Brewery

The Brewhouse

Step into Brewery

Williams Bros. Brewing Co. is located in Alloa, Clackmannanshire and is set in the old George Younger’s bottling hall in Kelliebank.

Although now producing an eclectic range of Craft Beers for the international market, our 'Brew House' is steeped in Scottish tradition and remains the last bastion of brewing in a town, which was once regarded as 'Scotland's Beer Capital'.

Now firmly established as one of Scotland’s largest independent breweries (often also acting as a central contract brewing & packing facility for many of the countries best brewers) our story has humble beginnings, borne out of proud home brewing traditions.

The companies genesis can literally be traced back to one ‘home brew’ sized batch of Fraoch Heather Ale, recreated by Bruce from an ancient recipe.

Our first commercial brews of 'Scotland's Original Craft Beer' were at a 5-barrel brewery in Taynult near Oban on the West Coast. Here we were able to brew just enough to supply cask conditioned Fraoch to 5 premises, including the Clachaig in Glencoe, which to this day remains one of our most loyal and enduring customer.

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Grain Store / Solo

Our brewing "grist" is selected, blended and milled into our grist case where it will be piped through to our mash tun. For it can be as simple as straight up Extra Pale Malt to more complex brews where we also use a blend of speciality or un-malted grains.

Mash Tun

Our grains are blended with hot water and steeped inside this large insulated vessel. After soaking for around 30mins the liquid is recirculated through the grain bed by a process called vorlaufing, this starts to filter/clear the liquid of particles of grain. After 10mins the grain is then 'Sparged' (sprayed with warm water) to rinse out all the good, sweet juices (the juices collected are called 'Wort'). The Wort is collected into our kettle & the spent grain is piped outside where it goes into a trailer and a local farmer collects it to feed to his cattle.

Wort Kettle

The Wort is boiled up with Hops / Heather / Bogmyrtyl / Pine / Spruce taking about an hour to bring to boil and then boiled for a further hour.

Fermentation Vessel

Wort is collected into the fermentation vessel. It leaves the kettle and passes through a heat exchanger, arriving at the fermentation vessel at around 20°C. This process take around 1 hour. Yeast is added to the wort after collection and it is fermented for about 7 days. Fermentation ends once our house yeast has eaten all the available sugars and has reached it’s final gravity.

Mixing Vessel

Fruit / Elderflower / Lemon / Hops are mixed up with some beer brought into the vessel, brought to the boil and boiled up to release the flavours and sterilise everything. Beer is flushed in and out of the vessel and back into fermentation vessel to wash out the flavours in the vessels contents.

Cold Tank

Beer is then transferred into the cold tank, and the temperature is brought down. Finings are added to the beer (product depending) to help it clear. The beer is then chilled for 14 days at around 1ºC. This is called conditioning. For our Lagers we extend this conditioning time like many premium European Lagers. Our Cask Ale is ready at this point and are racked from the cold tank.

Quality

Tests and Quality

Taste tests are carried out throughout the whole process to monitor the flavours as they develop, we are looking to avoid 'off' smells and flavours. We have a tasting diagram we use when doing these taste trials.

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Centrifuge

The newest addition to our brewhouse, the conditioned beer passes through a centrifuge where it is spun at high speed, this separates the bright beer from the proteins, yeast and hops.

Filtering

Depending on the product and the results from centrifuging the beer might then be filtered to remove the last of any yeast, protein or particles from the beer.

Bright Beer Tank

The bright beer is collected in this tank where it is then carbonated and ready to be sent to our kegging plant or on to our bottling/canning plant.

Taste / Carbonation Tests

Once again further taste trials are carried out along with carbonation tests to check the level of CO₂ in the beer.

The Final Article

The Full Beer Package

Our company ethos has always been to let the beer speak for itself, but we feel that any brew is not quite complete without a strong visual identity to compliment the ale and capture the imagination.

Mil Stricevic; a lecturer at The Glasgow School Of Art and an institutionalised member of the family has created our contemporary design and branding since we became Williams Bros. Brewing Co. in 2004. As much care, deliberation and passion goes into the packaging as the brewing process itself.

We call the end result "The Full Beer Package".

We strive to make the best quality brews, in the most sustainable manner, with a focus on local sourcing of ingredients and using processes designed to have the minimum environmental impact.

We use Scottish ingredients wherever possible. We recycle glass, plastic, card, paper and our spent grain is fed to local cattle (who particularly love the Midnight Sun & Kelpie mash).

Our ingredients are sourced and picked responsibly, with care not to create an impact on local wildlife or their environment.
We have a good relationship with other Scottish craft brewers, bottling and packing for many of the key players in the industry. After all we're all in this together, spreading the word about good beer.

More than anything else we still like to experiment and develop new ideas & flavours and this is something you will see more of as we continue to create more seasonal, collaborative & limited edition brews.

Sláinte!

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Brewery