BREWERY FOCUS Running the Bath The remarkable growth of a West Country micro. Long-time friends Roger Jones and Richard Dempster week and is n times busier at worked at Smiles, the micro-brewer based in Bristol. Christmas. All the 16 full-time staff They often thought that they should take the plunge are trained to use the tills. The brewery has deals with and set up their own brewery. Smiles stopped using Enterprise and J D Wetherspoon and Maris Otter malt and moved on to Halcyon and Pipkin, a growing business with national both fine winter barleys but the pair noticed the wholesalers – with a fleet of three Bath Ales Ltd change. Then Smiles changed over from UK hops to 7.5 tonne wagons, a 1.5 tonner and Units 3-7, Caxton cheaper US ‘commodity’ bittering and again they three small vans delivering up to Business Park believed the change was detectable. Smiles sold its fifty miles in any direction but Tower Road North pubs to Youngs and wound up its business in 2003. perhaps a tad more to reach the Warmley Dorset coast. Nothing unusual so far Bristol then? BS30 8XN engineering ever since. After three Since 1996, the pair, with a By Roger Putman Tel: 0117 9474797 years of five o’clock starts to drive to sleeping partner who owns two Fax: 0117 the brewery, they moved the plant pubs, have been able to buy some 9474790 which they had since purchased to seven pubs under the Bath Ales www.bathales.com oger and Richard took the Siston in the north-eastern suburbs banner. All the pubs are in Bath or R plunge and founded Bath Ales of Bristol. Steam replaced electricity Bristol and within eight miles of the in 1995 aiming to set up a micro for boiling and an extra FV was brewery, only The Swan at brewery and pub in that city. The added but by 2002 that plant was Swineford is surrounded by fields deal fell through but the company working at full capacity. rather than chimney pots. The had been registered so Bath Ales set A further 18 months of peak cashflow from the pubs has allowed up some 45 miles south by renting production saw a move just one mile the ongoing expansion of The branding logo of a the Henstridge Brewery. This was a closer to Bath to a newly-built production. A chain of pubs for such hare which looks rather showcase for a local dairy fabricator 500m2 unit at Warmley but still with a small brewer is perhaps rather like one of the ethereal who was trying to break into the a Bristol post code! There was a unusual but only in the scale of the bunnies from Watership micro-brewery market. The plant brand new Brewery Design Services operation. Down is in fact based on had a 10-barrel batch operation with 45-barrel batch unit. That was in the hill figures carved in an electricity powered copper. The 2004 and currently capability is 225 Bottling at Bath the chalk downs all over pair were joined by Craig Lewis, an barrels a week and the moving Bath Ales began to bottle some of its the West Country. inveterate home brewer and ex- annual output is around 7,500bpa. beers in 1999. The target was the postman who has been the mainstay There is a brewery shop on site hotel and restaurant trade. Then the of matters production and which takes an average of £2000 a café bar culture in the tourist cities began to grow – and although they RIGHT: The eponymous may only take three or four cases a Mike Moravek checking week – that soon mounts up. Local the feed from the crown supermarkets also stock Bath beers reservoir during the and there is a national launch for commissioning of the Asda in the offing – which requires a Moravek 2000bph ‘shelf-ready’ tray collation. In bottling line at Bath building the business, there was a Ales. succession of bottlers; some were too busy, one went bust, some had quality problems but all wanted 90- barrel batches and then lost up to 20% of it in changeovers! The increasing popularity of bottled beer in the micro sector meant contractors demanded more and more lead time and were inflexible to last-minute changes which led at times to Bath customers having to go without. It was time to take another plunge and tap the bank manager again in order to build their own bottling line. Trouble was that Bath wanted to offer a contract service as The BREWER & DISTILLER INTERNATIONAL • Volume 3 • Issue 5 • May 2007 • www.ibd.org.uk 58 Brewing at Bath Ales Malt is from Fawcetts with organic coming from Beer for bottling Warminster, all is floor-malted Maris Otter. There is a LEFT: Fined beer is put into Ruddock mill as in most of transitanks and taken one mile down Richard Shardlow’s creations the road…. but this time the copper is LEFT CENTRE…where it is pumped heated by a steam rather than into maturation tanks. a gas coil and pelleted hops BELOW LEFT: After seven days cold, are used. Mashing is entirely the beer is filtered into BBT…. conventional but Bath has BELOW:…and then sterile filtered rigged up an unusual (right) and carbonated in the centre ‘swinging valentine’ chamber. arrangement where an BOTTOM: All units are cleaned and inverted U-turn is secured with a nut and thread connection sterilised using this useful portable Exterior shot of Bath Ales which is loosened and the CIP equipment. brewery showing the shop tube moved clockwise once entrance. the strong wort is off. Having said that, the other valve coming straight off the base of the mash tun was open at the time in the interests of getting a faster flow! Yeast is Whitbread B which is looked after by Cara and it gets an acid wash every eight generations ‘whether it needs it or not’! Fermentation is over in 3–4 days and the balance of a week’s residence is settling. Beer transfers to two racking vessels and the day before racking, a sample is test-fined and the addition is varied from Attractive shop displays. the usual half a pint per firkin as necessary. Casks are washed back into stock using an Alko portable pressurised well – which needed space for finished beer ready for palletising is hot-water source and are finished stock and other customers by Moravek, including sterile steamed and sealed the day packaging materials; even if they filtration, sterile CIP cleaning of the before filling. The area beside hoofed out a sub-tenant next door to entire system to ensure repeatable the tanks across to the mash the brewing unit, there would not be sterile filling and inline carbonation. tun underback was a mass of casks resplendent in their enough room for the new operation. Firstly, there are two sterilising Bath Rugby Club banding on So it was off a little closer still to filters from domnick hunter before old yoke pallets. Space was at Long shot over to the racking Bath – to a 750m2 industrial unit at an in-line carbonator. This Moravek even more of a premium vessels and fermenters from the Southway House, about a mile away. speciality, the basis of many two- during my visit as there had mashing stage. The beer is fined into 1000-litre head manual bottling units is a been a delivery of tote bags of IBC plastic transitanks which have chamber of CO2 where the beer is malt the evening before. been bought new. Three at a time are atomised in at the top and cascades Finings are jugged in and fork-lifted on to a delivery vehicle over a series of inverted cones beer fed direct from tank. and taken down the road. Beer is off- meeting CO2 which is injected at the Adding 14ml of isinglass and loaded and chilled into one of three bottom, rather like in a beer then filling a flat pallet of 5- maturation tanks (20, 30 and 50 deaeration column. The thin film of litre ‘microcask’ cans was a barrel) for seven days at around 0°C beer encouraging solution rather delicate operation. Bath with an addition of Polyclar Plus than a conventional carbonator claims to be second into this 130 for chill proofing. The organic where gas is bubbled into the beer market after Charles Wells beer gets Daraclar, an SHG flow in a pressurised loop. A with Huber cans having a Run off commences into the treatment. An upstand in the vessel continuous snift of CO2 helps to useful volume below the tap to underback. holds back the sediment and the beer deaerate the beer and such contain the sediment. A passes through a pre-owned Seitz 1µ carbonation is deemed to give a regular series of phone calls polishing pad filter to one of two smoother and more even bottle fill as that ‘I’ve just bought one of BBTs (30 and 50 brls) which are on there is no fobbing of excess gas your microcasks and got it Applied Weighing load cells and when the bottle is released from the home but it is cloudy’ and the offer an accuracy to the nearest five filler back at ambient pressure. An need for a refrigerated supply litres. All vessels came from DME in ultrasound level detector which chain and only a 4-week shelf the USA. ignores varying levels of fob life means that production will There is a changeover flow plate controls the beer level in the move down to the new site for a chilled and filtered and everything downstream to the carbonation vessel.