Rolling out the barrel at Cornwall’s St Austell Brewery: Why Joe’s beer is the talk of the town

• Watch our report from Graham Lewis, including a tour of the brewery

A young brewer from Cornwall who has just completed his apprenticeship has had his first beer selected to be sold nationally by Wetherspoons next month. Joe Baker works for St Austell Brewery and has named his recipe ‘Average Joe’

Joe said: “I went to meet some friends recently, and they've all got jobs, but everyone's most excited that I'm brewing and the fact that I've got a beer in Wetherspoons is the talk of the town.”

It’s a double celebration for Cornwall’s largest independent brewer as they mark Cask Ale Week, celebrating the best of British Beer.

The brewery has been producing cask ales for 172 years. Georgina Young, Brewing Director said: “There's nothing added to cask beer like carbon dioxide. There's nothing filtered, there’s nothing taken away. So it is the most natural form of beer that there is.

“And it's live, it has a short shelf life because it has yeast in it. Once a cask has been opened, it needs to be drunk within three days. So it's really fresh.”

Beer is made up of 95% water and Ms Young said: “The local soft water here in Cornwall makes a wonderful pint of beer that is then mixed in the mash tun with malted barley.

“We buy as much barley as we can from Cornwall, which then gets malted so that we can use it in the brewing process.

“People also know beer for its hops, they are a perennial plant that actually gives the beer its bitterness and also its flavour.

“But it's the yeast which is the magic ingredient because the yeast actually converts the sugars in the malted barley to the alcohol and a lot of the other flavour components that we have in the beer.”

While the beer is fermenting the brewery staff test it every 6 hours to make sure the yeast is doing its job creating the alcohol. That’s just one of more than 110 tests the beer will undergo before it reaches the pubs.

Ms Young said: “Of course, the most important test is the taste.”

It takes 7 or 8 days from the time the process starts to the beer being put into casks. Ms Young explained: “It's really important to still have some yeast present in the beer so that the secondary fermentation can take place in the cask while it’s in the cold room and in the cellars.

“The containers come in and we empty them, wash them and then we fill them with lovely fresh cask beer.”

St Austell Brewery also collaborates with small independants to exchange ideas in their small batch brewery.

One of them is Ivybridge Brewing, a social enterprise giving job opportunities to people with learning disabilities.

Simon Rundle, the founder of Ivybridge Brewing said: “We're in a much smaller location with a much smaller brewing kit. So for them to actually see how brewing works on a larger scale, it's a really great education.

"And it’s all part of what we're trying to deliver for all people, which is to actually let them see a little bit more about the brewing world and to think about potential job opportunities in the brewery world as well.”

St Austell Brewery, which is still family run, provides employment to around 1,700 people and produces 288,000 pints every week.