The End Of The Beginning

Many brewers might think that the last brew at a brewery was a sad affair. Not Ben Cash. When he got up this morning - which he does at the ungodly hour of 4 AM - he thought to himself. "This is the last time I will ever brew on this brewhouse. I know, I will put on one of my wife's skirts and dress up like an accident at a PostIt Note factory."

Ben, no doubt is looking forward to brewing at the new all spangly and shiny, easy to keep clean, fully automated, decently lit, warm, dry, dust free, state-of-the-art new brewhouse currently being road tested only a mile and a quarter away, but for some others who have been with Meantime throughout it's turbulent 10 year history July 23rd 2010 will go down as, to employ an old cliche, the end of an era.

We don't know as yet where the old workhorse brewhouse will end up. We do know it has served us well for a decade during which it will have produced close to 5000 brews. Some of these ended up winning medals and others have been enjoyed as far apart as Brazil and Brisbane.

Meantime is moving towards a new stage in its history. Everyone is looking forward to bigger, brighter, more professional, less chaotic future, where it is not freezing in winter and sweltering in summer, but down in the Union on a Friday night there will be plenty of moist-eyed nostalgia, beery reminiscence and fishy tales of brewing at in the old days at Penhall Road.

And why not? After all, it was not one of the world's prettiest breweries, but it did make some of the world's best beers.

Tanks For The Memory

As an unmemorable World Cup fades into the past, life at the Blackwall Lane brewery construction site is now focused, once more, on completion of the largest new brewery investment in London since Guinness built their Park Royal plant in 1933.

Sine our last bulletin more vessels have arrived, including new 200 Hl fermenters and maturation vessels, and a lattice of stainless steel pipe-work continues to snake ever more intricately around the newly painted walls of the brewhouse.

Pipes in a brewery invariably end in valves and given the size of the brewery there are only two methods of managing the large numbers of valves needed. You can either train octopuses to brew, or  - since no textbooks actually recommend this - you can automate the brewhouse.

Accordingly the pipe-work has to be matched by control systems, so a parallel network of cabling is being installed and linked into the computer system that will control the whole brewhouse. The octopuses will therefore be kept purely for backup purposes.

Taking The Eye Off Football

The Guardian newspaper's online section wanted to run a piece on the World Cup and the beer being drunk by football fans before the competition closed.

They thought that given the majority of the beer drunk during the tournament was fizzy industrial rubbish they wanted to feature something that wasn’t. So they came to Meantime and produced a very intelligent piece.

It seems like they forgot something though. Apart from the introduction, how many references to the World Cup can you count?

http://gu.com/p/2t8yn/tw

Will World Cup Derail Meantime Brewery Fitout?

Worried directors of the Meantime Brewing Company headed down to the new Blackwall Lane site recently to assess the situation when the World Cup threw up the worst of all possible fixtures for the company. The England-Germany clash on June 27th.

The brewhouse vessels are now in, and two teams of welders - 8 Britons and 8 Germans- are working away feverishly between fixtures to weld and fit no less than 10 miles of stainless steel pipe work that are needed to connect all the vessels in this fully automated brewery.

So far rivalries have been fairly friendly with health and safety compliant fire resistant national flags indicating the areas of strict demarcation between the various working areas. Competition between the teams so far has been confined to the two camps respective radio station choices.

The Meantime board are concerned that all this could change on June27th. Meantime Brewmaster, Alastair Hook, explains the company dilemma. "If England win we get our beer mains, gas and steam working in time for the commissioning date of 12th July. If Germany win we will get the brewhouse up and running, but naturally neither will work without the other. The best result for Meantime and its thirsty customers would be a match postponement until the end of July’."

Tight Squeeze No. 2

Meantime Brewing Lauter Tun Install from Meantime Brewing on Vimeo.

Having had a tight vertical squeeze with our hot liquor tank on June 3rd, the following day we opted for a tight horizontal squeeze with the lauter tun.

Everyone was worrying about making sure that the mammoth 4.5 metre diameter brew vessel did not hit the walls, that they forgot that it also shouldn't hit the floor.

Meantime Team Time

Now that Meantime's new brewery in SE10 is starting to take shape we thought it was time that the staff from our old premises at Penhall Road, came for a bit of an advance preview, which took place on Monday 7th June. The new vessels were closely inspected and pronounced very exciting. The Meantime team left greatly fired up and looking eagerly to the day in the next few months when they can move into their new offices next to the shiny new brewhouse.

Meantime Get Into A Tight Scrape

There was a tight moment at Meantime Brewing's new premises on June 3rd when the largest vessel in the new brewhouse was hoist into position. At 250hl ( 25,000 litres or 42,000 pints)  the tank was only two inches clear of the brewery ceiling, so it was touch and go if it would sit on its plinth. It did.

Most of the remainer of the brewery vessels are being lifted into position this week, and then there follows six weeks of electrical and pipework to ensure that Britain's newest brewery is ready to go at the touch of a button.

Meantime Brewmaster Alastair Hook, stands atop the new 4.5m diameter Lauter tun, prior to its installation (left) and inspects the platform where the new lauter tun will sit.