Tennent Caledonian Brewery
One of our long-awaited visits has been realized - a tour of a brewery!
With a rich brewing heritage in Glasgow for over 450 years, the Tennent Caledonian Wellpark Brewery on Duke Street in Glasgow was the clear choice of place to visit. Plus, it's not very far away 😀
Yes, we're aware of The Kelburn Brewery in Barrhead but, as far as we're know, they don't yet do tours. Maybe some day...
Besides, Tennent's lager was a staple for many of us Scots growing up in the 40s, 50 and 60s. We have a few unenlightened (but very welcome) Sassenachs among us so we can also flag this activity as educational 🙄.
The Neilston Men's Group and a lot of lager.
So, 16 of us hopped on a train into Glasgow and then out to the brewery in Duke Street. After we all signed in, we got given some health and safety guidance and a short history of brewing in Glasgow in their visitor centre, which has exhibits about the origins of brewing at Wellpark, a rare collection of vintage and retro Tennent's packaging, and videos of Tennent's adverts from over the decades.
Once we'd had the briefing and a good wander around the visitor centre, we headed upstairs to get ready for the tour - wearing of the hi-vis tops and silly hairnets for those us not sporting out own headwear.
Some of you might remember the Tennent's Lager Lovelies, a marketing campaign that put a range of pretty girls on the cans, and the visitor centre has a fair number of them on display. The campaign started back in 1958 with Sweetheart Stout cans and bottles but ended in 1991, as things moved with the times.
The cans trade well online and still have quite a following:
...and there's quite a few articles about them online:
Our tour guide Laura was pretty knowledgeable about the brewery and the brewing process and gave us an informative tour, leading us outside and into the brewhouse, which is where they brew the lager in an enormous sealed vessel. I'm sure she said it was the second largest in Europe after Heineken these days.
From there we went back outside, past the huge fermentation, filtering and settling tanks and headed for the bottling plant and a tour inside that, albeit off the factory floor on a raised gantry.
Looking from the bottling plant to the brewhouse.
Something worth noting if you're thinking of taking a tour - they only brew and can or bottle for three of four days a week so, as we found out, the Friday was a quiet day with nothing running. If you want to see thousands of bottles and cans being whizzed around the plant, then choose an earlier day of the week. Here are some more photos taken on our wanders around the plant:
We finished our tour back in the wee bar, having a pint of unpasteurised Tennent's Tank Lager, which just means it's freshly brewed, albeit with a short shelf life. Our pints were brewed just the day before but to make the lager sellable into retail, it really needs pasteurising to increase the shelf life.
We also had the option of sampling some of their export beers for a small fee. Michael couldn't resist so ordered samples of the Tennent's Whisky Oak, Tennent's Stout and Tennent's Extra. I think we liked the Stout and Whisky Oak more than the Extra, which reminded me of Tennent's Super Lager - just too strong at 9% alcohol.
You can see their full export range here: https://tennents.com/en/our-beers/
I think we all enjoyed our day, and even learned a bit about the large-scale brewing process and to always bring your own hat, and then some of us went into town afterwards for some "lunch".
If you fancy a tour of the Tennent Caledonian Brewery, then you'll find all the information you need on their web site:
…and you'll find a fair bit of background information and history about it here: