Greenall Whitley Brewery, Warrington. Brewing School visits 1968 to 1969
Greenall Whitley & Co. Ltd Brewery, Warrington
Visit by Brewing School students - 29 January 1969
One brewery in a group serving the northwest of England, central and North Wales. Traditional brewery but by no means backward. About 4,500 barrels per week. Control of the Group remains with the family, Bass Charrington have a small share of 13% and recently a trading agreement was concluded with Courage for reciprocal sales of its Bullseye Brown and Courage Light Ale.
Like Young & Co (Wandsworth) they preserve a number of steam engines in working order able to serve all the brewery’s needs via belt and shaft arrangements.
Brewery buildings date from the 1800s so consequently the layout gives the impression of being rather cramped but where modern equipment has been installed the rooms have been finished to a high contemporary standard. A new fermenting room with stainless steel vessels is being built with consequent problems of production while construction work is going on.
There is 8,000 quarters of malt storage. English malt in bulk. Adjuncts are crystal, black, Dixon's Enzymic, wheat flour and flaked maize in sack. They use about six hundred quarters of cereals per week. There is a Seck mill and a Porteus. Gypsum is added to the grist case. Liquor tanks are treated with calcium chloride.
The materials and respective volumes are shown below
Edme malt extract is metered in during mashing. Colouring for XXX Mild and Old Chester barley wine is placed in the underback. There are four mash tuns, one is modern stainless steel fully automatic. Mash at 150°F and sparge at 160oF.
If Old Chester is brewed the final runnings are too weak for the high gravity required so the last 60 barrels are pumped to the copper prior to receiving 2XXX and the sparge over the 2XXX is correspondingly reduced by 60 barrels.
Single brews that is XXX and BB are mashed thinner than doubles.
Clarifloc is added to mild and bitter 20 minutes before casting. Starbright is added to stout, Festival Pale and Old Chester five minutes before casting. Potassium chloride is added to the bitter at copper up. Sugar is added to the copper at the following rates 2BB 10cwt, 2XXX 12cwt, Festival Pale 6cwt, Extra Stout 2cwt and Old Chester 11cwt.
There is a 1 lb/brl hop rate for bitters and half a pound per barrel for XXX mild. Half is added at copper up and half after 30 minutes. The rate for Old Chester is 1.3 pounds per barrel. BB gets a 90-minute boil, XXX also, Festival and Old Chester get 120 minutes. Double brews are turned out at 10 inches deep dip of evaporation. Single brews are turned out on gravity the minimum gravities are below.
Four coppers are in use and vary between 230 and 254 barrels. There are two hop backs each serving two coppers. Spent hops are removed manually.
There are two wort receivers, two APV paraflows which work at 140 barrels per hour. Water goes in at 50°F and is returned at 140°F. Wort is collected at 64.5°F and Festival and Old Chester to 60°F.
There are assorted FVs, some with parachute skimming. Sulphur dioxide is added to Best Bitter, a total of 48ppm against a legal maximum of 70ppm. This is comprised of one pint of primings 4.8ppm, two pints finings 7ppm, four Phylax tablets 32ppm plus 5ppm produced during fermentation.