was the Nag's Head, which had an impressive 12 cask beers on.

 
I spied Gadd's Old School Mild, which made the choice easy. Surprisingly hoppy for a dark mild I still enjoyed it even if I didn't get what was Old School about it. The pub was one big room with bare floor boards, which isn't really to my taste but I wasn't fussy by this stage of the proceedings. All that was left after that was to wend our way home, with refreshment from the M&S at the station sustaining us for the train journey.

Greenwich beer and jazz festival

Me and the lovely Lisa went to Greenwich beer and Jazz festival today. We got the boat from Waterloo as you get much better views than you do on the tube.



You realise that some of the buildings are designed to be seen from the river.



And you get to see sights you wouldn't normally.


If you look closely you'll see that this sail boat is in fact a fake - that's right there are no sails. In fact it was motoring along like everything else.

Surprisingly enough beer festivals are quite quiet on Thursday afternoons.



So we could get on with important beer research.



The beer range didn't seem as good as last year. There seemed to be fewer breweries on offer this time. Last year we went on Saturday, so many of the beers we'd hoped to try had sold out anyway (and the lovely Lisa missed out on Sarah Hughe's Dark Ruby mild yet again!), although we did discover the delights of the excellent West Berkshire brewery though and Twickenham Original and York Guzzler were also on top form.

This year only Wolf's Lavender Honey, a very nice pale hoppy and refreshing beer stood out. It didn't taste of either lavender or honey but that was in its favour. The Nelson Brewery and Meantime had their own bars but the beers didn't seem up to much. Commendations go to Purple Moose Dark Side of the Moose (smooth and drinkable with a taste of chocolate malt and plenty of hops) and Oak Leaf Nuptu' ale (floral hop taste) but otherwise the beers we tried were OK but nothing special.

The fact that this year there were no tasting notes in the programme may have hampered our efforts to find beers we liked, as could the fact we were there in the afternoon and we're heading off on holiday tomorrow so we were strictly limiting our intake less than our body weight.

On the plus side the Jazz wasn't offensive.



Some people even thought it was nice



Though something was making Captain Cook scowl.



It's a good festival in a great venue and even though we thought the beers were mostly pleasant, not outstanding I'm sure we'll be back next year.