Youngs Wandsworth. Brewing School visits 1968 to 1969
Visit by Brewing School students in January 1969
A well-established small brewery in South West London. Just over 100 public houses, they produce beer with a distinctive flavour and of high quality. The staff appear to revel in the antiquity of the building and plant. They are in communication with one another by two-way short-wave radio with a three mile radius! The head brewer however turns his batteries around!
Two beam engines of 1835 and 1867 vintage are preserved in working order, gearing is via hornbeam teeth which are easily replaced by the carpenter. They serve four pumps and power for milling and mashing via a vertical shaft. Each engine does a 12-hour shift despite their age they run as smoothly as if new. They get many visitors via the Science Museum.
Towns water is used for brewing. Malt in sack is screened to remove foreign bodies and separate the corns into large and small fractions. Each fraction then passes through a separate mill. The separation of corns means that each mill needs only one set of rollers. Mill settings may be slightly incorrect since the grist was amongst this coarsest we had seen. Mills have been beautifully maintained.
There are two mash tuns. On the day of our visit, a Friday is cleaning up day so we did not see any brewing. There are two 200 barrel coppers now fitted with steam coils. Volatile hop oils are imparted to the wort by adding a layer of new hops in the hop back. There is no dry hopping. Wort is transferred to an open cooler in the roof and they have to use more hops in summer to counter the risk of infection in this shallow vessel.
The word is called to 60°F, a hop seed strainer is used and when a bed builds up as indicated by a pressure change a knife is rotated manually to clear the mesh for filtration to continue. From collection vessel, fermenting wort is dropped to skimming squares where a man with a paddle skims surface yeast down a chute where it is processed in a conventional Scott yeast system.
Racking balance tank, typical manual racking line two tubes, delivery and fob removal. Beer is fined in cask. There is a Goliath cask washer and a gas flame to inspect the inside. Young's make all their own casks.
High speed bottling lines have been introduced. Foster Probyn is part of the Young's organisation (see Foster & Sons. Consultants were brought in to study transport and crate handling procedures; their suggestions for handling were dismissed and the company introduced its own highly workable and cheap system. The transport ideas have however worked well.
Horses are still used in a three mile radius from the brewery. Each does three journeys per day and there are 22 working geldings all Shire horses. A team of eight show horses, black with white socks and 18 hands high have won many trophies which can be seen in the stable reception room. The farrier makes shoes from iron ingots according to requirements of a particular hoof. Some horses need reshoeing after only 10 days on the road. The company is expanding in the continental market by agreement with a Belgian brewery.