We drink more than seven and a half billion pints
of beer a year.
That's more than 20 million every day.
No wonder it's the nation's favourite alcoholic drink.
Whether you're making craft ales,
stout, or lager,
brewing is a complex process that involves malting,
mashing and fermenting.
It's all happening in here...
..at Britain's biggest brewery.
I'm Gregg Wallace...
I've never seen anything like this.
The scale of this production is ginormous.
..and I'll be following the incredible journey lager takes
from barley to beverage.
One small step for mankind.
It's a very long way for a pint of beer.
I'm Cherry Healey...
Oh, wow!
..and I'll be discovering the secrets of the perfect pint.
You can really smell the alcohol, actually.
Historian Ruth Goodman...
Gosh, that is dark.
..discovers how beer got its stereotypically blokey reputation.
Men get interested in brewing when it gets a bit more lucrative?
Yes.
Over the next 24 hours, three million pints of beer
will roll off the end of this production line.
That is a big night by anyone's standards!
Welcome to Inside The Factory.
This is the Molson Coors Brewery in Burton upon Trent.
They've been making beer on this site since 1777
and today they knock out six different varieties.
Tonight, we follow the production of their biggest seller,
which is also the UK's most popular lager,
Carling.
But no matter what kind you're making, all beers
are traditionally made from just four key ingredients -
water, hops, yeast and barley.
This humble grain is essential, providing the nutrients
that kick-start the brewing process.
It's as important to the beer as grapes are to wine.
Cherry's helping out with the harvest.
Overbury Farms in the Cotswolds produces 1,200 tonnes
of barley every year.
Farmer Jake Freestone has been growing this lot
for the last 11 months, and today it's ready for cutting.
Hi, Jake.
Cherry, hi. It's lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you, too.
I feel like I've picked a good time, it's just far enough away!
That is a big old combine harvester.
It is, yes.
That's quite a large machine and it's got a lot of capacity.
We can cut about 400 tonnes of barley seed a day
with that one machine.
So why are you harvesting today?
Well, the crop is fit and it's ripe and it's ready to be harvested.
The weather forecast are for heavy thunderstorms
from about three o'clock onwards.
Oh, my God! So we've got a bit of pressure.
It's now a race against time to complete the harvest.
Wow, look at that!
That is an absolute monster machine.
That's taking about ten and a half metres wide.
Why have you got a big, rotating cone?
So that just helps to feed the crop into the knife.
Right. So it pulls it in.
At the bottom of there,
there's a knife cutting.
I've never seen a machine that looks so much like an animal -
eating, eating, eating,
kind of digesting and then spitting it out at the back.
And then spitting the rubbish out the back.
Travelling at just two miles an hour, the combine pulls
the barley into threshing drums, which rip the seed heads away
from the stalks.
The grain is carefully collected.
While the leftovers are used for animal bedding.
Oh, my God! It's better than a fairground ride.
It's real!
Jake needs three dry July days to clear his fields.
It's a round-the-clock job, made easier by the technology
on board his harvester.
I don't want to sound like a nervous passenger but I have noticed
that you're not in any way driving this or touching any buttons
or anything. Are we all right?
We're absolutely fine.
The wonders of modern technology means that we've got a computer
programme on board here that is following a defined line
up the field.
So there's absolutely no need to steer until we get to the end.
Is it autopilot? Autopilot on here.
And on the screen, I can show you where we are.
So this is the combine in the field. That's amazing!
It's tracking the field and giving you a path to go on?
Yep.
Once the tank is full, we can tell the waiting tractor
we're ready to unload, at the push of a button.
Just once? That's it. Just once.
There you go, look. Look in the mirror.
That is one big old pipe.
Here's the tractor. Here comes Gord.
Then if you press that yellow one there for unloading...
Three, two, one... Off we go.
Out. I mean, look at the ferocity of the grain
coming out of that pipe. Yep.
Nothing about this operation is half-hearted.
Everything is full-throttle. Full-throttle.
And that can unload nine tonnes in about two minutes.
And yet, still you're going, still you're harvesting.
Still harvesting.
That's it. And off it goes. Off it goes back to the grain store.
No time to lose.
Look, he's absolutely going like the clappers.
Each tractor unloads nine tonnes of barley into the intake pit.
Conveyor belts transport it up into the rafters
and through a series of grates, which sieve out any larger pieces
of straw or debris.
The clean barley then drops down into the storage area,
just as the heavens open.
Oh, my God! Whoa!
And here it is in all its glory.
Look at your happy face. I know!
That is a happy face!
Oh, look at that.
It's absolutely beautiful.
Are you happy with it? Very happy with it.
Really, really pleased.
600 tonnes of clean, dry grain.
So this barley is now ready to head off to start
its transformation into beer.
From the farm, the raw barley heads 56 miles north
to Burton upon Trent.
But it can't go straight to the brewery.
Before it can be used to make beer, its internal chemistry
has to be altered.
And that happens here at Shobnall Maltings.
The operation is overseen by production manager Mark Warren.
Gregg. Pleased to meet you. Nice to meet you.
I've come to see the barley unloaded.
Our beer production begins.
With only four main ingredients, you might think this would be
a quick process, but you'd be wrong.
It'll take nearly two weeks to turn this lot into beer.
How much barley on that truck?
About 29 to 30 tonnes.
That's a lot of barley.
Yeah. We can handle up to 1,200 tonne a day if we're really pushed.
Is he dumping it into the floor?
Into this pit. There's an elevator there, up through the building
and over into a silo.
Wow!
In just 30 minutes, this clever subterranean system
transports all the barley to the silos.
How do you turn this into beer?
What has barley got that makes beer?
What that is is a food package full of starch.
All we're going to do is break down the cell walls that hold
that starch together, that allows it then to be converted
into sugars at the brewery.
It's these sugars that will give us our all-important alcohol.
What's that process called? Malting.
Is that a traditional way? Is that the way we've always done it?
Since Egyptian times.
Is this malting a long process?
I'm afraid so, yes!
Are you happy to show me how it's done?
I certainly am.
Where? Let's go this way.
Thank you very much.
Over 40 tonnes of barley is piped from the silos...
Right.
..into one of ten giant containers
called steeping vessels.
This is the start of the malting process.
The barley is submerged in 138,000 litres of oxygenated water.
What we're basically doing is tricking the barley into growing.
We're doing what happens in nature in the ground.
So we're giving it moisture and air.
This is a seed. Yes.
Are you trying to get the seed to grow?
Yes. And you're going to trick it into thinking, what,
it's fallen into the ground? Yeah.
Right.
OK.
The confused seeds absorb the water.
And after more than 40 hours soaking in this bath,
they've tripled their moisture content.
Oh, I thought that would be a mush!
No. I thought that would be a complete mush. It's not.
So now
that's what we call a chit.
A chit.
And that is where the rootlets would form.
That little white root that's coming out of there...
That's right, yeah. That's the seed growing?
Yeah.
This growth is triggered by the release of starch
inside the seed.
So this is a little self-contained, living organism?
Yes.
And what is making that root grow is the energy that's coming
from the starch? That's right.
Wow!
Well, listen, I was never very good at science at school,
in fact, I didn't go to school much, but I understand this perfectly.
Each grain of barley is changing its internal chemistry.
But they're in no hurry.
We're already nearly two days into production.
Is there something about the slow speed of the process
that appeals to you?
Yes. There's nothing here that can't be solved by a cup
of tea and thinking about it.
Luckily, this next stage is a no-brainer.
Just like when you're planting seeds, once they've had a good
water, next, they need warmth.
And that's supplied in these mysterious-looking buildings
called germination tanks.
There are four of them here and they're all controlled
from this room.
A bit of cool retro tech!
Very important retro tech, though.
Shall I wear flares?
Each of these tanks contains 330 tonnes of chitted grain.
Uh-ho-ho!
What is THIS?
What is this?!
This is germination.
Germination.
This looks like a cross between sand dunes and a baker's bun.
It's warm in here, it's humid in here.
Right, this is the perfect conditions to grow the grain.
Giant fans blow humid air at 16 degrees Celsius
up through the grain bed.
How deep is this?
This is about 1.8 metres.
If I tread on there, do we just, like,
sink to the bottom?
No, we don't. Come on, I'll show you.
Hmm. I think I might let Mark go first.
MUSIC: Walking On The Moon by The Police
It seems safe enough.
Oh, wow!
It's, er...
It's not like walking on the beach because the beach is firmer.
I am actually sinking, my feet are sinking in there.
It is safe, right? It's perfectly safe!
It's really, really soft.
One small step for mankind.
A very long way for a pint of beer.
Oh, I really love this.
Inside the grain, the chemical transformation is almost complete.
How do you know it's ready?
Look at two things.
One is what we call the acrospire, which will become the stem
of the plant, which is growing up inside the grain.
So we split it open and look there.
And then secondly, I just rub it through my fingers.
It's definitely squishy.
In fact, you can feel the starch.
It's powdery and sticky. That's right.
How long does it stay in here for?
Four days.
This is not a fast process, is it?
No! It really isn't.
But this is now ready to be made into beer?
No, we've got one final stage for that.
The starch in the barley is now unlocked.
And to stop the seeds eating it all up before it can be used
to make beer, we have to halt the germination process.
Nearly six days after it arrived, the barley is dried in this massive
kiln for 21 hours.
So this is it, this is our finished product?
This is malted barley.
We took barley in at the start, this is now malted barley
for the brewery.
It pours through a grate into the back of a lorry,
which is driven backwards and forwards
to ensure even distribution.
That's an easy job, isn't it, that?
I want that job - move a lorry back and forwards.
It doesn't look a great deal different than it's looked
throughout the rest of the process. It doesn't.
And I have a sample here.
It smells malty, though.
That's right, it smells malty.
You can now eat this. Can you?
Yeah, it's rather nice.
Ooh!
Ooh, let's cover them in chocolate.
Has anyone thought about that?!
Is that it now? Is that ready to be made into lager?
It is. You can go make your beer with that now.
Mark, thank you very much indeed.
It's a pleasure.
I'm going to head down the road to the brewery with this lot.
And it's no accident, you know, that this town is famous
for its beer, as Ruth is discovering.
Burton is the heart of brewing in Britain.
Home to over 30 breweries at its peak in the 1880s.
But why did they cluster here?
Apparently, this is the answer.
Right across Burton,
there's a series of pumping
stations and wells.
This is the secret to brewing beer in Burton for hundreds of years.
That looks pretty good.
So what is it about this water that is so special?
To find out,
I'm heading to the town's National Brewery Centre,
where I'm meeting master brewer Steve Wellington.
Steve. Hello, Ruth.
What fabulous machines. What are these?
Aren't they, just? These are very old water pumps.
These pumps drew up the water the town used for brewing.
So what is it about this water that helps to make this beer?
It is very, very hard water.
If you drop that on the ground and it evaporated,
you'd get a white stain.
Right. Now, what is in there are two salts.
One is magnesium sulphate, the other is calcium sulphate.
Compared to soft water, hard water has a very high mineral
count - perfect for brewing strong, highly flavoured beers.
Oh, gosh, that's quite nice.
It is quite good, isn't it?!
But it wasn't just the water in the beer that was important.
The canal network around Burton allowed boats to bring ingredients
in and take finished beer out,
shipping it around the UK and on to all corners
of the British Empire.
11 years ago, author Pete Brown retraced the journey
some of those exports took.
Pete, hello!
Hi, Ruth.
So am I right in thinking that you took beer from Burton
all the way to India?
A whole barrel, right from here all the way to Calcutta,
going the old-fashioned route, the long way round.
And this very marina was the first leg of my journey.
That meant 140 miles by canal to London,
then 18,000 miles by sea to India.
It took a while.
The original route was about six months' long.
So one heck of a journey.
I mean, why were we exporting beer all that way?
Well, before we had refrigeration, you couldn't really get away
with brewing in India.
And so the beer had to go out there and it had to be really,
really good-quality beer.
Over time, a strong but pale ale evolved, that could survive
the long sea voyage.
This export earned the name India Pale Ale,
or IPA.
This is probably the closest survivor to that style
that we've got today.
It's a heck of a lot paler
than the earlier dark ale, isn't it? It is.
I mean, it's not as pale as IPAs are today,
but it's much paler than the dark porters and stouts
that were prevalent beforehand. Yeah.
And such was their success, pretty soon they spread
around the world.
India Pale Ale became pretty much the world's first global beer style.
This pale ale turned 19th-century Burton
into the undisputed capital of brewing.
At its peak, one quarter of all beer sold in Britain was produced here.
And all because of that extra special water.
My 27 tonnes of malted barley has covered the one mile journey
from the maltings to the brewery.
This place is colossal!
Spanning 120 acres, this huge site is over
half a mile across.
At the intake area, six lorry loads of malted barley
arrive every day.
Brewing manager Andy Runcie is waiting for me.
Are you Andy?
Hi, Gregg, how are you? I'm good, mate.
I have got a truck of malted barley here.
What do I do with it?
You leave that there, it'll get off-loaded here,
and we'll go make some beer.
That is a good idea. Show me where to go.
My malt is unloaded and a system of conveyors transport it 30 metres
to the top of the six-storey brew house.
Have we got to go up there? Yeah, all the way up the top.
Why do you need to brew beer in a tower?
Historically, all brew houses were built in a tower
because you get to pump it up once and then gravity does all the hard
work after that. Come on, then.
I hope you're fit and well like me.
By harnessing the power of gravity instead of using pumps,
the brewery can save energy and money.
Mate, this is a bit much, isn't it?
At the top, the malted barley arrives at the hammer mill.
At last!
I've climbed a mountain of stairs.
Is this beer-making?
This is starting to make beer, Gregg.
Right, OK, so apart from being hot and noisy, what is it doing?
This is taking the malted barley that you brought from the maltings
and turning it into this fine powder. We call it grist.
Looks like baking powder.
Inside the mill, 128 little hammers called flails
spin at 1,500 rpm.
As the malted barley drops down, it's smashed against these hammers,
crushing each grain into tiny particles,
most less than a millimetre across.
This ferocious contraption crushes nearly four kilograms every second.
That means that in just one hour, it produces enough ground barley
to make 224,000 pints.
Right, and you call that a grist?
Yeah. Is it a grist? Yeah, grist of the mill.
OK, I've got a grist at the end of me wrist.
Yes.
I think I'm getting to grips with the brewing lingo.
The grist drops down into imaginatively named grist cases
on its way to the mash vessels,
where the brewing process
begins in earnest.
Oh! That's like R2-D2's head.
That's the mash vessel.
Well, that's just a big empty tank.
That's because we need to mash in.
Mash in? Yeah.
Mash in?
That's another one for the brewing dictionary.
In order to mash in,
we need some help from the control room.
Andy is letting me do the honours.
What do I press and what do I say?
Press the button and say, "OK to mash in".
OK to mash in. Over.
Yeah, OK.
Yeah, agreed.
He reckons that's one of the best mash in messages he's ever had.
Classic.
11 tonnes of grist are released into the mash vessel,
followed by 26,000 litres of water,
heated to precisely 66.5 degrees Celsius.
A combination of water and heat help start a chemical reaction,
which causes the starch molecules in the grist
to break down into sugars.
It's this sugar that will ultimately turn into alcohol.
But we're way off that yet.
That grist is coming out with the water.
It's a creamy colour.
Yes. Well, actually, it's coffee-coloured.
That is like an enormous great latte.
Yeah, it's a very thin mash.
So tell me, please, what is happening?
Why hot water?
By using that temperature, we get as much sugar as we need,
but we leave a little bit left over to give it a little bit
of sweetness in the final beer.
And this is the famous Burton water, right?
Perfect for making beer. Yeah.
This is what the town was built on but now, because of modern
standards, we need to purify that water first.
I thought it was perfect for making beer?
It was when they first started but obviously standards change.
Oh, right. So now we purify it and add back in what we need.
So 150 years ago, you could just draw the water
from the well. Yeah.
Different health and safety laws now. Yes. How long does this take?
It takes an hour and 50 minutes. Right.
But there's one over there if you'd like to have a look at that.
You're getting the hang of this telly lark, aren't you?
I'm starting to get there.
It takes just 60 minutes of heating to extract all that starch
and convert it to sugar.
So the mash is finished now.
Now that looks like beer.
It's brown and it's got a foamy head.
But...
..that's got no aroma.
No, because that's just a sugary liquid at this point.
Right. So what has it done exactly, just got the sugars out?
It's made a nice, sugary liquid for us.
How do you know you've got all the sugars out?
We do a test.
So I'm going to take a sample now and we'll go and do that test.
Using what looks like a pole vaulter's pole with a cup
on the end, Andy extracts a small amount of the finished
mash to inspect.
It smells malty.
Yeah, that's what we want.
Right, so you've got your sample.
Yeah. What are you testing for?
So if we put this in here.
We add iodine.
And if there's any black left over when we've mixed it,
we've not done our job properly.
Iodine will react black with starch.
We're just checking that there's no starch left over.
So all the starch that the malt has produced, you need to turn
into sugar, all of it?
Yes, we don't want any starch. Right.
So if that goes black, there's some starch in there...
Yep. ..and that process, that mashing, hasn't worked? No.
OK. How long do you leave it? It's done.
We can see that's a really good mash. Perfect!
Ready to move. Monster mash.
Yeah. Perfect.
Am I allowed to taste that at that stage?
Of course you can.
Andy, right now that looks like a dirty puddle.
It's just the first stage of the process.
If I drink this, collapse on the floor,
and I come up with fangs and pointy ears,
can you tell my wife I love her?
Of course I will.
Ooh!
Ooh! That's sweet.
Yeah. That's really sweet.
Right now, it's hard to believe this sugary, non-alcoholic liquid
will become lager, but Andy assures me it will.
As I'm discovering, brewing is a complex process,
yet there are only four ingredients traditionally used to make beer.
Cherry is getting to grips with the recipe.
I've got to admit, when I walk into a pub,
the array of beer choices can be a little bit overwhelming.
How can the same basic ingredients make one beer that looks like this,
and another beer that looks like this?
To find out, I'm going to a micro brewery in Walthamstow,
East London, to meet chemical- engineer-turned-brewer Jaega Wise.
Hi, Jaega, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
What a beautiful spread.
So what do we have here?
We've got porter, an IPA, and a lager.
And they really are at the extremes of what you can create
with four ingredients.
Malted barley, hops, yeast, and water are the basis
of all beers.
But, subtle differences in these ingredients have a big
impact on taste and appearance.
It all starts with the water.
So, where we are in London, the water's very hard,
naturally.
Hard water is ideal for brewing porters and stouts.
Soft water, on the other hand, is better for lighter beers
with more delicate flavours.
One of the most famous places in the world for very soft water
is Pilsen, as in in the Czech Republic.
And that's where the Pilsner has developed.
Today, Jaega's using good old London tap water to make a porter.
What gives a porter that dark colour?
It is all about the very, very dark, roasted barley.
This is the fundamental difference between a beer like this,
and a lager.
We can create chocolate flavours, we can create coffee flavours.
Mm! All from the intensity of the roast.
Roasting the barley before brewing
brings out different flavours in the beer.
Ooh, just on top of it, perfect, that's it.
Mashing this toasted grain with hot water...
Oh, look at that, wow!
..gives porter its dark colour and helps create those
rich stout flavours.
For IPA, or lager, like the one Gregg's making,
brewers would use lighter malts.
Now, it is time for ingredient number three -
hops.
Hop plants are climbing vines that grow up to ten metres tall,
and produce leafy green flowers.
These flowers give beer its aroma and bitterness,
and work as a preservative.
Are there more than one variety of hops?
There are a lot of different varieties of hop.
So, this one in particular, this one's known as Centennial.
So this is a hop from the US, you can probably smell
it's quite pungent. Very strong! Yeah.
What is it in the hops that make them perfect for beer?
So, the main things we're concerned with -
the alpha acids, the beta acids, and the essential oils.
So, the alpha acids is what gives our beer its bitterness.
The beta acids, there's been lots of research showing
that's where beer gets a lot of its stability
and its antibacterial properties.
And your essential oils, so that lovely citrus note
you can smell, that is what us, as brewers, that is what we're after.
Porters require a very bitter hop in order to balance out
the flavours from the roasted malts.
Hops away!
While lager tends to use more subtle varieties.
The final ingredient is yeast,
which gives us that crucial alcohol.
So, if you hop on to the step, we should be able to see some
yeast in action. All right.
This porter uses a strain of ale yeast.
Ready? Yep.
Oh, wow!
You can really smell the alcohol, actually.
What is this bubbly area around here?
So, this is actually the yeast sat on top,
and it's how ale yeast likes to behave.
We call it top fermenting, so, it likes to ferment and really
sit on the top.
Whereas a lager likes to ferment on the bottom,
so we call it bottom fermenting.
It's one of the major differences between an ale yeast
and a lager yeast.
Using different varieties of lager or ale yeast will bring out
different flavours in the beer.
Four ingredients, three very different-looking beers.
Now, I get to taste the porter I've been brewing.
I can definitely taste the coffee,
the chocolate, the caramel.
It's more like a meal!
Next, the lager.
So, it's quite light. Mm-hmm.
But, it's quite bitter - is that the hops?
Yes, that's the hops.
Finally, the IPA.
It's citrusy...
Yep.
And, hoppy, grassy, bit nutty.
It just shows just how diverse beer can be.
They taste so different, and yet, they have got
the same four ingredients.
Yeah.
Well, well done, you.
Cheers. Cheers.
Back at the Burton brewery, we're over six days into our
beer production process.
After one hour of heating in the mash vessels,
all the starch in the barley has been converted to sugar.
And Andy and I are in pursuit of hoppiness.
What do you want me to do with this? Weigh myself?
No, I want you to weigh the hops. Are these hops? Yeah.
Are they very trendy? Are they hip hops?
I thought hops were like buds, like, looked a bit like corn.
Yeah, but, a lot of that hop is waste, ultimately.
So, what we do is, we pelletize them to get
all the bitterness we want, but none of that waste.
Well, we've got an enormous vat
of sweet, malty liquid at the moment. Yeah.
How much of these hops do we need to add to that?
We need to add 21 kilos. Is that right - 21 kilos?
Yes, yes. Not 200 kilos? No, 21 kilos.
So, what do I do, put the bags on?
Yes, so, those are five-kilo bags.
Right, OK, well, look...
Five,
ten.
15.
20 keys.
So, I've got 20 kilos, I need another one kilo.
Shall we put that bag on? Yeah.
So, another kilo, right?
Astonishingly, this relatively tiny amount
will be enough to flavour over 190,000 pints.
There you go. Perfect.
Right, 21 keys, where do we go?
We're going to put them in the hopper.
You grab one, I'll grab the other one, go on.
There we go. Yep...
It's just a short "hop" over to the holding tank
to unload our carefully weighed goodies.
Is that it?
No, we need to add some calcium chloride as well.
Calcium chloride?
Yeah. OK, give me that.
What is calcium chloride?
Calcium chloride is just...
Where we're just replacing some of those things that we took
out of the water when we purified it earlier on.
Right, OK. What does it give you?
That balance of sweetness and bitterness.
Is that right? Yeah.
Calcium chloride is a type of salt.
Adding 12.5 kilos of it into the mix will help bring
out the flavours in the beer.
It's just like adding seasoning to your dinner.
How long have you been working with beer, Andy?
I've been working with beer for about 20 years now, Gregg.
And what made you do that in the first place?
So, I did a brewing degree, and then joined the company 20 years
ago as a graduate trainee. I've been here ever since.
Right, all the stuff's in there, what's the next stage?
Before the hops are added, our non-alcoholic sugary liquid
is sent from the mash vessel to this giant robotic accordion,
called a mash filter.
Here, the mix gets passed through a series of plates,
which sieve out the leftover grist.
56,000 litres of the clean, filtered liquid,
now called wort,
is then pumped into giant vats, called coppers.
Yes, I know. They're clearly not made of copper,
but in the early days of brewing, they were - and the name stuck.
Are the hops in there? They're not in there yet.
I know how much you like a radio, Gregg.
Do you want to add the hops?
Press the button! Right, what do I say this time?
Add the hops. Is that it? Yeah!
Yeah, it's Gregg. Can you add the hops, please?
OK.
With a little help from our friendly control room,
the hops drop down into the copper through a pipe in the ceiling.
So, those hops are now dissolving, aren't they? Is that right?
Yeah, and we're going to get the bitterness from those hops.
And we're also going to form some protein that we can move later
on, to make a nice, clearer beer.
This is a really slow process.
When I normally go in factories, they can make crisps,
or biscuits, in like, an hour!
Does this get any faster?
Sadly, no, Gregg, we can't rush it.
The mix is boiled for 40 minutes. As well as releasing the hop
flavour, the heat kills off any bacteria in the wort.
Today, hops are an essential ingredient in beer,
but it wasn't always that way.
And as Ruth's finding out,
their introduction changed everything.
In the Middle Ages, the home-made ale Britons enjoyed
tasted very different from modern beers.
It was sweet, un-hopped,
and brewed almost exclusively by women.
Brewing was one of the most common professions for women,
who were often known as brewsters, or ale-wives.
It's believed that a third of women in villages were brewing
ale for sale.
Women learnt the techniques from their mothers
and aunts - it passed down in the female line.
But this dominance was not to last.
Come in!
Beer writer, Jane Peyton...
Hello, Mistress Goodman!
..tells me the change began with
some early consumer protection legislation.
In 1266, King Henry III passed a law,
the Assize of Bread and Ale.
So, he appointed ale conners, these were male inspectors who went
round all the places selling ale, and they would test the quality,
and if they found it to be bad quality,
or if the ale-wife was overcharging
for that ale, then they could be punished.
The homes of female brewsters became known
as public houses, or pubs.
But opening their homes up like this also exposed
the women to criticism.
You might become suspicious of them, you know,
are they overcharging, maybe?
Are they putting nasty things into the ale?
It's easy to vilify somebody and to give them a bad reputation.
Do we have any examples of this hostility, then?
Well, a really good example is a poem that was written
by King Henry VIII's Poet Laureate.
And, it talks about an ale-wife, Elenor Rumming, and the way
she's described is really insulting.
"She is ugly fayre.
"Her nose, somdele hoked, and famously croked."
It's really not a nice image, is it? At all!
It really isn't.
Despite the ridicule, ale-wives continued to brew
on a small scale.
Until our game-changing ingredient arrived.
What changed everything was the introduction of hops.
Historians think hops were introduced to Britain
from Belgium in the 15th century.
At the time, the un-hopped brew made by ale-wives
went off within a day or so.
It was soon discovered that hopped beer lasted far longer.
This was a revolution, and this is where the schism
between the male brewers and the female brewers
starts to come in - hops.
Hopped beer could be brewed in bigger batches,
making production more profitable.
Men get interested in brewing when it gets a bit more lucrative?
Yes!
You could say that.
And also, brewing on a big scale, in factories, basically,
where women didn't work outside the home, normally.
Right. So, it's going to be easier for a man to set
up as a commercial brewer?
So, this really is the great reason for the divide,
for the change, from brewing as a female activity to brewing
as a male activity.
Yes, and the irony is that these are the female part
of the hop plant!
To ale-wives.
In the brewery, my sweet, malty liquid,
or wort, has been boiling away in the coppers,
and is now fully infused with those fragrant hops.
But it's still not beer yet.
To turn this wort into lager, we need yeast.
Whoa!
I'm meeting Steph Tunks in the project lab.
Hello. Is that dry ice?
This is liquid nitrogen, and it's currently at about 196
degrees below zero - that's how we store our yeast.
And, I can't go anywhere near that, can I? Absolutely not.
Not without some serious gloves on, yeah.
Why do you store the yeast like that, please?
It's so we keep it in a stable state,
and to stop it from growing any more than we would need
it to at this time.
So, we can keep it for long periods, to use it whenever we need.
There are over 700 varieties of yeast used in beer-making.
And this one is closely guarded by the brewery.
Can you please explain to me the part yeast plays in beer?
Yeast is the vital ingredient, it's the magic ingredient.
It's what turns all of the sugars that you get from the malts
and the barleys into alcohol and carbon dioxide,
which, to a brewery, is a dream.
Yeast is a living, single-cell organism.
Without it, there's no alcohol, no fizz,
and ultimately, no lager.
How much yeast is in there right now?
About 0.2 of a millilitre, so a tiny, tiny amount.
Is that just a sample?
No, this will now propagate all of our yeast
for the next six months. WHAT?
Absolutely. Sorry, I didn't mean to shout.
How is that possible?
I thought it was ridiculous the amount of hops you were putting
in. Just that little bit there? Yep.
That'll keep you going for six months?
Yep, it will soon multiply and become everything that we need
within six months, given the right conditions.
The yeast is grown in this 30ml vial.
Steph adds wort before mixing it all together.
She then transfers 10ml of the mix into this flask.
The extracted yeast now has the food and space it needs to multiply.
Is it extremely valuable?
Absolutely. Without our yeast, we wouldn't have a brewery
to go with. It's so valuable to us, it's the life and soul of our beer.
Seriously?
It's the heart of every beer.
As it grows, the yeast is transferred to increasingly
larger containers,
finishing up in this massive tank.
It will continue to multiply
until they have over 1,000 kg of the stuff.
Then, the whole lot is sent to the fermentation tanks,
which are full to the brim with our sugary wort.
So, what's the volume of liquid in there?
It's 2,400 UK barrels in one of those.
For those of us not in the pub trade, that's enough to make
an unbelievable 1.3 million pints,
in just one of these tanks.
And there are 19 of them!
You've got a bottle of brown. Yeah!
You haven't had beer yet, you've just had bottles of brown.
Yeah, so this bottle of brown is the last time it's wort,
before it becomes beer.
This sugary liquid is the final stage of production
before fermentation starts.
Can I have a sip of this? Of course you can.
Is it going to be horrid?
You'll see.
It smells malty, still. Yeah.
It's almost sweet like honey. Yeah.
And it is going bitter, and it's actually that bitter
flavour you get at the end of a pint of beer!
Yeah. But it started off like a sugar drink! Yeah!
Inside this fermentation tank,
this sugar drink finally becomes beer.
But it doesn't happen quickly.
Over the course of five days, the yeast cells feast on the sugars,
and then expel alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste by-products.
The CO2 is siphoned off from the top to be reused later.
And once the batch is finished, the leftover yeast is extracted
from the bottom.
And has it used up all of the yeast?
The yeast there is cropped off and reused.
So, we re-use that yeast about eight times.
After 11 days and 22 hours,
we finally have alcoholic,
slightly fizzy, beer!
But it's not quite ready to drink.
Andy, what is this?
It's like, completely space age!
What does it do? Don't tell me.
Deep sea divers have left their tanks here.
No, this is where we filter the beer.
What, just like a normal filter?
Yeah, so, inside these, there are lots of little membranes
that filter out all the particles.
That looks like it's sitting still. Is that beer flowing through there?
Yeah, in here, it's producing about 2,400 cans of beer a minute.
So, that is just gushing through there faster
than my eye can tell. Yeah.
This massive system of filters removes any leftover protein
or yeast particles, leaving clean, but slightly flat, lager.
Can I taste just a little bit?
I don't mean have a drink, I mean, just... Yeah.
Mate, I've seen hours and hours of beer-making process,
and when I finally get to taste it, it's in, like, a medical jar?
Yeah, it's a sample.
Have you not got, like, a nice jug, with a handle on it?
We don't drink in the brewery, Gregg, we only sample.
I can taste my hops.
Yeah. I can taste the hops.
I can even taste the sweetness.
That's more like an ale.
To transform it into fizzy lager, the carbon dioxide given off
during fermentation is pumped back into the liquid
through the carbonation machine.
Our lager now has those all-important bubbles.
And at last, I get to try the genuine article.
That tastes like a clean, more fizzy, pint of lager.
Yep. That is the end, finished product?
That's the end, finished product, here in brewing.
We now need to put it in a package.
Andy, thank you, it's been fascinating.
I can't stop and drink more of this, mate, honestly.
I've got to see a man about a can.
After almost 12 days of production, we've got beer.
But how should we serve it to get the most out of the flavour?
Cherry is investigating.
To pour the perfect pint, you first tilt the glass to a
45-degree position until it's halfway full
and then,
you straighten up into an upright position.
And there we have...
..a perfect pint.
But does a great-looking pint make it taste any better?
To find out, I'm meeting sensory scientist
Professor Charles Spence, from the University of Oxford.
Surely, it's just about the beer in the glass?
To any one of us, it feels like it's just the liquid
in the glass that we're tasting.
But a different glass, a different colour,
a different shape, all these other factors matter.
Some more than others.
So, exactly the same beer can taste different
under different circumstances?
Absolutely.
This is the kind of thing that we can test.
I'm pretty sure I can find some volunteers for this.
We've taken over this pub to run three scientific experiments.
In each test, we'll be serving exactly the same beer,
but we'll change one thing in the way it's served.
First, we present our tasters with a straight glass,
and a curved glass.
Take a sip of each beer.
Maybe two or three.
Take your time. No worries.
Which is more flavourful, aromatic, fruitier?
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah, that's definitely more fruity.
I think this one has a little bit more,
sort of, interesting flavour, the warm notes.
I think that one's...
Was it fruitier?
Yeah, that one's fruitier, I think.
Over half our tasters think the beer tastes fruitier
in the curved pint glass.
So, what's going on there?
We find from research with wine, with soft drinks, with beer,
that when you have something more curved in your hand,
that tends to prime notions of fruity and sweetness.
And you express that in the taste of the beer.
This could be one explanation for why people drink more than twice
as fast from a curved glass, compared to a straight glass.
On to test number two.
So, here I have two beers - one with a head
and one without a head.
Which is tastier? This one, for me. This one?
That one.
The liquid in each glass is identical,
except for the amount of head.
I'd say that this one had more flavour.
70% of our beer drinkers
think that the pint with the head tastes better.
That head is capturing all the volatile, aromatic molecules
in the beer. So, whenever you put it to your lips, you're getting
a bit more release as the bubbles burst more of the aroma.
And we know that 75-95% of what you think you're tasting,
you're really smelling.
So, the more bubbles that burst, the more head on the beer,
the more flavourful the pint.
In the final test, our tasters are served a pint
at three degrees Celsius, and another at 12 degrees.
That's more flavoursome, that one.
Actually... I have to agree with you.
All of our beer drinkers rated the warmer beer as more flavoursome.
The thing is that our taste buds don't work,
really, when they're too cold. Mm.
In fact, you get more flavour from warmer beer because that allows
the taste buds to do their work and pick up the flavour
that's in the drink.
Despite the ridicule we Brits get for our warm beer,
according to science, we're on to something.
So, there we have it - the secret to the perfect pint.
A lovely curved glass, a healthy amount of head,
and served at 12 degrees Celsius.
In Burton upon Trent, I'm on the final leg
of my beer-making adventure.
It's taken 12 days to get from raw barley to lager.
And only now does the finished product head to the canning area.
17 lorries arrive here every day,
each one delivering 100,000 empty cans.
I'm meeting packing operations manager,
Gareth Annable.
Gareth? Hiya. I think you're my man. I am.
What is pushing them off the truck?
That vehicle has got what we call a live bed in it.
So, it's got rollers in the truck which transports it onto this live
bed as well.
I've got a wall of moving cans.
That's pretty rapid. I mean, how long does it take
to unload that lorry?
It takes just under a minute to get those 22 pallets off.
That's it, they're all off, aren't they? They're off.
What happens to them now? Let me show you.
The cans are hoisted up to the de-palletiser...
..where a robotic arm sweeps them off the pallets,
one layer at a time.
After a very slow brewing process, now, we've picked up speed.
Over 150 metres of conveyor belts
push the cans around the factory to the cleaner.
I've never seen anything like this.
The scale of this production is ginormous.
One of the biggest factories I've seen.
And this, I've never seen anything like that,
a load of upside-down cans.
Is that magnetic?
That's a vacuum that holds the cans up.
The vacuum holds the cans upside down, as fans below the conveyor
shoot high-pressure jets of purified air up into them.
This removes any trace amounts of dust or contaminants.
This machine is called the Nelly.
Why? We go down here, you'll be able to see.
The two ears, and the big trunk coming down the middle.
GREGG CHORTLES
After a good clean in the Nelly, the cans end up here -
the filler.
This giant spinning top is turning at over 11 revolutions per minute.
The sheer speed makes it almost impossible to see what's happening,
with the naked eye.
But 165 cans are simultaneously being filled
with 440ml each of freshly brewed lager.
Filling all those cans takes just 5.5 seconds!
Now, that is what I call a quick drink!
Where's that splash coming from?
So, as the beer, because it's filling at such speed,
we can get foam on the top of the beer.
And that foam has got little bubbles of oxygen in it.
Oxygen will spoil the flavour of the beer.
So, we have to blow that foam off the top of the can
before we put the end on.
That's why you get little splashes of beer foam coming out.
Right, OK.
Once the beer's in, we move through to what's
called the seamer.
Seamer? Seamer, yep.
And the lid gets put on the can.
The seaming actually happens in this machine here.
It's all then closed, but the lid goes on the can.
As the can spins round, the seam is formed with the can end.
So, once it comes out, it is one piece of equipment.
I've got it.
Up to 1,850 cans a minute
are filled and sealed here.
The operation runs 24 hours a day.
And this is only one of three identical production lines!
That sort of volume of beer is really hard to comprehend.
We're producing it, and people are buying it.
That's an ocean.
In a year, a staggering 350 million cans of our lager
will roll off this line.
And every single one of them passes through this giant pasteuriser,
which heats the cans to 60 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes.
This kills off any microorganisms which might be present,
giving the beer a shelf life of up to nine months.
Then they get boxed up and slid on to pallets.
Before being loaded on to an army of waiting trucks.
How many lorries go out?
We do about, roughly, three or four an hour.
Really? Yeah.
But not 24 hours?
24 hours, each of these has got 22 pallets on.
Just 60 minutes after an empty can arrives,
it's been filled, boxed up, and loaded back on the truck.
So, basically, the cans are just flowing in one end,
and flowing out the other? They are.
One hour? One hour.
Have you got storage area anywhere?
We don't have any storage on site, no.
Everything that comes in comes straight out, on the vehicle
and away it goes.
The beer-making itself was far slower than I ever imagined,
but this canning is the fastest thing I think I've ever seen. Yep.
Unbelievable!
Unbelievable.
I always knew we loved our beer,
but this place has completely blown me away.
From here, the lager is shipped out
to all corners of the UK and Ireland -
from Cork to Cornwall
and all the way up to Inverness.
I am really impressed by the scale of production here.
It is absolutely immense.
But do you know what I really like?
It's how long it takes to actually make a pint of beer -
over 12 days, from barley to can.
You know, in this 100mph world,
some things just take time.
Next time...I'm getting straight to the point...
What is that?
..at the world's oldest pencil factory.
I feel like Uri Geller!
Those pencils are almost falling over those plates.
OK, is that a good jug?
And Cherry waxes lyrical.
Oh! You're kidding me!
That is an Inside The Factory crayon.