Monday 13th August 2018 in Devizes.
It was still raining as we walked into town. R had his mandatory Costa and then we walked down to Wadworth's Brewery to see if they were still doing their tours and, by lucky chance, arrived ten minutes before the start of the morning tour. It reminded us of visiting Cadbury's in that the aroma led one on by the nose but this time the fragrance was of malt and yeast, rather than of cocoa!
It was fantastic. Wadworth's, established in 1875, is still a proudly independent family business. Henry Wadworth, who started the business, was something of an adventurer who flew in a hot air balloon (landing in Poole and narrowly missing going down in the sea) and he was also the first person to ride the 100 miles from London to Bath on an iron tyred bicycle, called a "bone shaker", that didn't have brakes or a saddle ("ouch!" remarked M). It took him two and a half days! Later, he used to travel round the local Wadworth pubs (there were then 32 in Devizes alone) on this very penny farthing.
Today, Wadworth owns over 200 pubs in the region, 50 of which are directly managed and the rest are tenanted.
The current brewery building was built in 1885 and was custom designed by Henry
Wadworth so that the process started at the top of the building and flowed downwards by
gravity through the six floors.
In 1887, Henry Wadworth took on a business partner, John Smith Bartholomew, who became his brother-in-law when he married Henry's sister and
the current owners are direct decendents of John Smith Bartholomew.
Our tour guide was Jim, who was a mine of information, and he was brilliant. He started with a short talk about the history of the brewery and then went on to discuss the four basic ingredients of beer: water, malt (roasted barley), hops and yeast.
Originally, the brewery had two wells for water, but these were contaminated when the local authority built a gas works behind the brewery, so now they use corporation water with added gypsum to correct the Ph.
The malt varies from light roast, which is at least 90% of the mix, through four darker varieties, which are added in smaller quantities to create a darker, maltier taste in the beer. He gave us samples of the different roasts to taste. The light roast had a definite "Ovaltine" tang!
The hops are added in a concentrated form and finally, the yeast is their own strain that they have kept pure for the last 40 years.
The start of the process, at the top of the building, is the milling machines that "crack" the malt.
This is then put into a "Mash Tun", where hot water is added and it is allowed to steep for at least an hour. Each of their two "Mash Tuns" can hold 89,000 pints and they can be refilled three times a day if necessary. The residual mash is recycled as animal feed.
We were lucky enough to be there as they were emptying one of the "Mash Tuns", so we could watch the "Wort" flowing down into the next process.
The next process is to boil the mixture for about an hour and then add the hops. They still have the original massive "Copper" installed by Henry in 1885. It used to be heated by six coal fires directly underneath, but now a steam coil has been insterted, run on gas instead of coal.
The next stage is the "Hopback", which acts as a big sieve to separate the hops from the wort. In the original equipment, the hops that remain at the bottom of the "Hopback" have to be shovelled out by hand (not a popular job as the "Hopback" is still extremely hot). The spent hops are recycled as fertiliser.
While the original "Copper" and "Hopback" are still used for speciality beers, mostly these last two processes now take place in the "New" brewhouse, which uses a totally enclosed system with all the waste heat being recovered to heat the incoming water. Happily for the staff, the hops are now recovered automatically using centrifugal force. This new system is so energy efficient that it has won a "Green" award.
The new system was installed in 2008 in an area that used to be offices. This was not easy as the building is Grade II listed and they had to remove the roof to get the equipment in - and then rebuild the roof exactly as it was afterwards!
Finally, the yeast is added and 29,000 pints is fermented in each of these vats with the temperature controlled at 18deg C for seven to ten days.
While they fill barrels and kegs on site, all bottling is now done off-site.
Wadworths is the only brewery that still has its own in-house sign writing facility. This was M's favourite part of the tour.
All of their pub signs are hand painted here by three full-time artists. Most of the signs do not contain a name as, by tradition, the clientele was largely illiterate and they identified the pub by the picture alone.
One local legend is of the "Moonrakers", smugglers who were caught by a revenue man as they were raking a local pond to retrieve contraband brandy hidden in the pond. They convinced the revenue man that they thought they had seen a round cheese in the water, which was in fact the reflection of the moon. The revenue man went away thinking that these yokels were mad, but they clearly had the last laugh.
At the end of the tour, we all went to the bar, where Jim gave us samples to try of seven different beers. Five barrel beers: Game of Stones, IPA, 6X, Swordfish and Horizon; plus two keg beers: IPA Gold and Corvus. The last one being a dark stout, that was definitely our favourite.
Each sample was in a small glass, which the two of us shared (except for the stout, where we had one each), but the number of empty glasses soon started to accumulate!
Normally the tour includes a visit to the brewery's three giant shire horses that still deliver beer daily by dray to the thirteen Wadworth pubs in Devizes. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for us, they were away on their well deserved two week holiday. Apparently, when they arrive in the field each year, they run around like small children let loose in a playground!
Inevitably, we acquired a mixed case of their beers and, given that it was heavy and we were feeling quite "happy" (!), we decided to go straight back to MM for a rest rather than do any shopping today!
Guy looks despondent because he couldn't remember where we keep the bottle opener.
Today: MM took a break. We had a lie-down!!!
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