Penguin Ale Remembered

Penguin Ale Remembered

Report by Tim O'Rourke

Falkland Islands (Everards) Brewery

The Falkland Islands is a British Overseas Territory lying 350 miles off the east coast of Argentina in the middle of the South Atlantic. It consists of two islands which had a population of 2,000 when I visited it in 1982; half live in the capital, Port Stanley with its natural deep harbour, and the rest are scattered around on small sheep farms. It is a bleak and boggy place, with four sheep to every person and its principal produce was wool sent to the UK for spinning and garment manufacture.

The Islands lie 1,000 miles north of the South Pole with nothing in between and although there is little snow, the winter temperatures only fall to around -5 degrees C. but the Antarctic winds can make it feel more like -20 degrees C. It can be very cold and windy even in summer.

Other than sheep (eaten as mutton), the Falkland Islands are dependent on imports with most things arriving by ship from the UK, a journey of 6,000 miles. Only three brands of beer were available on the Island, all in can, and identified by can colour - White (Carling Black Label), Red (McEwan's Export) and Green (Whitbread's Best Bitter).

In 1982, the islands were liberated by the British army after being invaded by Argentina and over 3,000 troops were stationed on the island mostly on modified ferries with very basic facilities as barracks were not available.

Everard's Brewery saw an opportunity to provide the garrison with cask beer and looked for a stand-alone brewery to meet its requirements. This came as the new wave of craft breweries was setting up, and Roy Wilkinson and I, working at Robert Mortons DG (RMDG) (now part of Briggs) had developed a stand-alone ten barrel (16hL) unit which precisely met the bill.

The brewery contained many innovative features, with a triangular mash tun surrounded by the hot liquor tank, sitting on top of a combined kettle/whirlpool heated using a unique direct gas fired external wort boiler. It was all designed to fit into a 20-foot container for shipping.

Mashing in was achieved by adding pre-ground malt to a grist hopper which fed a vortex box combining the grist and liquor which was then pumped to the mash tun through a mono-pump to maximise hydration. While much of this technology is commonplace today, this was, as far as I know, the first use of these systems in brewing and a giant leap forward in craft brewery design.

The contract to supply, install and commission the brewery, as well as train a local resident to brew, was awarded to RMDG. It was a daunting task because we had to take everything with us as there was a six-week lead time for replacements and supplies to arrive from the UK by ship. Everything was ordered new, but fortunately we had a working pilot plant in the factory. I drew a chalk line around it, (like HMRC traditionally used when shutting down a brewery for non-payment of excise) and asked the packing company to include all the loose fixtures and fittings to make sure we had spares and that nothing was left behind.

We worked with the material suppliers to make sure they were suitable for the voyage and storage, for example the pre-ground malt was double-bagged to prevent it from becoming slack and we were one of the first people to use the newly developed Vickers cryo-dried finings.

All the equipment and materials were packed into containers ready for shipping to the Falkland Islands; a four-week journey. Followed six weeks later by our party which consisted of myself as Commissioning Engineer and Brewer, Ron Barclay, Production Manager for Everards whose job was to arrange distribution and sales of the beer and Phil Middleton, who lived on the island and had been given some training at Everards brewery before taking over as the brewer.

The only way to get there was courtesy of the RAF with a flight from Brize Norton to Ascension Island on a VC10, where we spent the night before boarding a Hercules transporter for the flight to the Falklands. The Hercules was equipped as a cargo plane and had canvas seats arranged along the sides of the plane for passengers. There was no heating, so we had to wear all our outside clothes throughout the eight-hour flight. In-flight services comprised a tuck box handed to us at the start of the flight containing sandwiches and bottles of water. I cannot remember whether there were any seat belts. The soldiers on board quickly settled down and slept throughout the flight and were fresh and ready for action as soon as we landed. My flight home was much more relaxed, as I had become a minor celebrity and spent most of my time in a spare seat in cockpit with coffee and teas provided.

The Hercules could not carry enough fuel to complete the round trip and there was limited aircraft fuel on the Islands so re-fuelling was via a Victor 2 tanker. This was another adventure, in so much as the stalling speed of the tanker was greater than the highest speed of the Hercules, which had to waddle up to its maximum height and fuelling occurred in a gentle dive. The runway in Stanley at the time was made of chain mail and the aircraft landed and wobbled to a halt.

Before we left the UK, Everards had presented us with a pack of pressed yeast cake, which was expected to last until we were ready to brew, but by that time it looked rather sad and had a very low viability and some bacterial contamination. I had taken a yeast slope and equipment for propagation and was able to grow up a new pure ale culture in an old sheep hut (not under the most hygienic conditions) ready for pitching the first brew. The new yeast strain was a great success as samples of the Falkland Islands beer returned for tasting at Everards were judged to be the best samples of bitter ever produced!

We stayed at the Upland Goose, affectionately known as the "Mucky Duck" and was at best a two-star pension but was the only 'hotel' on the Island. It also hosted many of the World's Press giving me my "15 minutes of fame" in an interview for the 9 o'clock news on the BBC.

The brewery was to be located on the docks on the site of an old seaweed extraction plant and the container ship was moored in Stanley Sound. What could possibly go wrong? We soon learned that there was no access to the site by land because of overhead cables and our only option was to land it from the sea. This involved taking down the existing building and off-loading the container from a landing craft, then rebuilding the brewery around the containers.

The army was roped in to find the largest crane on the Island and a landing craft to transport the crane and the crates to the brewery site. Locating the crates on the jetty was a delicate manoeuvre as the containers were heavy and at the extreme end of the tipping point for the crane. Local builders were brought in to erect a wooden frame around the crates which was then clad in corrugated iron. Only once the building was complete could we remove the crates as they protected the equipment against the weather, the army were then called in to connect the electrics and we were ready to brew.

Commissioning got under way quickly and we were able to complete two brews within the first week and they were packaged the following week. This gave enough time for Phil to learn to brew with the support of the brewing manual I had written. The beer was packed into casks to supply the three Island pubs with the rest packaged as beer in box to meet the needs of the remote farming settlements and the army billets.

RMDG responsibility was to supply the brewing equipment, while Everards looked after sales and marketing. One rather serious oversight was to forget to provide glasses to serve the beer, which meant many of the troops were unable to drink the beer in their billets as there were limited glasses and washing up facilities on the garrison ships.

The Island Governor and his wife, Sir Rex and Lady Hunt were very supportive of the project and often popped in to see how it was getting on. After two weeks of brewing, we had the grand opening by Sir Rex and that evening I boarded the Hercules for my flight home. The brewery continued to produce cask beer for three or four years before closing and the brewery equipment was relocated to Uruguay. Problems of consistency and lack of glasses and washing up were cited as the major issues. The troops and population happily returned to drinking white, red and green can beer which avoided all this fuss, also the imported beer was cheaper than that brewed on the Island.

The Falkland Islands are a haven for wildlife with large areas of isolated coast, a popular breeding ground for marine mammals and birds with many different species of penguins including the King penguins which come there to breed. They do not build a nest but incubate the single egg by holding it on top of their feet underneath a flap of skin. They have no land predators but have to run the gauntlet of orca when they go out to sea fishing. The chicks, however, are vulnerable to being eaten by skuas and so breeding penguins keep a wary eye open to the sky. They rest on the shore looking out to sea, and it was reported that the RAF liked to fly their helicopters towards the colonies where the King Penguins kept an eye on its passage without moving their position, with the result that as they flew past many penguins trying to look behind them fell over like bowling pins. An amusing if somewhat cruel pastime, but there was not a lot of entertainment on the Island!

I was fortunate to take a day off from my labours and fly by seaplane to the opposite side of Falkland Sound from Stanley and spend a day with the wildlife. I was over 30 miles from the nearest human, surrounded by penguin colonies and nothing to the South between me and Antarctica. The Jackass penguins bolted for their burrows as I walked along the beach and since they are rather ungainly on land, I had to pause to give them enough time to rush from the sea to their burrows, but the King penguins were unimpressed by a human and completely ignored my presence. It was a huge privilege to absorb the scenery and wildlife in total peace apart from the sound of the wind, the birds and with the nagging doubt that the return plane would fail to turn up!

In 2012, a new brewery opened on the Island called Beerworks aiming at producing ales packaged into kegs and bottles, making it easier to store and sell. Although there are fewer soldiers garrisoned on the Island the population has grown to 3,000 and with a boost from occasional cruise ships, the demand for the beer has grown. Now that oil reserves have been found off the Falkland Islands it is expected that the economy will boom suggesting a bright future for the brewery.

The inspiration for this article came from our Newsletter Editor, who discovered an RMDG brewery in the Isle of Man originally installed at Phoenix in Brighton and although there have been changes over the years such as a new wort boiler, the brew tower and fermenters are original. A good recommendation for RMDG design and craftmanship.

Tim O'Rourke

References

• Tim O'Rourke -How Penguin Ale Came to Port Stanley - Brewers Guardian April 1982.
• Tim O'Rourke & Roy Wilkinson - A Mini-Brewery for the Eighties - The Brewer December 1982.