This system, commissioned and installed by Hungarian manufacturer Zip Technologies, is complemented by a bottling line from Italian firm Framax. The Hungarian business, in Palmer’s words, worked with the team every step of the way to help maximise their space, moving around tanks on CAD drawings, responding to demands for more storage, and ensuring no pathways and loading bays were compromised.

“We always told ourselves that if we were going to brew professionally with our own company, then we would do it properly. We spent months putting together this plan so we were not going to settle for second best. Call it the OCD in me!” says Palmer. “I hung out with a group of ex-pat brewers in Japan. They were so meticulous, so passionate.

They would talk about their setups in detail, about cleaning, sanitisation and for me, this matched my own outlook. I had received some brewing textbooks from my father and from reading them, re-reading them, and reading them again, the main point that came across was the importance of the setup.”

He continues: “Yes you can make good beers from a standard setup, but doing that over and over, with that repeatability, is helped no end by a quality setup. With Todd having worked in Germany, and with my own learnings, we knew that if you want to make a wide variety of beers, that you need control over the mash.

“You need a homogenous wort each and every time, and you need the least amount of ability for microorganisms to get into the process during transfer and movement of the beer.”