Burton Bridge Story

The Burton Bridge Brewery Story By Bruce Wilkinson and Roger Putman

The Burton Bridge Brewery was taken over by Planning Solutions’ Heritage Brewery earlier this year allowing Bruce Wilkinson the surviving founder to retire at last. Bruce wrote an early history in 2008 which we have brought up to date and take a look at Planning Solution’s brewing operations which can trace its origins back to the old Bass Museum.

Back in 1979 whilst separating the ale and lager liquor streams at Ind Coope Ltd’s Romford brewery, Engineering Manager Geoff Mumford and Technical Manager Bruce Wilkinson discovered a mutual interest in starting their own brewery. After many visits to smaller plants it soon became apparent that it would be better to have a small brewery joined on to a pub and own the freehold rather than rent an industrial site.

The Fox and Goose at the town end of Burton Bridge had been closed for some two years and was in a poor state; it had been de-licensed and sold to a solicitor. In those days licensed properties had a 25% price premium. Luckily the solicitor managed to get the licence back. Geoff and Bruce made an offer subject to the planning permission to brew being granted.

Funds were also required and they were given good advice from their accountant to form a partnership rather than a limited company as this would have considerable tax advantages. The banks’ responses were not straight forward but eventually a deal was struck. Some years ago the pair stopped calling themselves ‘partners’ to avoid strange looks!

In October 1981 notice was given to leave Ind Coope Ltd at Romford and items of equipment were procured from a variety of sources. With the help of two Youth Opportunity lads and six months hard work, brewing started on 25th May 1982.

The first brew was Bridge Bitter with an OG of 1042o(4.2% ABV) the strength determined by the fact that all the other Burton brewers’ main bitters were around that strength but none had a OG of 1042. They wanted an all malt brew and Maris Otter was selected, as that was the malt being used by the brewers producing beers with a good reputation. Target and Challenger whole hops were chosen as they produced a good balance with Styrian late hopping. Having worked in larger breweries with multiple yeast cultures it was decided that it was very important to have an independent yeast supply. The yeast was selected from the National yeast collection catalogue. Five strains were selected for being….

• Top cropping, for ease of skimming

• Comparatively slow fermentation for better fermentation control and being able to stop the fermentation in time so that priming sugars would not be required

• Quick fining for commercial advantages in the free trade- A chain former for ease of identity under the microscope. These five yeasts were propagated and then brewed in five gallon buckets to evaluate flavour.

New cultures were originally propagated every month but that was abandoned early on and was carried out when considered necessary. Malt extract was used and the propagation is started from a stored slope into two 25 mL bottles from there into litre flasks, then into a 5 gallon home brew fermenter before being pitched into the brewery fermenting vessel.

The brew length of 15 barrels is still the same as it was in 1982 but the number of different brews required for the present market is much larger. Maris Otter malt is crushed on a two-roller Bentall mill and augured into the grist case. Liquor from the town supply is treated to produce analytically similar liquor to that used to produce classic Burton ales. The brewing liquor is heated overnight in the copper to 77oC by a gas fired tubular burner. Burton Bridge brewery was the first brewery to use this Lanemark system. By the time the liquor has preheated the plant, the temperature has dropped to the strike heat of 71oC. Mashing in 400 kg of malt then takes place into the mash tun which has a false bottom made from a stainless steeltop from one of the fermenting vessels with its edge ground down to fit the mash vessel exactly. Try drilling 9000 3/16 inch holes with a Black and Decker drill - a boring job! The sparge arm was converted from an Ansells Brewery Ltd horizontal tank CIP unit.

After mashing in the remaining liquor in the copper is boiled and then dropped into the hot liquor tank for use in sparging. A 90 minute conversion time is allowed, followed by recirulation until the worts are bright before being transferred to copper. A 90 minute boil ensues with whole cone hops while the spent grains are dug out into a one tonne builder’s bag supported by the fork truck. The mash tun now becomes the hop filter and the wort is recirculated through the paraflow until the outlet temperature is 90oC, with any late hop additions, yeast nutrient and copper finings being added at the start of recirculation. The yeast is removed from the most active fermenter and acid washed. Fermentation takes four days with a maximum temperature of 23oC, this is followed by a 24 hour diacetyl stand at 18oC prior to skimming and cooling to 10oC. On transfer to the racking tank, auxiliary finings are added and beer is racked into steamed casks before any settling can take place. Beer is stored for a week prior to fining and delivery.

Deliveries are made to within 35 miles of Burton each week (Nottingham, Birmingham, Stoke and Leicester). Each week a two day trip is made to a different part of the country on an eight week cycle. Beer swaps are made with other brewers and deliveries are made to free houses. Gaining awards from CAMRA and SIBA beer competitions certainly helped to spread the word about Burton Bridge products.

Bottling is done at the brewery by hand. The beer from the racking tank settled in cask for 48 hours without finings and then CO2 pressurised into a syphon filler (3 or 18 head) and crown corked. It is then stored at 20oC for at least three weeks before hand labelling. One man has hand bottled six barrels in a day, with labelling taking a similar time. Some bottles are exported to USA and Canada.

The amount of work required to make a success of a business is not widely understood. For the first seven years the founders started at 7.30 am either brewing or delivering. One would go home at 5pm to return at 8 to run the pub until the accounts were finished and the pub was clean ready for a bar maid to open the following lunch time. The other would go home at 8pm. The partners worked alternative nights seven days a week. This was at a time they both had young families!

Burton Bridge Brewery would most likely not have survived without its own outlet in The Bridge Inn and subsequently they added a little estate of freehold pubs in the Burton area which were run by tenants; the Plough, Prince Alfred, Great Northern, Devonshire and Brickmakers Arms in the neighbouring village of Newton Solney. Another 16 years passed and only once did the pair go over the 5000hL minimum duty band, the plant was updated with a new cask washer from AB UK, more 15brl fermenters and a new copper to allow a turn down to 10brl for smaller batches. Only once did bottling move from a hand operation to a contractor, that was for Tesco but driving beer all over the country to return to the local store at a lower margin was not cost effective. The pair continued to win prizes for their beers and the trading footprint remained much the same although Wetherspoons was a good customer via E cask.

With none of their children wanting to carry on in the family business, the pair looked to selling the concern and a well deserved retirement. The business seemed to be the wrong size (with a brewery and six pubs) to sell as an entire unit. Some buyers did not want one or two of the pubs and most did not want a brewery either so the pubs were gradually sold off one by one. Then decisions in Denver Colorado and the Burton Town Hall changed the course of events. Molson Coors agreed to sell its Burton office block to the local authority and move its UK HQ to the old Bass Museum site. This meant the Museum now called the National Brewery Centre had to move out and this story has been well covered elsewhere.

Burton Bridge hot liquor storage tank with the paraflow in the foreground; the trusty Bentall two roller mill; the mash tun with its 9000 hole false bottom; some of the fermenters and Bruce weighing out the yeast. All photos from 2008.The 175kg mash tun at the old Bass Museum brewery in 2000.

Wind back to 1977 when Bass celebrated its bicentenary by opening the Museum. It relocated the 1920 pilot brewery from Cape Hill to Burton. This was open to visitors and used for occasional brews and departmental team building exercises. Brewing was boosted by the arrival of Steve Wellington in 1994 who started brewing old Bass brands like P2 Stout and No1 Barleywine as well as resurrections of Massey's Burnley Brewery Ltd, Offiler's Brewery Ltd, Hewitt Brothers Ltd, Wenlock Brewery Co. Ltd, Charrington & Co. Ltd and Joule & Sons Ltd bitters. Worthington E in cask was sold only in Burton where they knew it was a beer and not something laced with Ecstasy!

Output got a fillip in 2000 when King & Barnes Ltd were taken over by Hall & Woodhouse Ltd so the brewing and bottling of Worthington White Shield had to find a new home. A £100,000 investment in a 800bph bottling line and more fermenters would see White Shield being brewed in the Museum. The brewery had a number of private pub customers and supplied specially labelled celebration packs of 500mL bottles. In 2010 Wellington managed to get Coors to invest £1,000,000 in a new 22.5hL brewhouse from Grange Engineering since the hundred year old largely copper brewery was showing its age. White Shield moved to the main brewery and was bottled by Fuller, Smith & Turner Ltd but there were plans to introduce a range of ‘Shield’ beers named after colours and seasons.

That same year, Coors transferred administration of the Brewery Centre to Planning Solutions, the rump of Rank Holidays and Hotels and a local company which ran a visitor attraction nearby called Conkers. Brewing was managed by Planning Solutions and the beer was sold under the Heritage Brewery banner. The closure of the NBC in autumn 2022 meant that Heritage had to find a new home and contract brewing started at Burton Bridge. This arrangement was cemented when Planning took over in April 2024.

The brewery is being extended to the rear of the pub to accommodate new equipment, a beer garden, a lab is planned, Draught Burton Ale and Empire Pale, which was runner up CAMRA bottled beer in 1998 (both Covid victims) will be reintroduced as well as a shop selling home brew kit and Heritage beers.

Sadly Geoff Mumford died only a month after the Planning takeover but every Friday lunchtime, Bruce Wilkinson takes a walk across the fields to inspect operations at the Brickmakers Arms in Newton Solney which he has retained.