Brewdog, Ellon - 13 September 2018
Brewdog Ltd, Ellon, Abersdeenshire - Photographs taken by Roger Putman - 13 September 2018
BrewDog was founded in 2007 by school friends James Watt and Martin Dickie
By the time of my visit in 2018 they were brewing 600,000hL
An aerial shot of the Ellon brewery with a bit of snow on the ground. Photo courtesy of BrewDog
Site 1 (Rolec 100hL plant) malt silos with the DogTap pub beyond. Photo courtesy of BrewDog
The ubiquitous street art murals by employee Craig Fisher.
More Fisher street art
Unusual decoration in the DogTap bar
More of Craig’s work in the DogTap pub.
The controversial End of History 55%ABV beer in dead animal carcasses!
A pair of Cochran boilers; a Thermax and a WEE Chieftain
Inside the packaging laboratory with a collection of finished bottles and cans on display. The only contract production is for water conservationists Brewgooder.
Pale malt is from Muntons
Four roller Kunzel mill
Specialist malt store
The hop room at the brewery is held at 1-2oC
Specialist malt in tote bags from Simpsons from the new Ziemann brew plant
Materials handling with a dedicated conveyor for fruit peels which need to bypass the malt mill
General view of the Rolec plant. Note the decorated internal fermenters beyond
The Rolec plant from floor level
Note there is no hydrator on the blue conveyor to the mash vessel. The stirrer is turn on full and the malt added to the water at striking heat in the vessel
The mash vessel impeller in the 100hL Rolec brewhouse
It is all very well putting six process monitoring screens on to a single display until two brewers want to enter something at the same time. Impressive but not too practical.
The horizontal external boiler for the Rolec brewhouse
The 300hL Ziemann brew vessels.
Underneath the Lotus lauter tun on the 300hL Ziemann plant with its much simplified run off pipes.
The sophisticated trub clearing nozzles in the Ziemann whirlpool.
General view underneath the Ziemann plant
The FV dry hopping system; hops are fed into a CO2 purged tank at the top and drop to the circulating green beer in the vessel below.
Mash hydrator on the Ziemann mash vessel
Close up of an additions pot
More additions pots below the brew vessels
Yeast collection and propagation tanks at Site 3 (Ziemann)
An Alfa Laval Brew 701 centrifuge on polishing beer duty
Cones of the 1800hL Ziemann FVs are high above the process area working space.
“We are swing bend rich”
A simpler swing bend station for moving yeast about
Sheet filter for final polishing
Filling 20L KeyKegs.
Even more works by Fisher above the packaging palletisers
There are four manual stations for filling KeyKegs, these are 20L
The exterior of the OverWorks building showing the visitors entrance to the tap room on the first floor
The visitors’ stairway in the OverWorks sour beer plant.
Danger, microorganisms at work!
An ISO container doubles as a micro 'airlock'. Operators change clothes and footwear within
Interesting microbes being cultured in the OverWorks walk in incubator.
The open coolship, the starting point for spontaneously fermented beers
OverWorks stainless end, primary fermenters on the right and secondary tanks on the left.
The Holstein fruit press without its cover
The 1000bph Eurostar bottling line at the Overworks
Another view of the secondary tanks beside the bottling line
View through the casks and foeders toward the ‘stainless end’
The view over the OverWorks plant from the first floor tap room. There are 1200 casks plus 8x100hL and 10x50hL foeders by Romualdi
An experimental amphora but iron was leached into the beer
A Lego model of the OverWorks operation in the lobby.
The tap room with the ubiquitous street art.
The DME 20hL R&D brewplant which arrived in 2018 can be viewed from the DogTap…
..and pilot plant fermenters.
“We get through a lot of coffee”. Trials were underway on this 12kg roaster.
Global Brewmaster Jason Pond looks after all production worldwide
OverWorks Brewmaster Richard Kilcullen with foeder named ‘Deets’, a wild west character.
