Rob Jones, Filtration Operative

Lives: Faversham, Kent

Age: 46

Career: Rob grew up near Faversham, living in Boughton, Davington and Oare, and attended Abbey School. He left at 16 to join a Youth Training Scheme for Sea Fishing, and worked as a trawlerman for a two and a half years. He then worked for 18 years at the iron foundry in Oare, before joining Shepherd Neame as a filtration operative in 2004.
 
Favourite Shepherd Neame beer: Whitstable Bay Blonde

Favourite non-Shepherd Neame drink: Coors Light

What is your role? I am part of a five-strong team which runs Shepherd Neame’s filtration room. All the beer produced by the brewery comes through us before it goes to the bottling hall or keg plant. We normally get through between 16,000 to 20,000 pints an hour. Our overall aim is to ensure that the bottling hall and keg plant are kept in beer, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We also look after the rundown of the cask beer in the cask yard.

What does a typical day involve? The filtration room is constantly running, so we work a three shift pattern from Monday to Sunday to cover it: typically early from 6am to 2pm, late from 2pm to 10pm and nights from 10pm to 6am. We normally only have to do nights once a month. The beer goes through our centrifuge which takes out the yeast, then goes to the chiller, before going through the filter. The laboratory team then analyses it and if it meets the necessary specification, it goes onward for distribution. Cask beer is slightly different, as it is more manual. It goes through a centrifuge but not a filter, and we take a sample at the end of each day for the shift brewer to taste the morning after the rundown.

What personal characteristics help you in your role? You don’t need any specific qualifications for this role, you can just learn on the job, but you do need to be fairly good at maths as you have lots of calculations to make when the beer needs adjusting. It is also important to be able to undertake manual work. I personally have a real interest in science as well, so I enjoy going over to the lab and watching the beer be analysed. The most important thing, however, is working well as part of a team.

What do you enjoy about your job? The fact that no two days are the same, as we produce so many beers, which all pose different challenges. It is also great to have a role which involves a mixture of manual work and analysis, as you have to plan the schedule for the week and work out the adjustments that may need to be made. I had never done shift work before I started at Shepherd Neame, but I really enjoy the flexibility of it. For example, when I first started and my children were younger, for the first time in my life I was able to take them to school or pick them up. Our team all get on really well, so we are all happy to help each other out by swapping shifts when necessary.

What is tough about the job? When I started the role, it all seemed very complicated, with what seemed like hundreds of pipes and systems in the filtration room which I didn’t understand. But I started off working in the cask yard to get an idea of the beer movement in a less complicated way, and then gradually began learning about the other parts of the filtration process.