Black Sheep - Gallery

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  The Black Sheep Brewery logo
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  The brewery was once Lightfoot's maltings in Masham
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  The entrance to the visitors facilities
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  The Black Sheep portfolio on sale
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  The Black Sheep Bistro
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  Black Sheep Bitter pump clip
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  The new cask racking room - on the right is the brewhouse
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  Casks arrive on the 'Sheepy Shifter' from the local depot
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  Off loading empty casks for washing
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  Diesel fork lift clamp truck taking casks to the line
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  View of the line built by Microdat; dirties in on the right, debung, wash, label and rekeystone, fill and seal, palletise and away
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  The truck driver moves the locator board from a layer of empties to a layer of fulls
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  Making sure the keystone is uppermost, the casks pass to the deshive and dekeystoning machine
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  Casks enter the washing machine
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  The rear of the Microdat cask washer
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  The washer has 10 stations
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  View of the discharge end. The cask is upended and an operator places a new keystone into the aperture...
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  ...a machine presses it home and the Logopak machine adds a label
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  The four lane filling machine
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  The filling head has two stations, this one fills the cask...
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  ...then the beer head disengages, the operator places a shive in the aperture and the frame moves back and the shive is pressed home
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  An operator oversees the machinery and places a shive over the bung hole once the filling head disengages
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  The Velderflex pumps for metering in the isinglass finings
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  Four cleaning nozzles for the beer heads
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  The cask is upended and heads towards the camera for palletising
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  A completed three layer pallet is created by the truck operator
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  This fiercesome device will grab a cask inside the chime and lift it on to flat pallets as required by some customers
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  Inside the brewhouse
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  The old mash tun, you can just about see the grist case above and the underback taps below
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  The original mash tun (and copper) came from Hartleys at Ulverston
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  The old copper dates from 1947, Grange Engineering in Burton on Trent fitted a stainless inside
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  The manway is not visible from the visitors walkway
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  The external calandria for the copper
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  Head Brewer Paul Ambler with the new mash tun which was built by Grange Engineering.
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  The spent grain chutes...
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  ...and two positive displacement Seepex pumps
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  In the hop room
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  Hops from Kent...
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  Hops from Sussex...
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  ...and hops from Herefordshire
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  Head Brewer Paul Ambler rubs the hops
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  The new mash tun side commissioned in 2004
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  Grange Engineering's Steels masher and grist case
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  Yorkshire square 'rounds' built new by Shobwood in Burton on Trent
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  The operator is cropping the yeast from the left hand 'square' - note the rousing fantail on the righthand FV
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  Cropping the yeast
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  A venerable slate square rescued from Darleys at Thorne
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  A slate square in action
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  A round square in action
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  The top floor is domed for strength, the starting wort level will touch the underside of the floor at the periphery leaving 100mm freeboard under the hole
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  Operators Dan Scott Paul and Steve Wilson
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  Brewers Astrid Hewitt and Alan Dunn
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  Maturation vessels
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  The beer processing block