Bluetoungue Brewery Starts Production In Warnervale

7am this morning marked a momentous occasion for the beer industry in Australia, with brewing commencing at the brand new 120 million dollar Bluetongue Brewery at Warnervale. The brewery has taken 18 months to reach operational status and boasts world class technology enabling the Bluetongue brewery to brew a wide variety of beer styles.

Bluetongue’s Brewmaster, Dermot O’Donnell says, “Starting up the brewery was such an exciting moment for the brewing team today. The 2 years of intense planning, hard work and around the clock commitment from the team seem to have paid dividends and we have had a successful start to the brewing process.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the new Bluetongue Brewery team, which has enormous potential to brew the highest quality beer brands. Pacific Beverages has created a very flexible brewery, which can brew a variety of beers ranging from traditional European lagers to modern American and Australian beer styles. The Brewery has significant brewing expertise with brewers from the original Bluetongue Brewery combining with the international expertise that the SABMiller team bring.”

O’Donnell explains, “The Bluetongue Brewery is unique in its design because it has twin-stream brew houses – a large and a small one under one roof, which allow for brewing flexibility to suit consumer and customer demand.

“You can be assured that the new Bluetongue Brewery has been engineered for taste, quality and flexibility. As an example, no one in Australia is utilising decoction technology to make traditional European lagers. This is a mashing technique that intensively extracts malt flavours to produce fuller flavoured beer.

“We are also using genuine draught sterile filtration, which is a special technique developed to maintain freshness and brightness in beer; the sort of beer that brewers love to drink. The centrifuge technology, which uses centrifugal force to separate the final yeast from beer post fermentation,enables ultimate beer clarity and polishes the beer to perfection. Sterile filling means the beer is not heat pasteurised and results in that wonderful brewery fresh taste that will make our beers unique.”

Pacific Beverages has successfully managed so far to capture 10% of the Australian market since its inception four years ago and their new brewery has been designed around a modular format allowing expansion as the company grows further in Australia.

The new brewery can also boast about being one of the most environmentally sustainable breweries in the world. The sustainability efforts have focused on six main areas namely water and energy consumption, product packaging usage, waste generation (water and solids), atmospheric emissions and considered land use.

The largest investment has been in the water recovery plant, which utilises the most modern technology including an anaerobic methane reactor, aerobic (membrane biological reactor) and reverse osmosis treatments to produce high quality reusable water. This recycled water will be channelled in to the general maintenance of the brewery including wash down and cleaning, boilers, refrigeration, staff amenities and fire water top-up that results in water usages equalling about half the global average. The Brewery has also invested in storm-water harvesting to capture 900,000 litres for later supply to help sustain the much needed water for the future Porters Creek scheme.

Peter McLoughlin further expands on the sustainability credentials, “From an energy perspective, we are in a position to recover the methane from the anaerobic part of the water plant and feed it into a methane boiler. When the boiler is operating at a full head of steam we will get a 15% reduction in energy. Combining this with all the other sustainability measures we have implemented across the brewery, such as flash pasteurisation and dry bottle conveyors, our carbon footprint has been substantially reduced”.

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Some Bluetongue History

Bluetongue Brewery was founded in 2003 by four entrepreneurs who set out to create a premium Australian beer with the iconic stamp of their local region. The original Bluetongue Brewery is located in the Hunter region at Cameron Park, where a team of passionate local brewers oversee the creation of the Bluetongue range of beers. After being purchased by Pacific Beverages in 2007, the brand continues to grow in popularity. Pacific Beverages, the joint venture Company formed by Australia’s largest non-alcoholic beverage company Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) and global brewer SABMiller, has invested $120 million into the construction of the new brewery which will be fully operational by mid 2010. The $120 million Bluetongue Brewery, which will have an initial annual capacity of 50 million litres, expandable to 100 million litres over time, will be the State’s second largest brewery.

Fast Fact: The new Bluetongue Brewery can produce up to 1 million bottles per day at full production. When at full capacity each days production of bottles placed end to end would stretch 109km!

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