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Origins and short history of Brewing as an industry
Brewing originated as an everyday domestic activity needed to produce a liquid that was most people’s staple drink. In the medieval era, brewing on the largest scale was carried out in monasteries. Later, colleges and great country houses brewed for their own consumption. On the domestic scale, water could be heated over an open fire in a cottage and the beer brewed in the kitchen, but by the 16th century the dedicated brewhouse was becoming commonplace. By the 18th century the more formal, purpose-built brewhouse had become an integral part of the offices typically found at the large country house. Country house breweries were still being built in the mid 19th century, and this type of brewing carried on regularly until the early years of the 20th century.
Commercial brewing began at inns, taverns and alehouses. These were issued licences to trade by the local magistrates. Licenses began to be required from about the 1550s.
In the 18th century there was the beginning of what was called "The Common Brewer", which meant someone who made beer for sale to all comers. They might own their own public houses which provided a ready outlet for their beer, or they might rely upon sales to private inn keepers, hotels and inns.
Large industrial scale breweries began in London, such as Samuel Whitbread's.
The Beer Act of 1830 introduced the concept of the beer house, in effect a new type of public house created by allowing any rate-paying householder to apply for a license to sell (and brew) beer on the premises. Within 8 years almost 46,000 beer houses came into being, but they failed to compete with the major brewers in the long run as their beer was unreliable and often produced with poor equipment.
In the 1830s brewery sizes remained relatively small, but by the 1860s output was increasing and breweries grew larger and more numerous with a peak in the 1880s. By the 1900s beer consumption was 30 gallons a year per head, but this declined over the years to just 13 gallons a year in the 1930s. The number of breweries decreased accordingly, either by outright financial failure or by a take over resulting in consolidation into larger and larger concerns. Greene King survived all these trends to remain a large national brewer today.
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 Typical mid 19th century malthouse |
The Processes involved in Producing Beer Malting It is possible to make beer from various cereals, but traditionally in England it has been based on barley, which is screened to remove impurities, then steeped (soaked) in water for up to 70 hours, allowing germination to begin. The grains are then spread on the malting floor, and turned occasionally to maintain an even temperature and to stop the shoots knitting together as germination takes place. After 8 to 15 days, depending on the type of malt required, the part-germinated grains are moved to a kiln and then dried for 3 to 5 days, stopping growth whilst adding flavour and colour. These processes take place in traditional floor maltings or (from the 1870s) pneumatic maltings, where the grains enter a controlled environment, usually a drum or box, after steeping. Some breweries had on-site maltings, while others brought their malt from specialist maltsters. The process of making malt and the maltsters who produced it has always taken a back seat in the written histories of beer making. However, malting was a major industry in its own right, requiring huge buildings and a great deal of skill. The whole process of making malt is dealt with in great detail in another section on the Malting homepage.
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Mashing At the brewery the malt is milled and ground down into grist, ready for mixing with water, which is known throughout the brewing process as liquor. Hot liquor and grist mix either in the mash tun - a large, cylindrical vessel - or in a mashing machine (masher) which opens out into the tun. The thick, sludgy mix is then allowed to stand for two or three hours at a controlled temperature. Boiling the wort The sweet liquid mix (wort) is run off through the slotted floor of the tun, which collects the spent grains; these grains are then sprayed (sparged) with hot liquor from a revolving device within the tun, in order to flush out any remaining wort. The wort is then boiled with hops - more often now hop pellets or extract - for an hour or two in a large metal vessel known as a copper. Coppers, as the name suggests, used to be made of copper (now stainless steel), are now normally closed, and may be flat-topped or domed. A variety of heating methods have been used to boil the wort, from external direct firing with wood or coal, through steam coils to external gas firing. After boiling, the hopped wort is sent through a metal vessel with a perforated base, the hop back, which sieves out the spent hops. Fermentation The hot wort is then cooled before fermentation. Originally large, open shallow tanks (coolships) were used for this purpose, sited near the top of the brewery tower where good ventilation was available. Many improved forms of heat exchanger were later devised, particularly towards the end of the 19th century. After cooling, the wort is run into fermenting vessels, which used to be open wooden rounds, copper, stone or slate squares, or wooden casks. Now, closed conical fermenters are the norm. Yeast is added (pitched), and within 24 hours the surface is covered with a thick yeasty foam, which is later skimmed off. Some is reused, while the excess is compressed in a yeast press and sold to food processors. Fermentation time is typically 3 days. Racking The beer can then be run from the fermenting vessels directly into casks, but is usually sent to conditioning tanks, where the remaining yeast is cleared from the beer using finings. Finally, the beer is either bottled, transferred to wooden or metal casks (racked), or packaged into metal kegs or even road tankers.
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Overview of the Greene King Brewery
Greene King’s Westgate Brewery in central Bury St Edmunds is listed grade II in five sections. The oldest parts of the brewery complex are the 16th and 17th century outbuildings on the corner of Westgate and St Mary’s Square. The brewhouse is a six-storey neo-georgian red brick pile built in 1936-9. The design was by the London brewery engineer Mark Jennings in combination with Greene King’s head brewer, Colonel B. E. Oliver, and the firm’s usual suppliers, Adlam’s of Bristol and Briggs of Burton upon Trent. In 1980 Greene King added a racking plant designed by Michael Hopkins Associates, and a new bottling hall was built in 2007. An old copper is set into the pavement outside the brewhouse, which has modern stainless steel vessels as well as copper vessels dating from early 1939.
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Page created on 29th June, 2020
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