The Business English Class (BEC Class) had an interesting tour of the Carlton Brewery Factory in Yatala, about a 30 minute drive heading north towards Brisbane. The tour started with a brief visit to their lounge area, featuring a large bar and a huge variety of beers [32 in total] that are all made at this location. The Brewery makes all the beer for Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory. Unfortunately, the taking of photos was prohibited during the tour, so most of the photos attached are taken in the lounge / sales area. 

Firstly, we were shown a brief Health and Safety video and started the tour on a ‘mini-train’. Our tour guide spoke a little fast at times but gave a good description of the beer making process. The first step is filtering and cleaning the water. Beer is made from hops and these are converted into pellets. There are two main types of hops, one for making light beers such as Fosters and another for making the darker ales such as VB. We were shown huge vats where the beer is brewed and we then moved on to the huge bottling area where literally millions of bottles are washed, sterilised, filled, capped and labelled, all in a fraction of a second. It was surprising how few people we saw, perhaps only 8 workers in total, most of whom were doing maintenance work on equipment. 

Another interesting fact, was that the company who supply the bottles are fined $1,500/minute [yes, one thousand five hundred dollars per minute] if they do not have the bottles delivered on time. The storage warehouse was huge and holds millions of dollars worth of beer but the beer is moved and distributed continually, staying in the warehouse for no more than about 3 days. The only disappointment was that our tour guide wasn’t as generous as previous guides, because she didn’t give us any beers to sample at the end of the tour. Maybe next time… 

PS – Do you know the meaning of the highlighted words – Look them up in a dictionary! 

Participants: Alex – Chile

Christina – Spain 

Isadora – Brazil 

Lloyd – S Korea 

Marc – Switzerland 

Meline – Switzerland 

Nalu – Brazil 

Rebecca – S Korea