St Austell Brewery Visitor Centre

An engaging new exhibtion guiding vistors through the brewing process.

The challenge

To create a new visitor experience tour for St Austell Brewery with a brief to represent the four main stages of the brewing process; water, barley, hops and yeast.  A key part of the brief from the brewery team was for it it to be tactile and textural and to show the brewing processes through the senses of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch.

The response

From the initial brief our in-house design team developed concepts and ideas with a focus on a key feature for each part of the brewing process.   Once the concepts and layouts were refined so began the technical design phase and then onto production which included curved walls, interactive displays using copper, steel, timber and natural acrylic stone. False walls were created to house custom made picture frames, fabrication using acrylic to create hoppers and ingredient tubes along with graphic panels and traditional signwriting onto the original walls. Some of the design elements, such as the granite water feature, required careful planning due to the weight loading and finding just the right millstone for one element meant a journey across the south west.

The outcome

At the heart of the exhibit is a small batch brewery.  The copper theme continues around the exhibit with highly polished copper elements featuring on many of the displays which makes for a beautiful finish tying together the brewery, the bar area and the exhibit itself.  Touch screen interactives enable visitors to explore the ‘Wall of Fame’ and search the various inns across the brewery estate along with a range of other audio and kinaesthetic interactives throughout the space .  The finished result is the creation of a welcoming and engaging space for visitors of all ages.