Members of Cornwall CAMRA visited Sharp’s Brewery to help celebrate its 20th anniversary and were hosted by former Sharp’s head brewer, no head of craft brewing and innovation at parent Molson Coors, Stuart Howe, and operation brewer Hayley Barton, formerly head brewer at Cumbrian Legendary Ales, writes Steve Barber, of Cornwall CAMRA.
Stuart gave the visitors a tour of the compact modern brewhouse, passing ranks of stainless steel fermenting vessels in the yard. Sharp’s continues to expand, both in land area to the site across the road, and in brewing capacity towards 300,000 barrels per year. The brewhouse is run intensively with up to eight brews per day, seven days per week. The packaging plant runs six days per week for 18 hours per day.
Stuart (pictured right) said that Sharp’s is the second largest user of whole-leaf hops in the world (after an American brewery). One advantage of whole-leaf hops is that after the copper boil, the hops form a natural filter bed to remove trub (coagulated protein) from the wort.
Water is converted to brewer’s liquor by a series of purification stages, including bag-filtration, activated carbon adsorption and reverse osmosis. Salts are added to provide the most suitable liquor for different beer styles, eg magnesium, chloride or sulphate (Burtonisation). Sharp’s has a state-of-the-art yeast plant and sells tonnage quantities of spent yeast to a pig farm.
Quality control is paramount, and Stuart said that the first and last casks of each gyle are checked for clarity and other parameters before beer is dispatched into trade.
The CAMRA members were given tastings of Doom Bar (4.0% ABV bitter), Atlantic (4.2% golden ale), Dark Skies (a new 4.2% dry hopped stout) and 20 Year Reserve (a rich 6% dry hopped strong ale).
In addition to the cask beers, members sampled some bottle-conditioned beers: Single Brew Reserve 2014 (4.5% dry hopped pale ale), Honey Spice IPA (6.5% spiced IPA), Vintage Blend (7.2% strong ale from six beers brewed 2008 to 2013) and Cornish Pilsner (5.2% dry hopped lager). Filtered bottled beer Wolf Rock Red IPA from Sharp’s was also on the table.
There was also a chance to try filtered, bottled, Franciscan Well Rebel Red Irish Red Ale and keg Franciscan Well Chieftain IPA (5.5). Francisan Well, in Ireland, is also owned by Molson Coors.
