Dark Star Brewery - Official Opening

[SiHoltye]

Hi,

I managed to blag an invite to this event yesterday where Dark Star officially opened their new brewery in Partridge Green, West Sussex. It's a 45 barrel 4 vessel plant with 9 fermenters. Very shiney. Everyone was very friendly and I learnt a lot about the process on a commercial scale. Though not too much about their recipes or ingredients as they'd removed all the hop and yeast evidence . They do use Warminster Maltings for their grain though, and no Fuggles are used in the brewery

Brewing control panel

Whirlpool front left, Copper back right, additional hop/break reduction tank inbetween as Mark makes it hard adding so many late hops a waxing installer told me Plate heat exchanging that recieves water from the CLT and recircs it back to the HLT

CLT on left (HLT behind it out of sight) MT in the centre

Lauter tun with 6 take offs from around the circumference

Grain Mill & Hopper

Fermentation Control Panel (one fermenting, rest conditioning)

View from back of fermenters to whirlpool and copper

Airlock with adjustable pressure control (set at 1.25bar/17.4psi)

Keg storage

Mr Protz cutting the cord


Free beer, and I tried them all! My head hurts today!

[oblivious]

Oh nice pics, looks like you had a great day

[adm]

Very nice......I wonder how much that lot cost!

Lucky you...

[WishboneBrewery]

NO fuggles!!!
But why?

Cheers for the looks around.

[mysterio]

Wow shiny!

Yeah I was the same, "what, no Fuggles?"

[SiHoltye]

I dunno, one of the brewery hands said it was like a dirty word???

Fermenting their beers takes between 6 days and 10 days dependant on the OG. The 10 days I think applies to their RIS (I didn't know they brewed one) and then generally it's into the cold conditioning phase around 9°C for a couple of weeks. Into casks then out to pubs. They don't like Nottingham according to one worker, whether that means they don't use it often or what I don't know. I'd had conflicting info from the brewery before that they used a combo of Notts, S04 and US05. Sounds likely they might not use Notts as isn't US05 similar? Also they have connections with a US brewery so US05 seems more likely. Dry hopping happens at least in the Six Hop.

[DarloDave]

that looks ace

[mysterio]

Possibly the differences between Nottingham and US-05 become more pronounced on a bigger scale with the deep FVs. I prefer Nottingham personally.

[fractureman]

was down at the evening star pub in brighton today love dark star beers

[Chunk1234]

Great post, thanks. I love Dark Star beers, their seasonal Six Hop IPA is incredible.

[floydmeddler]

Yum yum. Dark Star beers are lovely. Have inspired some of my own brews actually, Espresso Stout and Hophead being a few. Best Sussex brewery in my opinion.

[DarloDave]

Agreed about the six hop. Had a pint of it over the weekend and thought it was excellent.