Adnams Brewery and more (Day 1 - The Brewery)

When I 'retired' last year, the company very kindly gave me vouchers for an Adnams Brewery trip.  It's half-term, so our current child care responsibilities gave us a little break.  So, off to Southwold and around the Adnams Brewery we went.  Weather-wise, it was a horrible day and raining quite hard when we got there.  I don't know Southwold that well, the nearest parking space I could find was 7-minutes walk from the Brewery, plenty of time to get soaked.  The hotel, though, is 30 seconds walk from the Brewery and provides some very nice lunches. We had plenty of time and enjoyed a leisurely lunch, then darted across to the Brewery about half an hour early. 

	Here I am sitting next to a pink pig, whose specific significance I'm not sure that I heard about, you can see the Adnams history and historic bottles in the background.  The plan had been to drink from the Tankard, I was also given, when we got to the tastings, but in the rush to get out of the rain, it was left in the car.  Plans get changed by circumstances all the time. Next to the pink pig is a blue crocodile.  The significance of the blue crocodile is that it ate the younger of the two brothers that founded Adnams, while he was visiting the Zambezi.  Well, I'm not swearing that it was a blue crocodile, perhaps someone has sampled too much of the Broadside, or the forerunner to Ghostship (8% ABV)
	Here's Jo, she's not asleep, just looking at her phone.

I've been on brewery tours before, not Adnams though, which is about as up to date as it gets.  No trays of grain scattered across floors and swept down through hoppers to the floor below. Everything is shining stainless steel, fully automated. We saw the control room, and I saw the cables (Ethernet)  in the ducting, very nice job they had done too. When product needs to be moved, it is pumped from one place to the next.  The operation is as energy efficient as they can make it, and they are very proud of their leading edge methods. They can run multiple brews per day. Nothing is wasted, the by-products are used to feed local cattle, who generate less methane when they're eating brewery by-product.

The brewing process, drawn by the same man who created the clock on Southwold pier.

So to the tasting room, where there is a wide selection of beers to try.  It was no surprise to me that I didn't like the lager, and I already knew that I like the ales. Even Jo, who is not a bear drinker, enjoyed the Ghostship.  Then there was the inevitable voucher, so we headed up the road to the Brewery shop, and stocked up a little.

Only having drunk a few 1/4 pints and a few mouthfuls, I was still OK to drive.  By now the rain had stopped, so we took a short stroll past the pier and back before driving to Yoxford for the night.

Our B&B - Copperbeeches - is on a tight bend on the A12.  I thought it was going to be a noisy disturbed night.  I was wrong, the house has secondary glazing throughout, and we were in a room at the back of the house.  We were the first guests in the newly refurbished room.  

Just down the road, less than five minutes walk away, is the King's Head.  A pub we visited in 2016, the last time we stayed in Yoxford (see: https://3cephas.blogspot.com/search/label/Yoxford).  It was as lovely that night as it was today.