While it’s fresh on my mind: for the Operations Management class I’m taking as part of my whole quest to get a business degree (and somehow translate that into a life of untold riches), we got to go on a factory tour! I went to a beer brewery.

Specifically, we went to the Adnams Beer Brewery in Southwold, which has been around there in some shape or form since the 1300s (honestly, if you haven’t at least been around 100 years, do you feel ashamed to say it in the U.K.?), to try and apply concepts like “swift, even flow” and the “service process matrix” and “lean manufacturing.” I… hope whatever essay I wrote about this for that class did just that.

I took a lot of pictures, but ended up only using three for the final essay. So… this is what a beer brewery looks like, guys!

There are a lot of pipes…

Hey! Whatchu looking at, fellow classmate?

Oh! It’s beer being brewed!

Afterwards, we went to take in some of the local colour and eat some local cuisine.

The sleepy town of Southwold was cold and windy that day, but still pretty in a desolate Wuthering Heights kind of way.

Local cuisine is… incredibly fried.

Somebody else's deep-fried mackerel - one of many deep-fried options on the menu.

I had two Adnams Broadside beers that did taste pretty good while I was drinking them (I’m admittedly terrible at reviewing beers and won’t even try here – you’re better off just googling Broadside review to get bits on tasting notes or what not), but I got a stomach ache on the ride back and felt so gross that the rest of my day was basically finished.I collapsed into bed at around 6:45pm and didn’t get out until the next morning.

Broadside!

At first, I blamed the beers… but looking back at these pictures, that might have been unfair. More likely, it was an overdose of fried food. I just don’t really eat that many fried things regularly.

Fried mushrooms... so fried that you can't really even tell they're mushrooms.

Fish (haddock) and chips. To be fair, it's not like I didn't expect this dish to be fried. But man, it was a lot of fish and chips.

So Adnams, I’m sorry I blamed your beer. I quite liked it and probably should have taken your recommendation to drink it with “stews and steak or kidney and ale pies… sausage dishes… A mature cheese ploughmans or cheeseboard of hard English cheeses” rather than a giant portion of fried haddock and chips. I will try harder to adhere to your advice next time.

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