A Tour at Monteith's Brewery

Greymouth, July 24th 2015

Approaching Monteith's Brewing Company

You can check out their website here.

Hmmm, the introduction already begins outside actually. A life-size mash tun for display outdoor.

The process, it's said. However, if you take the tour, you'll learn more interesting details.

The whole process until fermentation finishes takes 5 weeks. Sorry, I missed the letters on top left. It was "malt". Let's begin.

Samples of malt.

Malt gives a bitter taste. The longer roasted, the darker the beer, the bitter.

The real mash tuns.

What's the purpose of the bottom pointed shape? For filtering purpose.

To be noted, the equipment here are really working. It just happened that on the day I visited, the factory wasn't in full operation due to winter season which not a busy time.

On this deck runs the processes on mash tun, lautering, wort boiling, and whirlpool. The whole process on this deck takes 4.5 hours for one batch. Here I learned a new word: wort. My tour guide said, it's a difficult word to pronounce. :D

Quoting from Wikipedia, wort is:

the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer or whisky. Wort contains the sugars that will be fermented by the brewing yeast to produce alcohol.

And, lautering is:

is a process in brewing beer in which the mash is separated into the clear liquid wort and the residual grain. Lautering usually consists of 3 steps: mashout, recirculation, and sparging.

 How about the whirlpool?

Whirlpooling is a common method used in commercial breweries to separate hop pellets and trub from wort after the wort boil. Essentially the wort is pumped into the whirlpool vessel at rapid velocity, usually about 15 feet per second, to cause the wort to start spinning like a whirlpool. 

The temperature of the wort boiler is 100 Celsius and takes 75 minutes. Heat exchanging process occurs twice. The first, temperature is brought down to 18 Celsius. Then comes the fermentation process. In order to stop the fermentation process, temperature is brought lower to minus 1 Celsius.

My guide pointed out the ice covering the pipes because of the below zero content. Uhm... it's more winter-like here ;)

Final filtering, and then into the kegs.

Before sealing, the kegs are weighted. Those that weigh less than standard requirement will be automatically pushed aside.

"What would make a keg weigh less?" I asked.

"When the rubber ring is torn," my guide answered.

(That black ring.)

Finally, sealing and production coding.

In Greymouth, I was told, 80% of the production is bottled, and only the ones in bottles are exported. Beers in keg are not exported, because excessive movement would cause too much bubble inside the keg.

Bottling equipment.

The equipment was surrounded by glass wall. I bet it's meant to prevent dirt falling into the beer. That dirt might cause second fermentation and produce another variant of beer. Aha. Said me, not the guide.

The bottle caps.

Bottle heating equipment.

In order to help the labels stick properly, the bottles are heated beforehand.

My tour guide demonstrating the 3 steps.

Number one:

Place the glass under the tap in a sliding angle so the beer won't splash.

Number two:

Don't let the tap touch the brim of the glass.

Number three:

Pull the gauge quickly.

My question:

How about if you are too drunk to remember the rule but are craving for yet another glass?

[Of course I didn't ask that.]

Unlike barley malt, wheat malt tastes sweet. Indeed it was. Loved it.

Do you see that cider beer bottle on the right? Cider beer goes directly into the boiler, no malt needed.

More samples of Monteith's beer.

Crushed Apple Cidar Beer

At the cafe:

Included in my tour package were 3 glasses of beer of my choice.

First try, Crushed Apple Cider. Right choice. Sweet but not too sweet, and sweet aroma, too.

Tony's Tinkerings Beer

Second try, Tony's Tinkerings. Wrong choice. Bitter.

Three Omelette

My brunch of the day.