Ep 27 - Burton Union Set - Keeping History Alive - Thornbridge Brewery

Keeping history alive, the Burton Union

Join me, Chris Lewington and Thornbridge’s Rob & Ben as we discuss how they keep an old brewing system alive as part of their brewery’s future.

We get into the nitty-gritty of how they acquired such an amazing piece of brewing history, what brewing on this system is actually like and how it affects the final beer! 

This is a groundbreaking project that I’m so privileged to discuss with the team.

Listen on your favourite podcasting app NOW!

00:00: Introduction
02:22: Fifth Column Advert
06:45 History of The Burton Union System
12:35 - How did Thornbridge come to acquire the brewery
14:52 - Technically and operationally how do the unions set work 
23:54 The first brew
36:13 What modifications and innovations have they done to them and plan to do to them 
39:54 Can you dry hop in a Union Set? 
43:42 How the unions affected the flavours of their beers
47:59 The microbiological impact of union systems 
50:53 New recipe development with the union set 
54:45 How important is it for us to maintain our traditions
01:02:01 Outro

Thank you to our show sponsors Fifth Column, the BEST brewery merch 👕

🔗 Chris' LinkedIn

Transcript

0:13

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Modern Brewer Podcast with me, your host, Chris Lewington. Since going solo in this world, I have spent more time on social media in the last year than I had in the previous 31. There are many, many things I do not like about social media, but what I love is when a news story comes up on your timeline that makes you go, Holy shit, that's cool. And the story of Thornbridge saving the last operational union set from extinction was absolutely one of those moments. in the modern era where hops, fruits, extracts are almost solely used to create flavour, it's so easy to lose sight of the traditional, unique ways of getting flavour into beer, In this episode, I am joined by Rob Lovett and Ben Wood from Thornbridge Brewery, as they go through how they came to save the union system. The technical aspect of fermentation using the system. What went well, what didn't. What unique flavors aromas they're getting and their future plans with the union set. I've read about union systems and textbooks, but I've never seen one in operation. So literally, I cannot wait to get into this episode because I'm gonna learn so much and I absolutely love that side of doing a podcast. It's no secret to anyone that I used to work for Thornbridge for a couple of years back in 2015. Dom and Ben, to me, run the most quality focused brewery I have ever stepped foot in. They are absolutely incredible brewers and they taught me nearly everything I know about the technical aspects of making beer. So I know there isn't a brewery in the country that is in a better position to bring the union system back to life and deliver exceptional quality beers. I'm actually heading up to Sheffield in a few weeks time and I'll be seeking the Union beers out as soon as I set foot off the train. 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Welcome to the show, Rob and Ben. Hey, hi Chris. Hi Chris, how you doing? Yeah, doing well, thank you, doing well. I mean it's great to see you both again. It's been a bit of time actually, but I mean for those who aren't aware of who you two are, if you could tell us a little bit about yourselves that'd be excellent and let's start with you Rob. Yeah, so I'm Rob Lovett and I've been the head brewer at Thornbridge since 2010. Nice, that's a long time. It's a long time. So you were the when I was there Rob, that's for sure. yeah. My name's Ben, I've been at Thornbridge years. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I'm a technical brewer and, Rob lets me play with all the new things like Burton Unions or lines and stuff like that. Cal calculations, spreadsheets, algorithms. Spreadsheets. Yeah. Yeah. ai. Plug me in. Yeah, I mean, you are definitely, both of you are very influential in my brewing career. so yeah, it's really cool that you guys are still working together and getting these awesome projects in. I mean, I guess you kind of said right at the start, just before we start recording, Ben, I know this is actually, this Union System is fairly new to you guys as well as it is probably to a lot of listeners and definitely was to me. I mean, I've read it in textbooks, I've seen it in diagrams, but I mean, I've never really thought much about it until I sort of, saw that news article come out and then obviously read a little bit. But, do you, could you give us a little bit of background on the history of the Burton Union System and sort of what it is and why it's important? Oh, go for that, man. Yeah, yeah, sure. so the Burton Union system is, at its fundamentals, method of fermentation, but also of. separating, beer from yeast. So, it's a system that, was, I think first patented in the early 1800s, about 1840. there is a really great journal written by one of the ex head brewers of Marston's, which goes through a lot of the history of the union and how prolific they were and, and the reasons. So, A lot of this information isn't, you know, stuff that, I know firsthand because I'm not that old. so yeah, they kind of first painted a type of a Burton Union in, 1838. And at that time, porters and stouts were kind of the most popular beer and brewed down in London. And then as the 1800s progressed, ales Kind of became the go to drink, and they found that the water in Burton, obviously that Burton Snatch was really great for making pale ales. so a lot of brewers kind of relocated from London up to Burton, I think because of same as now, there's not a lot of space in London, but there's plenty of room in, in Burton. It was a growing town back then. And the first thing that struck me about the Burton unions is how big they actually are. we've all seen kind of wooden barrels. Everyone's, you know, dabbled in a bit of barrel aging. So I kind of had in my mind all these kind of 220 litre barrels in a row with like some cute little pipes coming out the top of them. but each, each barrel holds 650 litres. And is absolutely huge, kind of stood on ends. They're probably, you know, one and a half to two meters tall. And when they had sets of those, I think one of the sets of casks in a row in one of their rooms. and they're just monstrous. So I can see why they had no real space for those on large scale in London. so they kind of used those before kind of Cylindra Chronicle fermenters that we would all know now. And, the main, point of it was when they didn't have great temperature control, or there is some temperature control, these wooden barrels would allow the fermentation to kind of circulate through, a top trough and go around, and then also it would separate the yeast at the top. So I think way back when. They would kind of top barrels up with like a jug, so they'd ferment in barrels, the barrels would ferment over, and then you would get headspace and problems like that, so it was a person's job to walk around the cellar with a little jug filled with, wort, and then top all the barrels up so there wasn't much headspace in them. Hmm. Obviously part of this is that it's a self filling, unit, so as it ferments it goes around in a big circle and then refills with wort. Yeah. So I think the main, the main point of them was just a method of fermentation before big sliver chronicles came along, even though they were fermenting in squares and things like that. I think mainly it was for yeast separation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I missed him in like, I mean, I guess this was Is it patented? Is that correct, you said? Yeah. Guy patented, has a patent from 1838 about something that looks very similar to Burton union. It was for brewing fermentation. And they think that's kind of the earliest. documented thing that would be a Burton Union, but people have been fermenting in casks well before that. They kind of put the swan necks in later on. so I think people generally pick that as the start of the Burton Union. but you know, they were developing things every year or so from 1838 to kind of 1890, which was like the peak. So peak Burton union was 1890 where they think there was around 17, 000 casks in use across 30 different breweries in Burton. That's And then from there it kind of declined, all the breweries either moved out again, were consumed, or just closed down to like the 50s when I think there was five breweries. I think volumes were pretty similar, because those big breweries in Burton are absolute monsters. But the Burton Union Peak was, yeah, about 1890. And this, the one that you saved, right, I shall ask you that question in the next. That was operational, still? So they were still operating these union systems up until recently? Yeah, Marston's had, I think, about 400 casks, some in really old frames. I think they basically stopped using and then they, they actually invested in a new set in 1990. Yeah, 19, those barrels that we've got are from 1990 ish, I think. Yeah, so in 1990 they put a new, a new union room in, and they, yeah, used it to brew pedigree, blending it back. I think they said it was about 50%. Union, 50 percent tank fermented Mm hmm. and yeah, they've been up in use up until we took them. the Cooper that works there, a guy called Mark Newton. He's, he's one of the master Coopers. I think he's been there 30 years and the kind of his little, you know, there's children, he looks after them, a squall of them, his full time job is just maintaining barrels, so he kept them in good condition to be transported to us. Picked us out the best ones. Well, that's good. I mean, I said it in the intro, but I mean, for me, there isn't Better craft brewery in the country where this system could could have landed I mean, it's just gonna I know that the beers are going to be excellent coming out of it And the heritage is going to be sort of Kept because it's a part of the thornbridge brand and itself. So how did this actually happen? Like how did this come about Thanks. It's Garrett Oliver. you know, Brewmaster in Brooklyn. He, he got wind of the fact that they were gonna be decommissioned and, being passionate, you know, brewer that he is. And he obviously wanted to preserve brewing history and like you said, he couldn't think of anywhere else better for them to go than here. And, you know, that was the, that was the, in that, that, yeah. That's how the sort of, Snowball started rolling, I guess, and then it just got bigger and bigger, yeah. Yeah, he put us in touch with the Hounsberg people. Yeah, yeah. They, they gifted it to us. Yeah. They didn't, you know, we didn't buy it off them. I think a lot of people are saying, well, did they never just give it away? And I think they did. They wanted it to continue in one way or another. It's good. It's good that they wanted to keep the heritage I mean as you said, I think about someone's not far off life work has gone into some of these systems So i'm sure they want to see it continue on as well um He's a good character, isn't he? Garrett is a, you know, one of the true celebrities of the brewing industry, I yeah, yeah, absolutely. And for us, you know, like you said, we knew we could, you know, it was a challenge, but we relished that challenge as a team and we've got knowledge and time and, you know, the experience to make something like that work. I mean, don't get me wrong, I was a little bit nervous about it, at it, because you know, few things, you know, you've got barrels that could potentially dry out, infections, oxygen, you know, everything, how our yeast would behave in them, so it, we were, I was, yeah, it did give me a couple of sleepless nights, but it was, we wanted to keep brewing history going, I think, so that was one of the main reasons we took it on. Yeah, I love that. And we're going to get into some of those, into some of those later on, especially the, the microbiological side. Cause I know Rob, you're a keen and excellent microbiologist. So it's gonna be really interesting to hear about. I mean, I can absolutely imagine how that gave you some sleepless nights. yeah, our point of view, sitting on the other side, you're like, Oh, that sounds so cool. It's amazing. And then the operational side, it's like, well, this is actually going to be a big old headache. we had, so I mean, talking about the process of the Burton Union, if someone could just go through, like, how it fits into the, sort of, brewing process and how it actually works. yeah, sure. so to kind of understand how it works, I guess you kind of need a picture in your mind of what it looks like. If you haven't seen one, it's essentially a row of 2 wooden barrels and we've got 6. So 2 rows of 3, and they're suspended on a big stainless steel frame and above them, there are some large stainless steel troughs, like a huge bath. And coming out of the top of the casks, you have a swan neck, which, the shape of a swan neck, so it comes out the top of the cask, up alongside, and then over into the top trough. so, At the end of the top trough also raised up is what's called a feeder trough, which is kind of where the process starts. and that feeder trough has a pipe called a side rod, which runs down the side of each of the barrels and goes into the top of each barrel. So the way they actually work is, you brew, you cast your work to a fermenter as normal and then pitch your yeast and do everything as normal for day one brew around 12 to 18 hours later, kind of approaching high crowson, you then, transfer that into the union set. So our union set is in the tap room, which is about 150 meters from, the riverside brewery. So we run a great big stinking hose outside of the brewery, nice and early in the morning. So as not to disturb anybody, and just send over with top pressure, down the road and into that feeder trough on the top. So we run into the feeder trough and it goes down there along the sidewalks and then slowly fills each of the six barrels. As the barrels become full and frothy, their only way out is up through those swan necks and then into the top trough. So what you find as you're filling, because it fills the barrels from the top, so loads of great splashing into that nice air enriched cask, which is just great. you'll see loads of foam coming up and out and filling. And then we know that the capacity of the barrels is around 40, 42 hectolitres. So we'll transfer with a flow meter a certain amount, and then over the next couple of hours, it will all settle down, the wort will go into the barrels. that extra transfer is kind of rejuvenated. like crowson. So it's just going absolutely nuts. It's like giving it a second dose of oxygen, 12 hours into a fermentation. And then you'll start to see, froth, yeast and wort filling, the swan necks dripping into the trough. And then the part from there is the yeast will often stay behind. and the wort will travel through a pipe back to the feeder trough and then back down the side rods and into the barrels. So you have this circulation action of out of the swan neck, into the feeder trough, into the barrel, out of the swan neck. So it goes round and round and round. which is where if you've, if you've seen photos of the Burton Union is that classic kind of drip, drip, drip action from the swan necks of, yeast and some work that's carried up. So we then leave them in there for five days or so, and then transfer back to a slender conical for, racking. So you don't rack straight out of them. another great little, oxidizing method is to transfer out of the barrels underneath each barrel. You have a brass tap and then below the brass taps, probably 30 centimeters below the brass tap. There's a stainless steel trough that runs along. So you basically open the taps and then this nicely fermented, green beer will drop into the trough and then run to a pump and then get gone away. So nice extra bit of oxidation there. The. The team at Marson's used plastic sleeves that they kind of rubber band onto the taps to try and take away some of that splashing. they're quite keen to tell us, like, don't, don't splash it. And we've had mixed results with our transfers of, you know, just horrified looks on Rob's face as we're just dumping green beer out of the bottom of a barrel and it's splashing and fobbing everywhere, just, you know, a completely open air. But surprisingly, the oxygens were super low, which I can only assume it's because the yeast is still pretty active because there's a bit of gravel left to go. I, I, I would never have thought that yeast would mop up oxygen that quickly and, you know, I don't know, I've not really looked into it Hm. Hm. Hm. Hm. Hm. Yeah, so, we're looking at lots of different ways to do all of these processes to kind of eliminate those problems. The beer's not tasting oxidised. Yeah, it doesn't. You know, so, you know, you, you, you, You tell immediately. Yeah, really. that's essentially how they work. We transfer out and rack. So it's something you go into on kind of day day one of fermentation and then take it out just before it finishes. and then you're left with beautiful yeast up top and some nice bright beer coming out of the barrels. Do you, what's the purpose for the, the first one day step into a tank? Is that for micro or? Really? I think it's. Well, you'd have to go somewhere, wouldn't it, to start with? You've got to collect somewhere, and you've got to pitch, so I think it's probably to get it into high crowson, isn't it? To get that first kind of step of lac phase going, and get some yeast growth happening before you I mean, maybe the original Burton Yeats, did they always do that with the original one? Maybe they started day one in there, and it's Well, I've read certain things. So Bass used to hardly use the Burton Union at all. They would go into it on like day four and they would purely use the Burton Union as a way of separating yeast. They'd use it as a nice way to crop yeast. So people are using them in different ways for sure. That's It just makes sense to collect into a tank and make sure that it's all homogenous. That way you can do all the, you know, you're not checking yeast counting. Well, I mean, if you're at Marston, you should be checking, well, if you did check, you should be checking 70, 70, 40, yeah. It kind of makes sense to make sure it's all homogenous and you're happy with everything. Hmm. I guess in some breweries you cut them back with liquor and all that, and so yeah, and then just transfer it when you're ready. I mean, you could do it on day one, I guess, but I think the liquor back, I think they mentioned something like that in Aston's. Yeah. They would be slightly high grav, and then they would liquor back in FV some way. Yeah. Yeah. And then go from there maybe. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's that extra protection of that high crousin, where everything's at like the height of activity. Yeah. It's a little more protective of that yeast already there and going. If you put it in on day one, maybe that yeast gets out competed by something. Could do and also I suppose there's more chance of it getting oxidized because Yeah. you can't oxidize work I never thought you could but we had one instant one of one of the very few beers we put down the drain someone Put pure oxygen on it and and didn't put the right amount in and the work. It's an Oktoberfest Yeah, Oktoberfest, which I was might be pissed off about my favorite One thing anyone works here. Yes, this You know, a couple of beers that you cannot mess around with. Yeah, well we had to brew it again, didn't we? They're Rob's favourite beers. Everything but the lager. Yeah. Tazy IPAs, now I'm only joking. But, if you just, yeah, and it did, it was, it just tasted oxidised and then you ferment it on top of that, it was, it was, it was, yeah, it's one of those things that I never thought would happen, but yeah, pure oxygen definitely did it. you know what, there's plenty of craft breweries that use pure oxygen, as opposed to sterile air. So, That's why I don't like having it around, just in case, because you can't really over oxidize work with mm, mm. you can with, with oxygen, yeah. There's a whole separate podcast coming, I reckon. if you don't bother, you know, yeah. 35 ppm, yeah, no worries. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely happened, before in, in my career as well. Thankfully, thankfully not on an Oktoberfest beer. so yeah, operationally, What. sort of challenges did you encounter maybe on the first one and stuff was I guess it was very like It's quite a lot of beer, isn't it? It's not like you can really just Did you do a trial or anything or how did that first one go? Our, our trial was Dry pour. Dry pour, yeah. So, we wanted to do a beer that we already knew what it should taste like, how it should ferment, how quickly it should ferment, what the yeast counts were like, everything that we would then have a base to compare against. so we chose Jaipur and, you know, at the start there was, I know we definitely had conversations. There was a little bit of fear that God, what if it comes out and it tastes exactly the same as Jaipur or terrible. Yeah. We've, you know, we've done all this work and yeah. What if it's just terrible or unnoticeably different? Yeah. Yeah. come on all these podcasts talking about it and now you're like, oh my god Yeah, I'm not very good at making things up and pretending that it's just, yeah, yeah. So in terms of challenges, temperature control was probably the first major challenge we had. the way that they cool the barrels, they do have kind of a copper temperator inside the barrel. It's probably, I don't know, two feet long and like, I don't know, 20 centimeters wide, mix, mixing mass systems there. and it just has cold water flowing through the attemperator. It's quite a small volume, so it does a good job. But the way they were set up at Marston's is that the, they were set in groups of three. So cool, cooling would go into barrel one, out of one into two, out of two into three, and then three back into the main. And then the main would then go one, two, three. So we had it set up like that for the Jaipur brew. And we found that. Barrel number one, yeah, great, fermenting at 21, 22. Barrel number three, 25 degrees, 26 degrees. And you've got a ball valve to control this flow. so the first kind of big issue was, well, where, where do we pick? Do we pick barrel number two and say we want that at 22 and have one at 20 and three at 25? Or do we ferment them like, this is totally against everything you would decide to do when you're like brewing a beer. Like, oh, no temperature control or a five degree. range in temperature control. It's just not, it's not going to give you a consistency and that's kind of what we're all about, quality and consistency. And if you're controlling a fermentation with a ball valve with a five degree variable, it's going to be difficult to make that bit twice. So we got, there was a fabrication team that Marston's worked with called Empire, and they kind of installed the union for us and set it up. So we got them back to do some modifications for us. So the first model we made. Was making each barrel independently cooled. So instead of one ball valve, we've got three ball valves in and out of each and every barrel independently. So we can, we can chill as we want them. so yeah, temperature was a big challenge. And then like Rob mentioned, oxygen pickup is just. Again, a lot of the Burton Union goes completely against what you've been trained and what you would like to do in brewing, and then the worry is, well, how much of the Burton Union flavor is because of those quirks? And if we fix all the quirks, is it not Burton Union beer anymore? Like how far do we go? Do we line the barrels with stainless steel or what? Yeah, that's a really fun thing to think about actually because yeah, as you said It's so challenging to everything you've done and it's like but what makes is that what makes it unique and how can that then? Implement with your systems. I think one big question for me It's like how is it to clean as a system because presumably being wood and intricate pipe work? That's what, yeah, I mean, they were cleaning just a huge volume of them and we've only got six of them. I mean, it is laborious, but it's probably no more laborious than some of the small breweries that don't have CIP sets. You know, a lot of hot water, scrubbing the caustic. yeah, I mean, what else Ben? Yeah, I mean, I, I remember up in the Lake District when we cleaned a fermenter, there was a ladder on the side and I'd jump, I'd climb up the ladder and jump in the before as of caustic and mascara and get to work, you know. there was no spray balls in that brewery I worked at, everything was cleaned by hand. The union's the same, for the troughs on top, the stainless parts, that's, you know, it's cleaned by hand with a, with a scourer to get it, to get it clean. problem. My worry is that you couldn't clean completely, but in the micro that we, I mean, Casper. When you fill in a cask, even with the most advanced cask cleaning, the cask is never sterile, is it? but we've done some micro and touch watered in the past. So, I don't, I don't think we'd be brewing anything sort of, Sub 5 percent in it, you know, you obviously got pops and out and alcohol that helps low ABV and it will be low ABV. I mean, you just wouldn't really, but A non alka union beer. What a yeah. Don't say that out loud. Someone upstairs will hear you. Yeah. yeah. So obviously with all the stainless parts, you know, we know how to CIP, you know, caustic, rinse, PAA, all different ways to do it. the trouble comes when you get to the actual barrel itself and the amount of brass that's in this thing, you know, we can't put caustic anywhere near brass and we can't caustic the, the wood. So it's just huge amounts of hot water. I think they used to fill them up completely and then kind of turn the barrel because the barrels are suspended on two pins. So you can actually spin the barrels. Like through 360. Yeah, when they're not connected to the side rods, they just roll around freely. so they used to fill them with water and spin them and then the glugging action of the hot water would be the mechanical action to like scour the inside of the cask. So they'd have the temperature and then the mechanical was from glugging. But then luckily someone invented a spray ball. so now we leave them in place upright and we drop a spray ball into them and just spray ball them with, with hot water, you know, until it runs clear. And then we can take out the cooling coil and look inside and inspect them and make sure they're clean. So, yeah, it's, it's a lot of time and hot water, but it's, it's a lot of fun. With six, it's, it's fine. Yeah. I couldn't imagine doing 300 of them. Yeah. Yeah, it's, that'd be a staggering amount of, of water. And the, the, desire, I guess, for some of the people working there when they get to number 250 to go home, My god. I didn't know they could rotate. That's really cool, actually. As you said, glad they invented the spray ball. Seems to make everything easier, but it's cool to know that it can do that. did you have to change any of your modern day hygiene standards to sort of accommodate for them? we, we do ATP on, on the stainless parts that we can caustic rinse and PAA Mm hmm. on a normal CIP cycle. the, the wood itself, I think we've done, you know, the low numbers less than 30, which is, which is fine. The, I think the key is you, You have to keep them wet and keep cleaning them immediately after use. Like it's not one of those things where you can like empty them and then leave it for a day because as soon as that stuff dries on, you've got no chemical action, you've got no hope. and I think the fact that they're always, they're always full as well. It means you don't get that kind of, yeast line that you get, you know, the top of fermenters, that really hard bit to shift. You get that kind of in the Swan neck. So we've got the big brushes that we can get down and scrub the Swan necks with caustic because they're stainless. And hopefully the barrels themselves, you know, as soon as we empty them, they're relatively clean already. That's really cool. And what about yields? Do they change? I mean, Conceptualize the system. I don't see how they would change massively apart from maybe the transfer losses But do you see like a big difference in the amount you get? That you put in because you said you flow meter in versus what you get out. Oh, really? the yield's pretty good. Yeah. Like you say, other than transfer losses, but we chase through lines and, I think probably we, I reckon we probably get five, maybe 5 percent worse yield, but I guess we'd kind of put that down to yeast biomass, probably that second, that second oxygenation, like the amount of yeast they make, which I see why people use them, great for harvesting yeast. And you get a lot of yeast off them, but obviously for us, that amount of yeast is probably biomass related, whether we drop our hot side aeration level, I'm assuming we're going to get that extra biomass in the transfers, not something I've thought about until right now, but I guess we could, we could probably aerate 5, 6 million instead of like 12 million, because we know tomorrow morning, it's going to get a hell of a lot, it's going to get another dose of oxygen, Did you make any changes to the standard Jaipur recipe for the first one or? all the same, right? Same kitchen rate in FE, all the same ingredients, exactly the same until like 18 hours in when it gets transferred down. But yeah, then everything starts changing. what about, I mean, we mentioned a little bit about the maintenance, but is there a lot of maintenance on it, especially considering it's wood, and how, how do you plan to do that? the big concern is the barrels drying out really, and you know, and I think we looked at spraying them with water, filling them with water, anything between brews to keep the things hydrated, I mean, ideally you could even put one of those systems that we use in our barrel aging system, but you couldn't get it in the tap room or what are those things called? Humidifier. Yeah, humidifier, but we couldn't do it in that room because you were brewing there and there's a tap room. It'd be like a sauna. Yeah, it'd be like a sauna, wouldn't it? It'd be quite weird. Yeah, it'd be like in Centre Parcs with beer, but, but luckily it's been successful. So we're brewing in it. We're brewing more often. So we're brewing on it practically every week. and I think that will continue. And that means that they've very, they've always got beer in them, really. You know, a day here and there between. Yeah, even if there was a week here and there where I didn't have beer in, I think. They would be okay. There, so from 1990, I think Mark McCoop told us that we're already 34 years old as a barrel. he's told us the good for what, another 10 years, you know. Easily another 10 years life in them. He's he's, Marston's have given us loads of spare parts essentially. Loads of like hoops and staves and tools and things like that. And Mark the cooper's been, you know, more than helpful. He's come down to us loads of times. he's got quite close to John Fawcett. so, you know, I think when that phone call goes out and the bat signal goes up, I think he'll probably come down and he'll come and help us. There's, you know, he seems keen to, yeah. Yeah. He's definitely been happy to see him relocate, part of them to be relocated. But yeah, we can, we can do a bit, we can keep them wet, but there's, you know, there's stuff that we don't even understand that Coopers do to like maintain On an, on an annual basis. I think he would take them out every year, completely dismantle them and then put them back together and refurbish hoops and do all sorts of things. Yeah. that's a, it's a big barrel to be doing that on. It's quite impressive. A good person to know though, right. Cause yeah, I guess the thing about these things is that maintenance, is going to be quite intense on them over time. I think we're in the honeymoon period now where they're all shiny and pretty. And we've got to keep them that way. But in the same sense, they're also quite simplistic in the way they work, right? So there's not that many moving parts, etc. So it's kind of column A, column B, I guess. Yeah, for sure. so you already mentioned, some of the modifications that you make. Have you got any, plans to do any more modifications to the union systems? to improve, like, efficiency or quality or So we, we modified the temperature control, in terms of each barrel. there are also no. There were no temperature probes in wooden barrels, and we didn't want to start, you know, screwing thermal wells into these barrel heads that were 35 years old. So, we've got six temperature probes, which were actually pushing down the swamp necks. So they're flexible temperature probes that just connect to one of the handheld temperature readers, you know, that people used to do mash temps and stuff. so we've bought six of those and then as before we fill them, we'll shove them down, cable tie them to the top. So we have a temperature probe hanging in the barrel. So now we go around and we plug in to each swan neck and read the temperature. So. That's kind of the morning routine of taking graphs and temps. We can do that now, whereas before you, I think they used to sample one, one barrel into a jug and then put a temperature probe in it and then adjust the cooling based on that. which I think is fine. When you've got 20 years experience, you get to, you get a feel for. For how, how quickly it's fermenting, how quickly it's, you know, dropping out the swan necks and you can control things with that, you know, faint touch when you hear something weird in a brewery, you know what it is, we don't have any of that knowledge. So putting some digital temperature probes in there has really helped us. we've had to cover the troughs with perspex. Hmm. The union rooms were kind of purpose built areas within the brewery, especially in Marston's, where there was just the union. There's nothing else going on, whereas ours is at the back of a tap room next to the brewery, with an open roller shutter to outside for, you know, people coming in and out and goods and things like that. and the taproom brewery has got a malt auger, so dust just gets, you know, all over the place. that was one of the main concerns, was all this dust floating in the air and infecting the beer. So we've put Perspex lids over the tops of all of them that you can see through, temperature probes, temperature control. And I think the next thing will be to try and find a way to get that emptying process with no oxygen. We can get okay oxygen by dropping it into the troughs through like a plastic bag and something, but, I think next time I'll probably try like a, a normal barrel racking cane. Hmm. I don't think there's anything inherent about emptying the barrels through the bottom into the trough that lends itself to the Burton Union flavor. So I don't think traditionally there'd be a problem with getting the beer out a different way. I think a barrel racking cane would do it. So much better, but who knows, maybe there'll be a problem with that, but we'll give that a go next. That's cool. Yeah, I mean that definitely adds quite a lot of challenges to it, the fact that it's in a tap room with a already another operational brewery in it. yeah, it's awesome. It's a really good way of thinking outside the box getting that, that done, because I think that would be a roadblock for a lot of people, wouldn't it? If they thought, if you really think hard about it, it's like, you know, can just quite a challenge, quite a roadblock to have it in, in that location. So it's great that you managed to do that. It's good to show it off as well. Like, you know, it's one of the yeah, it's, the main things we wanted, you want it hidden away in the Riverside brewery and like, tell people we've got one in the tap room, you can see it from the, the tall kind of stage. Yeah. we've had a lot of people from Burton come down. Hm. you know, look at it and mention it. So it's nice that it's on show publicly for people to come and see it in action. Actually, yeah, that's a really good point, yeah. That's kind of the thing about having the, one of the last bits of brewing heritage, isn't it? It's kind of nice when people can go and pay their respects to it and see it in action and everything, yeah. I feel like this is a sacrilegious question, and I've been hesitant to even ask it, but, Do you think you could dry hop in one? Is there any plans to do that? Well, well, I did suggest that, you know, it's always how you chew the cud, we chew the cud a lot. I thought, you know what we could do is just put a load of hops in the, the yeast collects. And then the work just runs over it constantly. Ben said yeah but that's where all the yeast is and even though we're not reusing it you just end up with this quite massive hops. I think it's blockages isn't it? Yeah I don't know, maybe you could make it work, I don't know. We'd have to what, we'd have to put some sort of, even if you had a grill it'd get blocked wouldn't it? You know, like you say, if Mm. you could put it in the, cause there's two troughs, you could put, you could put it in one of the troughs and then that would kind of block it out from getting running in and then run into the feeder trough, which would refill the barrel. So as long as you dry hopped in the, in the top trough, yeah. What are you thinking, some Citra, a bit of Mosaic? Um, no, no, no. That's fair. Two worst hops that were ever created. Um, I think, um, yeah, no, it'd be interesting to do that, but, We, we've looked at, um, at term adding T one hundreds to, to the, the union bro, which is the, which is the bespoke beer that we've brewed on it. yeah. Little hot pellets in the cast as well. Yeah. But rather than, I mean, I'm not a huge fan of dry hopping t nineties anyway, but with those hell cones that could work. And we do something like a wet hot beer on it once a year. Yeah. That'd be Wet hop in the top. I mean, you might get micro issue with no heat involved. Yeah. I mean, it would be the first dry hopped Union beer ever? Probably, right? try out in the union. Yeah, probably. Something to think about. We actually, we have thought about it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know if it was going to be like, yeah, a big sacrilegious thing to do, you know? but it actually could be really cool. I don't know, it might be really fun, or it might be one of those things that sounds really fun, and then in reality it's actually really difficult. But, um, a, do it on a collaboration bin and we can blame them. yeah. So the other very desperately wanted to do it. Can't really think, other than blockages, if you're not harvesting the yeast, I don't know. I think it'd work. Yeah. I look forward to maybe seeing that one day, thinking that it's going to be a thing. Well, I was in bags, so it's not blockages. Just fill up a load of hot bags with them. Dump them in the top trough, overfill it. So there's, cause generally in the top trough and the feeder trough, there's not a great deal of, wort. It's not like, you know, when you start your bath at home and it's completely full, it's, it's more of a way for yeast to stay. And then wort travels through it and out back into the barrel. So we overfilled it, you know, five hectolitres or something and gave a good depth of wort in there. Then we could get some hot bags in there. You still have high yeast count, I guess. Yeah, if you're not separating it in full, back it in rather than, but you know, once you've transferred it into cylindriconical, you chill it and drop the yeast, but then again, it's not, yeah, it's an option, yeah. It'll be fun, be, it'll be a fun challenge, but maybe one when you're, less than, you know, a few a month or whatever. So since getting Yeah. alright, well let's talk flavor. I mean, Marston's pedigree is an intensely flavored beer. how did you find the Burton Union system influenced the flavor profile? especially of Jaipo beer that, I know really well, and you guys know, obviously back of your hand. So how did the union system really impact the flavor of that beer? I'd say it's, a few people, well, lots of people have asked me, but it's the same but different really, I think, than JIPOR. It was softer in a lot of ways. The bitterness is not as harsh, more yeast driven almost with the, with the yeast strain that we used. So, so it certainly had its, a unique flavor, but it wasn't, you know, massively different. I mean, you wouldn't expect it to be massively different, you know, it's, it's every change that you make in any part of the brewing process will impact the final beer. And I guess, you know, even with a fermenter, if you. Different geometry of a fermenter, Hmm. temperatures. You know, and in this you've got a completely different geometry. You, I suppose there's quite a bit of micro oxidation going on throughout the entire fermentation. So the yeast is going to behave differently. so yeah, I think there's, yeah, you're going to get, it's going to be, it's bound to be different. It's impossible for it not to be. Mm. Yeah. You don't, you don't get any of the, So obviously, generally when we use barrels in brewing, we're using like fresh barrels and we want to get flavour from them. and we're expecting, you know, like vanilla and all these different barrel flavours. But, you know, these barrels are 35 years old. They've been chosen for their neutral flavour profile. So it was a bit Yeah, you're not going to get any wood. It was strange to not get wood because all the previous times we put beer in wood, it's such a, a obvious standout flavour, that wood flavour in barrel aged beers. Because, yeah, it depended on the barrel age. Or, or spirit. Yeah, or the spirit that's been in the wood. So to have like, none of that was quite interesting. But Jaipur, like people, people like being smacked in the face by Jaipur. Like that's one of the draws Mm hmm. some people. And the Union Jaipur, like, I preferred it. It was, Rob says, it was softer, rounder, more, more, yeasty, a bit more estuary, maybe. Yeah. like, I preferred it, but I don't know whether, like, die hard fans of Jaipur weren't, like, weren't getting the smack in the mouth they were hoping for. so it was a different beer, but it was, yeah, lovely. Did you, do any of them go into a can or, or bottle or keg or is it exclusively in cask at the Casca at the moment, but there's plans for Bottle for sure, yeah. Hmm be interesting to see how that Develops over time because you know esters generally oxidize Well way less than hops, right? So over the course of like a 12 month shelf life be interesting to see how it stands up or you know Six months shelf life how long it stands up against like a a more dry hopped version I would guess Yeah. I don't know if we're going to put Jaipur in it, but we're certainly going to put the Bespoke Union beer in it, for sure. Cause we brewed that with the intention of being bottle and cask with different ABVs as well. Ah, yeah, I remember you saying yeah, was that why is the difference between in abv between cask and and bottle cause I just think 7 percent cask, it's got limited sort of people that want to drink it unless they want just half a pint. You know, it's cask beer, but people want a multiple I think. And I mean, what's the giant, what's the union in cask, 6%? Yeah, it's about, and that's your limit really isn't it? 6 percent in cask, 7 percent in bottle for the union. Yeah. I think it's, yeah, exactly as you say, the approachability to cast goes out a little bit at 7%. You know, we get away with 6 with the union. Yeah. 7 might be pushing it. Yeah. And I think 7, you know, a more, a warmer temperature and less carbonated is not as nice as 7 in a bottle that's carbonated and cold out of your fridge. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, Rob, I know, as I said earlier, you're an excellent microbiologist. How did you, how did this like wooden system, how did you feel about it coming in? You said you were a bit like stressed about it. And did you notice anything on the plates? Did you do any extra additional plating or anything or how did you sort of approach it? I thought they might have counted. It's been nice since they made it work, but then they probably pasteurized their bottle version. Yeah. but we've just been in touch with what it's been fine. Didn't notice really anything out of the ordinary on the plates. Yeah, it's really good to hear actually. I was, I was thinking about that. I was wondering if they maybe, because a lot of it ends up in cask, as you said, or into bottle, exactly. So it's pasteurized. So I was always thinking maybe, you know, Caspian has got a, it's just a lot more flexible as a, as a packaging option compared to like bottles and cans. And I was just wondering if there was just that pasteurizing was almost necessary for that system. Yeah, I mean, I, when we've, when our contract package in previous life, we've had beer come in from regionals. It was just swimming in bacteria, knowing that it was either going to be sterile filtered or pasteurized. And, you know, you didn't even have to propagate it up and that'd be my, that was a worry that maybe it did just, there was bacteria everywhere. I don't know if you can, I suppose you can flash pasteurize before you put it to cast, but I don't know what Marston's do, but it's been clean. That's great. I mean, especially, it's funny, isn't it? You know, you spend so much of your brewing career, cleaning and being so intense with chemicals And then your system like this comes along, you know, not far off open top and, you know, recirculating through wood and everything's okay. Really makes you like sit back sometimes and think like, yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot of protection you get from yeast, isn't there, a lot more than you think, I Yeah. And ABV. So, as you said, you guys that's probably why we're more, most concerned about that ball version, our cast nine weeks. Yeah. Hang on in nine weeks, no problem. If we're going to do, you know, 50, 60, 000 bottles with a 12 month date on or something, that's when, that's when you don't sleep, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It I don't know why I'd say that. Are we? I don't know. I don't know. Pasteurization's not always bad, but. depends on the beer style, doesn't it? But yeah, I think. five PUs any day. Just a little tickle. Yeah. I think there's no arguing that pasteurizing beer fixes oxidation in, because if you've got oxygen there anyway, and it's going to react. You know, sometimes you're better off just getting rid of that right from day one, rather than leaving it to go through to, you know, to, to, to oxidize over time. it might not be as, might not be as good to start with, but there won't be a noticeable drop off, I suppose. Yeah, consistency, pick that peak. Yeah. You got a peak and a trough, you just flatten it out, that line's probably going to be lower than Yeah, really interesting. So, What sort of new beer style or what beers are you gonna start to brew this in the future? Do you think, now you've got a bit of experience with it, you kind of seeing how it affects, you know, Japa. So, yeah. What sort of beer styles do you think you have in the idea, in the pipeline coming Well, the union one is just, you know, when we thought about with first beer, we wanted to brew on there that was just a brand new beer. We wanted to, an IPA, an English IPA came to mind because it's an English system. you know, what, what's an English IPA? I mean, you know, we look back at beers, you know, the records of the beers that were around and, you know, the turn of the early 1900s. They were, they ranged in start in, in ABVs, you know, from five to mid seven. So, and we didn't want to do what the Americans have done with the IPA, which is sort of reverse engineer an English IPA. Cause I mean, we have, no one can taste beers, what they tasted like back then, but you can kind of make a stab at it, I guess. We, Hmm, we, we, we thought there'd be, you know, like bags of English hops in there. There's going to be some crystal malts, and then invert sugars, invert number two. We're a big fan of here. So we used, I think 50 hectolitres, there's 200 kilos of it. certainly an assertive bitterness. So it's about, how many EBU, is it 60, is it? Yeah. Well, yeah, target was 60, but it keeps coming out low. Yeah, it keeps coming out low ish. Let's have an extra test. But, you know, it's the first few brews, but Yeah, I think more malt driven beers are probably what suits the system. and then we'll do, we're planning on doing quite a few collaborations with people. We've got, can't really reveal all the people that we've got lined up just yet, but There'll certainly be some exciting ones, yeah. Yeah, some American breweries, UK breweries, people like that. It's definitely a traditional piece of equipment that makes really good traditional beer, which is lucky because that's kind of having a bit of a resurgence at the minute. Mm-Hmm. but, yeah, who knows? I'm sure some one of the collaborations can be like, Oh, let's make a, I don't even want to say it, like a hazy IPA. Yeah, get loads of biotransformation from the union. You the time they'll mingle. Mm, gotta be careful, I want Rob to walk out of this, so. yes. Yeah, no, I've got enough to keep me happy these days with brewing so that way. We're not brewing lager on it, so. No, we're not brewing lager on it, and we've, you know, plenty of nice traditional styles that we're brewing. And an English IPA is certainly music to my ears with English harps, yeah. yeah, that'd be awesome. I mean, you must have an absolute queue of people wanting to work with you on this system. it's because it's probably the only operational one that craft brewers have a opportunity to work with and that that like having To get to like build up those old styles like you said Rob because like I'd say a lot of the A lot of the modern equipment that craft brewers are using don't really lend themselves to making great flavored old style beers and this this definitely does do that which is like, you know, it must be absolutely So exciting for people who own brewers thinking like this. I can have an opportunity to make like an a really good historic yeah. beer must be really cool Yeah. Yeah. Classic styles. And they've got, if they, if they might've struggled to shift them in the past, you know, you can put the union tag on it and you're immediately going to get more interest from. from pubs and places for a traditional style brewed on, you know, a Burton Union. Yeah, I mean, a good question to you both. I mean, how, you know, the craft brewing or the brewing industry has seen quite a lot of rapid change, I guess, over the last sort of 20 30 years compared to the previous probably 100. How important to you is it that we maintain our traditions and try to, you know, not let go of traditional styles? yeah, I think it's hugely important. I think, you know, trend has been disappointingly for a lot of British brewers. You know, the new guys is just chasing what America does, but why not talk about what our styles and what we do well and the fact that we've got the best malts in the world, you know, Marisota and this sort of maritime climate lends to that. That is why that malt so good and our hops, they might not be. You know, dank and juicy bangers, but it's subtle and not, not subtle. It's got, they've got, these hops were bred for a reason and they were bred because they had superior flavor and they, and finesse and people don't always want that anymore from particularly that, you know, the new guys, the trendy guys as well. I think there's so much to be said for British ingredients and British brewing practices. Mm. Yeah, I think, in terms of tradition, obviously the Burton Union is a historic, traditional brewing method. But I think, I think Marston's essentially kept that going for as long as they could, you know, I think Bass shut theirs in what, 1990? Everyone else had got rid of theirs by then and in 1990 Marston's actually invested and put a whole new room in when everyone else was shutting them down. Of the unions now, it's probably better than it would have been if they'd have shut it down in 1990, where everyone else, But that, that kind of tradition, I think it's going to go away. I think people should probably focus more on the tradition of cask beer as a whole. Yeah, cask beer is another, I think, yeah. That's, that's the tradition I think everyone should focus on. you know, cake beer is great and all that, but cask beer is, is Britain's national drink, you know. It's more important than tea and coffee. you've got, you know, things like this fresh ale stuff, which is complete garbage and what seems to be an attempt to kill off cask beer in a way. but that's what everyone should be focusing on. Cask beer, British ingredients, know, other ingredients are great as well. As long as it's from a cask and a hand pull, you know, in a pub, that's what we're good at. And I think it should be people, something people from around the world come to the UK to visit our pubs, drink cask beer. Yeah, I mean I agree a hundred and ten percent that is the ultimate tradition it's a shame that We kind of lost our way with it I think both on the seller side in the in the pubs as well and also brewing side as well It's got you know, how hyper competitive that market market could be Got and people just drop in. Yeah, it's a shame and I I've heard on the grapevine, you know, i'm not really Too into into it that much but I mean there is the talk is that casper is coming back in the uk a bit the market's definitely I mean for you guys you you've always been hallmark, casper brewers, but I think i'm talking about more on the On sort of smaller scale that there's a bit that the market is becoming back open to it again And there's plenty of pubs that you know, I feel like people are now You All pubs kind of came very similar selling very similar things and now that actually cask beer is the biggest differentiation you can have as a pub and and Because then people are going to go to you for that beer rather than getting the same beer that they can do every other pub So I I hope that it's coming back. I agree a lot. That that that's that would be it's a big future for us as craft beer drinkers, Do you guys do you have anything else you'd like to add to the podcast? yeah, I think it's worth, you know, thanking the team at Marston's that have helped us out. the Cooper, the engineers, I've been there like two or three times. Rob's been down to see them. They've come up to see us. they've been, you know, completely open with everything they do. And you can see when I've been there, that there's like, you know, a lot of old boys there that have been there 20, 30 years that are coming up to retirement. And you can see how sad they are when you go in and the unions are getting destroyed, you know, there's skips outside full of bits and you can see there's a bit of heartbreak on the faces, but they've looked after this stuff for so long and then, you know, credit to Carlsberg Marstons to You know, to give it to us to carry on. They're, you know, from what we've seen over the moon and I hope they come down here and try it and help us with it. But yeah, thanks to those guys. Yeah, Yeah, it's a big one. it's, it must have been, it's good that, you know, Garrett was, could help out as well, and I feel like, yeah, you forget sometimes how People's lives have gone into this. You know, she said that cooper's been working there 30 years building these things. So It's really nice that you guys could be a part of saving that and and yeah great to everyone involved for keeping that going I feel I mean, maybe one last thing for me. I just like take this, opportunity a of course Thank you both for taking your time out of your busy schedules That probably only got intensely busier when you bought in the union system And now you spend a lot of your time Your time talking about it as well. So, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to no problem. means a lot to me. So, and, and also publicly, I get to say like a big thank you to you, Rob, for giving the opportunity to work at Thornbridge all of those years ago. yeah, no, it's great. I know you took a bit of a gamble on me, so yeah, absolutely meant the world to me. no. Not at all. Yeah. And, thank you to Dom, to Ben and of course you Rob for teaching me everything about the quality of beer. So, you know, yeah, teaching me everything I kind of know about the quality aspects of beer. So I appreciate you guys so much. and yeah, really glad I actually got to do a podcast with you. It means a lot to me personally. So, No, that's great. to you all. Yeah. Thanks for being part of the Thornbridge team. Yeah, it was, great times, man. Heh heh, that's Serpent, Um, that was a Garrett Oliver one That was, uh, that was Serpent, yeah, that was the, I was there for the bottling of that as well. Hundred and, 180 bourbon barrels. When I think in the past we'd done maybe what, we had six barrels up the hall, didn't we? That little shed. yeah. And then Garrett was like, yeah, we're going to send you 180 bourbon barrels. Is that, is that okay? sure. heh. Yeah, that was good fun. All right guys, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. and I'll definitely catch you, hopefully I get, well I'm definitely going to go up to Sheffield in the next few weeks. So I'm really going to try and get some of these beers, when I'm there. I'm sure they're out in, in the Thornbridge Yeah, drop by. then. So, um, yeah, and I'm going to come up and I'm, my, my goal is to see them in action, by the end of the year. So that'd be awesome. Sweet. All right. Thank you so much guys. Take care. Thanks, Chris. Bye, Bonnie. So thank you for listening to that episode. I absolutely love that. Rob and Ben are amazing brewers. really great to get their insight. if you enjoyed the episode as well, please do hit the five stars on Spotify or write me a nice review on, on Apple Music. It really does mean a lot. It really helps me grow the show. And of course, If you think anyone will enjoy the episode, please share it amongst your brewing community, your pals, your friends at work, anyone to help me get the reach of the podcast out. Thank you so much for listening and I will catch you on the next episode of the Modern Brewer Podcast.