Talk of breweries and the drowning in the vat at Gales reminded me of some other brewery visits I've made but the best one was to the "proper" Brakspears' brewery in Henley on Thames. We started in the pub sign workshop with the artist who painted the signs and the carpenters who made them. Then over the road to the main brewery and up to the top of building as on these things it's traditional to follow the brewing process from crushing the malt to actually drinking the nectar. So lots of walking down stairs being shown lots of big vats, told their history and learning the brewing process as you go. Eventually we ended up at the bottom with racking the beer into casks and seeing an amazing victorian machine for filling soda syphons. At last we reached the sampling room, I say room but at Henley it was about 5 feet wide and 15 feet long with a stillage for pins (5 galls) and the walls were covered with stuffed fish in cases. A former head brewer was a keen fisherman but he didn't catch the fish, they got caught in a filter system where cooling water was taken from the Thames. Then after a few halves there it was time for a free slap up lunch in Brakspeares' finest pub in Henley. On the way back we made a small detour and had a mini crawl of Goring and Streatley.
Anyone else got any stories, good or bad, about brewery trips, or meet the brewer evenings, charabanc trips to beer festivals etc?
