Rob Sherwood, of Yeovil Ales, with the bottling plant created on site
As the importance of packaged beer increases, plenty of breweries are installing bottling lines, but Yeovil Ales has gone one better and built its own.
Rob and Dave Sherwood, owners of the family-run Somerset brewery, have used their specialist knowledge and love of ale to produce and bottle on-site ‘fridge-friendly’ unfiltered and unfined bottled beer, with the range including their Summerset blonde ale, Lynx Wildcat, and POSH gourmet India pale ale.
The new bottling line enables the team to have full control over the quality of the bottled beers and maintain the high standards the brewery is known for.
All the beers in the Yeovil Ales range are vegan friendly, and the low sediment content of the bottled varieties means they can be laid down in the fridge.
Rob said: “We’ve created from scratch a four-head counter-pressure bottle filler. It’s all computer controlled using technology known as Raspberry Pi. The whole operation is a real blend of skill sets — I designed all the pneumatics and electrical switches circuits, and Dave wrote all the software.
“I wanted to create a bottling line that allows us to use gravity to clarify the beer, keeping all the flavour in but reducing the variability of yeasty bottle-conditioned beers.”
New and interesting styles
He added: “We care deeply about the quality of our beer, which is why we like to keep it all on site. I’m a bit of a purist about beer and believe there should only be four ingredients — water, hops, malt and yeast. We have continually brewed high quality, sessionable and well-balanced beers with a late-hopping style. This has provided us with a strong platform to continue developing new and interesting styles without digressing from our founding remit.
“As for the bottling line, precision is imperative for unfiltered and unfined beers, and the only way you can succeed at anything practical is to have the right tools for the job. If you don’t have those tools already, we say make them!”
With a focus on quality and using the finest possible ingredients, including Maris Otter barley and whole hop cones, Yeovil Ales continues to produce award-winning beers. Stout Hearted in bottles has scooped silver in this year’s SIBA South West Independent Beer Awards.
Starting out in 2005, the 20-barrel brewhouse on Yeovil’s Lufton Estate has been continually evolving. In 2010 the brewery doubled in size, and 2016 saw a second major £100,000 brewhouse upgrade to increase the fermentation capacity.
