Tower brewery
The purpose of a tower brewery is to allow this multi-stage flow process to continue by gravity, rather than lifting or pumping the brew liquor between stages.
Once the bulk raw materials, water and barley malt, are first raised to the top of the tower, they can then mostly flow downwards without requiring further pumping.
The malted grains are lifted up the tower mechanically, by either a sack hoist or a continuous elevator.
From here they are fed into a grist mill (4th floor) which crushes the grains to open their seed coat and allow good extraction of their contents.
The wort is lautered or run off for brewing and then sparging, spraying the drained mash from above with more hot liquor for a couple more hours, extracts the remaining sugars.
[8] A non-gravity process now takes place, where the liquor is pumped back up the tower to coolers in the fourth floor attic.
The large area needed often extends into a lower building alongside the brewing tower.
The engine's primary tasks are to lift the two main ingredients: water and barley malt up the tower but other tasks are performed as well:[2] Boilers to supply the steam engine are housed in a single-storey boilerhouse alongside the main brewhouse, usually with a prominent chimney to provide natural draught.
Some breweries, such as Hook Norton, still use direct heat beneath these brew kettles, but this raises problems of temperature control and local overheating.
[13] Media related to Brewery engines at Wikimedia Commons Many brewers used their building as a form of advertising, both by displaying the beer's identity prominently on an impressive building, and by representing the brewery on beer bottle labels or other advertising.
These catered to a large distant and export market, encouraged by expanding rail transport in this period, and the brewery's image was an important part of this early brand identity.
Brewing was a profitable business and brewers could afford to indulge their architects with details such as Mock Tudor half-timbering and polychrome brick.
