Q&A: Keeping your cool
Where did the idea for Filton come from?
Filton Brewery Products began life as Filton Engineering - a division of Cox & Hughes - in 1981 when Martin Hughes, then a jig and tool designer, was introduced to the problems of beer cooling by his colleague Steve Cox.
Martin applied some new design logic to existing cooling methods and out of that was born the Filton Cooling Probe. Over time the Filton Probe became accepted as an industry standard and design classic.
Was there anything that helped establish Filton's reputation in the industry?
It would have to be the year we "saved the Great British Beer Festival"! After the company started Martin met a man called Bill Considine. He had experience in the brewing industry - being the lead engineer on the design and installation of the world's first automated brewing system at the Scottish & Newcastle brewery in Edinburgh.
Together they soon won the contract to cool the beers at the Great British Beer Festival. The event had been travelling around the country and had suffered severe problems with beer going off due to the heat. And as a result it was in serious danger of being abandoned.
With - at that time - a total of 1,200 kils to be cooled plus all the firkins of beers for the Champion Beer of Britain, it was a daunting task, and delays from the Campaign for Real Ale's head office meant that when the official order came through there was only five weeks to produce 640 cask coolers and insulating jackets, and two and a half miles of pipework.
The reviews from that show were fantastic and the cooling system highly praised. With minor adaptations the same system has been in use at the annual event in the 14 years since then.
What is the company's core strategy?
Basically everything in our range (from the Cooling Probe and the cooling jackets to autotilts - automatic tilting for stillages) is designed to improve cask beer quality. And our products are also aimed at demystifying cask beer. People are often too scared of it - they don't like to take it on in their pubs because they feel that they will have no idea how to handle it.
What are the benefits of having the autotilt system? Surely any licensee worth their salt knows how to stillage their cask beer properly?
The autotilt will save a licensee money. It costs £85 to buy but without it, the average licensee would waste at least three pints a barrel. With the autotilt you only waste half a pint per barrel. So not only do you make back your £85 but you then begin to actually make money on top of that.
You do a lot of work helping pubs put on beer festivals - why do you encourage that?
It's just another example of how we try to demystify cask beer. We will be running the beer festival seminars at this year's Publican Live show. They are meant to take the fear out of doing beer festivals. We have all got modern technology at our disposal now - so why are we not all using it? Sales will rise as a result.
A beer festival can be a fantastic occasion - especially if you build it round a big day, like a sports match or family occasion. We show how you can keep 11 to 14 beers in great condition outside the cellar environment.
Filton will be exhibiting at Publican Live at Olympia in London between April 2 and 4 and will be running a series of seminars on how to run a beer festival at your pub. This will form part of the Cellar Talks section of the show, to be held at the Publican Live pub.CV:
2002-present - Filton Brewery Products, sales and marketing
1991-2002 - I ran and managed five different pubs for Bass
1987-1991 - assistant manager for McDonalds
1985-1987 - kitchen assistant for NAAFI
