SWMBO and I took the tour of Burleigh Brewing today (not content with living in a brewery, SWMBO look it upon herself to book us in as an early birthday present for me ).
The brewery is small (in comparison to the mega breweries you can tour) - you see 2 rooms, the bar lounge area, which is also where the production vessels reside, and the fermentation room (5 or 6 11KL CCVs, IIRC). So most of the tour consists of brewmaster Brennan Fielding talking. Which is not a bad thing.
I found him enaging and entertaining. He explained every stage of the brewing process, passing around ingredients and indicating the relevant vessel behind him, in a way that was was not impenetrable to the average know-nothing, but still contained a few nuggets of knowledge for the intermediate (all grain) brewer like myself.
After the tour and couple of steins, I got talking to him, opening with the question of how Big Head is made low-carb (they don't use any additives, so I was hoping to have explained the alternative to using those gross enzymes that the megas employ). He stated that he ditched 15 test batches before mastering the 11 or so factors that make a low carb beer. One of these is apparently the coarseness of the grist, which intrigued me, so I asked "more coarse, or fine", to which he responded: "I'm not telling you!". I guess it's a trade secret . I laughed that off, being a bit tipsy by then (am still right now, in fact), but generally had an interesting and informative conversation. His passion for his craft really shows.
I was surprised to learn that he has never heard of the no-chill method. He claimed that if the wort is not cooled and innoculated within something like 2 hours, DMS reforms. I gave a brief explanation of how I no-chill and enlisted SWMBO to defend my beers against cabbage accusations. This mild altercation was put on hold when our cab arrived and I promised to return next Friday for the "Brew House Bash" with a bottle of no-chilled SNPA clone to prove my point. Anyway, that's the end of the story, I sense I've been waffling (as I said still drunk, sorry).
Burleigh Brewing tour: 4.5 stars (would be 5, but I was not offered the opportunity to climb into the mash tun)