Every month, The Five Points Brewing Co host a brewery tour on a Saturday afternoon. For £12 (plus booking fee), Lasting two hours, guests sample five beers, take a tour of the brewery floor and are regaled with the history of the brewery. Everyone is given a Five Points chalice to take home and the opportunity to purchase more beer onsite.
When I took the tour in May 2016, a row of banquet tables were set up in the heart of the brewery. In total, we were a group of 23 enthusiastic guests- only four of us had never been on a brewery tour before- and the majority were familiar with the Five Points' range. As we considered each beer in turn, we were provided with approximately half a glass each to swill.
Questions were encouraged throughout the two hour tour and company representatives demonstrated exhaustive background knowledge of the company and beer in general. We were whisked around the brewery floor, invited to climb ladders and peer inside a kettle, then to stick our heads inside the mash tun. We became acquainted with the bottling line, a hand-me-down from Beavertown Brewery, which could fill up to 2,200 bottles per hour. The canning line can manage up to 3,600 cans per hour and we received an animated demonstration of how the cans slingshot through the machine.
The brewery tour was an edifying insight into how another independent London brewery quickly outgrew its confines and made its mark as an institution proffering a seminal range of beers. read more