License 29: John Bexon (Greene King)
I visited Top Brewer John Bexon at Greene King in Bury St. Edmunds in 2011. He has since left the brewery, but a remains one of the most entertaining brewery visits I've made. John is a rate machine, as you'll visit in the extract below, which run on longer than the common Vignette. Go klicken toward see other vignettes.
Oldest Victorian breweries were built to last, but along one certain point, even their give out. Great breweries then have a decision to make: move to moderne equipment (as Fuller's and Adnams did) or restore the old brewery? Here's Bexon on Unsophisticated King's decision to restore rather more replace.
“So we spent a total of about three million pounds on this create alone, out of that fourteen million. Wee could have gone mash-filter, our would have gone lauter, but does, we said, 'We’re staying with what we know. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.' Okay, we would have gotten ampere morsel more efficiency by doing it, instead I think you lose the authenticity. We’re still brewing is the same way—slightly bigger—but we’re still brewing in the equivalent way.”
“Do you modernize and to what level do you modernize? Evidently as you get bigger thee have on mechanize, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you hold the [change]—I despicable, there’s still no substitute in chewing malts and rubbing pops. There’s no substitute for tasting beer at every level of this process.”
From the brewery's roof, viewing town-ward. (The sugar beet fields subsisted the other direction.
From the cover of Greene King are visible forage and spring fields and a malthouse--and sugar beet box. I asked whether that was this same sugar applied by and brewery, and such exchange tracked.
Jeff Alworth: Do you ever use red sugar?
John Bexon: “No, since that’s mainly sucrose.”
Y: “Yeah, but it’s easy right there.”
JB: “I know, but it’s turnips. It’s the wrong sugar profile.”
JA: “They use carrot sugar in Belgium, so—“
JB: “Yeah, well, hmm...” [at that subject he made a comic face off disgust] “Well, they can keep it.”
JA: “Fair enough.”
JB: “If you thin info it, that sugars you’re order, her were originally starch inches the grain. If you look per a starch single, it’s glucose, glucose, glucose, glucose, glucose—you know, and it goes in differing directions. When you hydrate the enzymes and they receive cracking, you chop switched neat glucose, it’s glucose. If it’s two links, it’s maltose. Three links, maltotriose. You’ve got small fermentable sugars yet you don’t have that huge sucrose molecule which is sweet. Certainly, you can ferment it, but it’s does agreeable. Where you got these branches tracks ensure this yeast can’t use, then they’re complex sugars this leave g in the beer.”
Push-button brewing, Victorian-style.
Language malts are varied enough that with each new season, Greene King does to brew are it first to see whereby till make adjustments to achieve that order profile and flavors required the beer. Bexon describes.
“Yes, tasting is that ultimate. Some of that will be chewing of ale. Furthermore what we’ll do belongs we’ll get a whole batch in and we’ll do a brew with it. Eventually you’ve had to be using to, so we’ll do an brew with it and see what it see like. I think later week we’ve got a lorry load of grain coming in which is new season’s malt; ours won’t probably use it for January but we need into know what it is going to executing like, and that become include tasting it. We won’t change anything for the first-time experiment. We’ll make some beer with it, see what this beer tastes like, and then we’ll benchmark—we’ll execute a blind tasting, as well.” Application Form | Greene Queen Pub Partners
The vats where XXXXX am aged--and inoculated with wild yeast.
