Greene King Breweries

Greene King Westgate Brewery, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

The Greene King Westgate Brewery is situated on a site that has had a brewery since 1700 with Benjamin Greene in 1799 acquiring Wright's Brewery in Bury St Edmunds Westgate Street then naming the brewery Westgate Brewery.  The Brew House was built in Art Deco style in 1938 with its imposing facade and today is a local landmark and home to the Greene King Brewery Museum.  

Acquisitions swell the brewing capacity of Greene King

Over the years Greene King acquired many breweries to become one of the leading producers of beers and ales in the UK.  Rayments Brewery, Wells & Winch, Morland Brewery, W.H. Ferguson & Sons' Angel Brewery, The Tower Steam Brewery were all acquired over the years with more expansions including the oldest Scottish Brewery The Belhaven Group plc.

Brewing by Greene King

The art of brewing the perfect ale with its own characteristics, colour, aroma and distinctive flavour lies in the recipe and skill of the master brewer.  The ingredients are simple hops, yeast, barley and water with Greene King's malted barley locally grown in Suffolk and East Anglia and renowned for its quality and logistically with a low carbon footprint too.

Greene King's brewing process

6 Steps to a perfect pint!

Step 1:  The barley grain is separated from its chaff and is then soaked to incite germination.  Roasting the barley is the next stage and this is carried out after the germination process is halted at a critical point with the transformation into large kilns.  The browning malt in the kiln after roasting is ground into a powder or grist then onto the next process.

Step 2:  The mash is made.  Hot water is used to combine with the grist to make a mash similar in consistency to mash then transferred into a copper vessel to be kept at a constant 65 degrees centigrade for approximately sixty minutes.  Sweet wort is the result of this process then this moves onto step 3.

Step 3:  A giant kettle called a copper is used where the sweet wort is boiled and has the addition of hops.  The boiling process takes approximately an hour then filtered becoming what is then known as wort and relocated into a vessel for fermenting.

Step 4: Yeast is the next ingredient to be added to the wort which starts the fermentation process and transforms the sugar to alcohol as well as generating carbon dioxide which produces the characteristic bubbles in beer.  The fermenting process takes a few days at a specific temperature to complete this process with the rising of the contents of the fermenting vessel rising to the top.

Step 5:  Beer is the produce of the fermenting vessel with real ale becoming real ale when it is decanted into casks immediately after leaving the fermenting vessel.  Secondary fermentation takes place at this stage as there is a modicum of yeast in the beer and the desired taste is acquired.  Finings are added at the end of this process allowing the beer to be completed for consumption settling the yeast and clearing the beer.

Step 6:  The perfect pint is ready remember that cask ale is a product that is a living product and is fresh for 35 days in its unopened cask or needing to be consumed once opened within three days.  Storage is critical and a Greene King publicans and staff are skilled in handling pouring a perfect pint to their customers every time they visit a Greene King pub, restaurant or hotel.