Friday 18 March 2011

Brewing it for tha toon! My first week at Mordue Brewery.

Mr Millichamp, meet your new kit...



And look, a posh little shop at the entrance.




So all said and done I arrived at Mordue Brewery at the rather relaxed time of 8:55AM Monday morning. No more forcing oneself out of bed at 4 or 5am for me. Inside things become more clear. The atmosphere is youthful and laid back. The floors are super smooth and easy to clean below a nice tightly packed set of square fermenters. I meet Matt and Gary Fawson, am welcomed in to the company, and then it's time to get down to some work.

I find it interesting how different and yet somewhat similar things are here compared to my old workplace at Daleside Brewery. Things seem a bit more relaxed with less emphasis on spreadsheets, timings and various other calculations. Somethings are easier to do, other things are harder. Lunch is when ever you want till whenever you want, whereas at Daleside it was from 12 till whenever Craig and Col finished the crossword in the Daily Star (so anything between 15 and 45 minutes),

But don't get me wrong, there's plenty to do here, it's no easy ride. Matt could have well have given me that famous line from the from the film Scum; "Theres no dolly mixtures in here, poofter, I'm the Daddy and don't you ever forget it!"...

But he was a nice enough bloke not to.
  

Up to now I have a decent understanding of the brewing system, but have yet to independently brew my first brew. I'm very excited to find out what it will be. The kit's a bit different to what I'm used to, but like they say all breweries are individual. Some like to say one's brewery is as individual as one's woman. Treat it the right way, and it treats your beer well. Others compare them to cars, they all do the same thing but work slightly differently.


I remember my first car. An old Peugeot 106 I used to call Star Bug (after the space craft in the series Red Dwarf) with no door handles but flicky up leavers to open the doors and a radio that only worked on about four stations by manual tuning. Now I have a Peugeot 206 with power steering, air con and a digital display thing that tells you the external temperature and how many miles you have left before you need to refuel.

Brewery wise I seem to have gone the opposite direction. But I'm not saying that's a bad thing. The more simple something is the less that can go wrong. I used to love that old Peugeot, the way it throttled when you had to get it past 60mph, the way you had to force the steering wheel round on those corners. The way you could almost imagine being in a 1940s armoured fighting vehicle driving it. It never broke down and always got me from A to B. It's a bit of an exaggerated comparison on how things are between the Daleside and Mordue brew kits, but its no disappointment. After all this is the kit that's putting out those iconic North East beers and its my honour to master it.

5 comments:

Mark N said...

Great post. Sounds like you're going to enyoy yourself.

Ed said...

Haway the lads!

Rob said...

Yes indeed. It sure is a splendid place.

BeerReviewsAndy said...

Enjoy mate!!!

big fan of the mordue stuff! need to see more of it down here!!

pdtnc said...

Hope we get to read about that first brew :)