Fuller's micro is a model in many ways

Visitors to Fuller's refurbished brewery shop have known for some time that a new pilot brewery was coming – you can see it behind a glass wall at the back of the shop. It was still under construction when the shop reopened though, and it didn't officially start brewing until quite recently.

Sadly, I missed the official opening, but when I read about it I wondered where the beers brewed there would end up. To find out, I of course looked on Untappd for check-ins and there they were, in the brewery shop. So one lunchtime last week I nipped over there for a look.

As I walked around the shop to see what I could find, I could also see through the glass a brewer, back turned to me, busily shovelling out the mash tun. I spotted several of the beers on the growler bar, available in two-litre takeaways, then looked up to see the brewer waving at me – it was Hayley Marlor (who was, incidentally, co-creator of Matariki, my favourite beer from the first Fuller's & Friends series which is back in the shops), and she invited me in for a look around.

The pilot brewery is built to more or less replicate the large one, so it includes items you'd normally not find in a 16hl/10 barrel microbrewery, such as a Steel's Masher. But it's also been given some features to make it more of a showcase (and incidentally easier to manage) such as a vertical window into the side of the mash tun. This means the brewer can see what's going on under the surface, and is rather unusual, to say the least.

Of course it can't replicate the main brewery exactly. For instance the volumes are lower, so you don't get the same hydrostatic pressures build up in the fermenters, and that changes how the yeast works. But it lets them come close, so as well as testing new ingredients and recipes it will help train new brewers on the main brewery processes.

Hayley said that as well as doing test brews and short-run beers, the brewkit will be used to pilot some of the future Fuller's & Friends collaborations. In particular, that's those with breweries overseas – with the UK collaborations so far, they've done the pilot batch at the partner brewery, then moved to Chiswick for the main production run, but that's rather less practical when the partner is half way around the world.

The idea is that each of Fuller's brewers will have charge of the pilot brewery for a year – Hayley was lucky enough to be the first. She expects to brew once a week to start with, and has already done several brews. Hopefully, as well as the growlers we'll see some casks and bottles available around London and at festivals before too long!