FOCUS ON
food production
MY BREWING JOURNEY GLEN UPWARD, Owner, Devitera I had been working in IT before I started my own microbrewery. It was only in 2016, when I was made redundant, that I saw a chance to do something different. My interest in beer went no further than my own home brew but, towards the end of 2016 I started to retrain as a brewer. I learnt the basics by watching YouTube videos and reading up on the subject. I also went on a brewery management course and visited established breweries – so I was ready to operate on a commercial scale. I identified premises and equipment and found a qualified brewer but, just as things started to take shape, it all went wrong in 2017. A trademarking issue meant I had to change my brand name (leading me create
I identified premises and equipment but, just as things started to take shape, it all went wrong in 2017.
my own made-up Latin word, Devitera). At the same time, my premises fell through and my business partner got cold feet and walked out. Still, I didn’t give up. I found new premises, bought old dairy equipment for
brewing. You’re either heating or chilling large amounts of liquid at various points so it’s not uncommon to see dairy vats being repurposed. I also sourced discarded wood from my nearest IKEA to use as makeshift worksurfaces for bottling and labelling. Then I had to work out how to upscale production. At a commercial level the rules of brewing are totally different. One of the biggest challenges I had was getting the beer from the fermenter into bottles. I didn’t have a winch or a forklift truck, so I had to use gravity to elevate the beer high enough so it could fall down into the bottling machine. Placing a cask on top of stacked pallets allowed me to pump the beer out of the fermenter into the cask – which has a small amount of sugar to carbonate it– and then flow down into the bottle filler and bottling machine. We run our entire production through this system and our record is 1,500 bottles in a day. Running a microbrewery is much harder than I first thought but I now have a range of beers and plenty of local stockists. Anybody starting up (in food or drink) should visit and talk to any fellow producers that will have you. There will always be highs and lows but you just have to keep learning from them and evolving. You can follow Glen’s brewing journey on his blog at devitera.co.uk
SCALING UP WITH SEA CHIPS
Brewery equipment and winemaking supplier Vigo says it has carried out 32 installations of American Beer Equipment (ABE), including 24 canning lines and eight brewhouses at craft breweries across the UK since 20150. ABE brewhouses are said to be “compact with precision controls and automation to produce consistent results brew after brew”, while the canning lines “produce reliable fill rates, minimal product loss and low oxygen pickup”. “As with all equipment we supply, we ensure that it meets all relevant British and European health & safety directives and standards,” said sales manager Andy Pegman. vigoltd.com
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March 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 2
I2R Packaging Solutions has unveiled a patentprotected aluminium foil tray for the food packaging industry. The i2r UltraTM is a stronger, robust, lightweight tray and has been designed to reduce its price point and environmental impact. It also includes an Alu recyclable logo and a “rinse & recycle” message. The company is initially launching i2r UltraTM with 8 foil containers as an addition to their existing “smoothwall” range with plans to expand the range longer term. i2rps.com
When former chef Daniel Pawson first began dehydrating waste salmon skins to produce crisps, he was doing it in his own garage. “At that point we weren’t manufacturing them, we were just testing it out and making them for friends and family,” said Pawson. It wasn’t long before Pawson moved to the restaurant he was working at and then to a small production kitchen in Leeds producing just enough to supply a few well-known retailers including Harrods and Whole Foods Market. After a spot on BBC’s Dragon’s Den which saw Pawson reject businessman Touker Suleyman’s offer of £30,000 for a 35% stake in the company, Sea Chips secured the backing of Jonathan Brown –a major player in the US salmon market. Brown is now a
shareholder of Sea Chips and has invested £250,000. His involvement has led to key meetings with buyers in the UK, and allowed Pawson to move production to a “state-of-the-art” 10,000 sq ft factory in Cumbria. The new facility (pictured below) allows the company to replicate its production process on a larger scale to now produce 10,000 packs a day, Pawson tells FFD. A large cooker now dehydrates the salmon skins but, Pawson explains, that as the skins pass through the oven via a
conveyor he can control the air flow at different times. “You can hit it with lots of heat and air. This pushes the oil off and creates a really crisp, dry product,” said Pawson, adding that it creates a whole batch in 20 minutes. A band saw cuts the salmon skin crisps before they are placed into huge tubs, mixed with seasoning and then bagged by hand. “Our next challenge is to move into new prepackaging material which can disintegrate in 180 days on a compost heap.” sea-chips.co.uk