Brewing a Winner

After last year's brewing day at the Bass Museum we booked another for Friday 5^Th March 2004. Sadly this day was cancelled due to Coors issuing a directive to Bass Museum to stop brewing cask ales and concentrate solely on White Shield for the bottled market.

In stepped John Mills of Tower Brewery, Burton Upon Trent, to offer his services on the same day. Thanks go to Chris Voyce, formally of Bass Museum for arranging this.

March 5^th soon came and standing at Leicester Station for the 0646 train to Derby were Keith Williams, Nick Williams, Neil Bettoney and myself. The Treasurer Pete Tomlinson was going to join us at Burton. Steve Hoskins had tipped us off that John likes to get started early, so when we arrived at the brewery at 0800, John was already mashing in.

We started in a civilised way by having tea or coffee and then a quick tour around the brewery, a former Thomas Salt & Co water tower dating back to 1875. An absolutely fabulous conversion has been done after years of neglect, that took many months. Indeed it has been awarded a Civic Society "Historical Industrial Building" restoration plaque which is on the wall outside. A trip up the spiral staircase to the malt floor was not for the feint hearted if you don't like heights. Even worse was to come when we climbed up to the former water tank at the top. John explained how long it took to dig out and remove all the pigeon mess that had gathered through many years.

Back safely on the ground and I was amazed how many casks of ale were on the floor. Beer My Guest Agency (BMG) also operates from this site and has a lot of beers stored here.

John not only brews for Tower but contract brews for Hoskins Brothers and also some beers for Lloyds. There were some full size barrels (36 gal) of HOB Bitter awaiting collection.

As John had already started the brew, we were given some jobs to do. I started off by cleaning out fermenting vessel No 5 (FV5) which our brew would eventually end up in. Keith and Nick were weighing the Northdown Hops for our brew and Pete was in the steam-cleaning shed cleaning casks. Next to me was a vessel full of Hoskins Supreme fermenting away nicely. This was the first time this beer had been brewed here.

As the day went on we added the hops to the brew and Pete dug out that mash tun as he was the only one of us who’s feet would fit the spare wellies! He seemed to get all the wet steamy jobs! Keith, Nick and Neil filled casks with the latest BMG brew and moved them around. I ended up going through our beer order with BMG for the festival.

Lunchtime came all too soon, so off we wandered to the Burton Bridge for lunch.

After arrival back at the brewery we watched our brew go into FV5, the next time we see it would be when Nick and I tapped them at the festival.

We then had a lift across Burton to the "Thomas Sykes", a pub in a former stable that is similar to the "Cow & Plough" for old brewery items on the walls. The only thing that spoils it is the bar, which is out of character with the rest of the room.

Back to Derby and a trip into the Brunswick saw Mr Graham Yates appear and offer us a second treat for the day. The Everards "Big Bang Bitter" had been brewed at the Brunswick, so a tour of the small brewery and a look at this in the FV was unexpected. Our stay in Derby also included a visit to the "Alexandra".

Home to Leicester via Loughborough Beer Festival and we had all had enough to drink and an enjoyable brew day. Little did we know that we had helped to brew "Beer of the Festival".

Thanks to John Mills, Chris Voyce, Penny and Jackie for their hospitality.

Andy Sales.

This page last updated: April 15, 2011

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