Having formed a partnership with Heineken UK back in November 2017, Brixton Brewery have been working towards the opening of their new Brewery. Last week saw a milestone reached as they started full-scale brewing.
The new site, an industrial unit about 600m from the original railway arch brewery and tap room on Brixton Station Road, will increase production capacity from around 14,000 pints to 30,000 pints with the potential to brew up to 100,000 pints each week. That’s a lot of Brixton beer.
They sent us a bit more detail of the new set up:
“The brewhouse, supplied and installed by UK company Gravity Systems, is a three-vessel, steam-fired kit. It introduces a bit more automatic monitoring over the process but allows us to keep our well-honed manual operations and techniques as well. Nothing is computerised and all valves are manually operated meaning we get to constantly control, refine and monitor quality of the brew at all stages. But new elements like the whirlpool vessel mean we can add pellet hops at a lower temperature so our beers get the maximum hop flavour and aroma. We’ve installed a canning line which does 6000 cans per hour, so our beers will be available in cans for the first time, which is perfect for export.
Senior Brewer Cam Mitchell says “As the new kit is five times bigger, we can’t do as much of it by sight and instinct as we do in the arch. We need a few toys to help us out with accuracy and measurements, like a flow meter to get our mash spot-on and temperature monitoring throughout to make sure we get the most out of our ingredients. But the best bit is obviously the automatic mashtun rake. No more climbing into the hot mashtun to shovel out bags of heavy, wet grain at the end of a brew. It’s the dream!”
The new Brixton Brewery on Dylan Road will open to the public with an Open Day party on 22 September 2018. See www.brixtonbrewery.com for details.
