Brewery worker
Make beer for people to enjoy in pubs and restaurants or buy in shops.
Also known as: brewer

About the job
Salary (before tax)
Weekly (average)
£470
Monthly (average)
£1,880
Yearly (average)
£24,440
Salary figures refer to this job and similar ones with comparable skills and qualifications. They only apply to Scotland.
Source:
LMI for AllWhat it's like
You would make beer for people to enjoy in pubs and restaurants or buy in shops.
Some large breweries make huge quantities of beer. Small microbreweries make limited quantities of specialist and craft beers, often experimenting with different flavours and methods of brewing.
Depending on where you work you could concentrate on certain parts of the brewing process or work on all the stages.
You would:
Get equipment ready for brewing
Prepare, weigh and mix ingredients
Keep records of ingredients
Monitor the temperature and quality of the beer as it brews
Wash and clean brewing containers and the work area
Sterilise equipment
When the brewing process is complete you would fill the clean kegs, casks, bottles or cans and label them correctly.
You might load the beer on to lorries for distribution. At some smaller breweries you may also deliver to local customers.
Large breweries use computerised machinery and so increasingly only certain work, like weighing and measuring, is done by hand.
You would often be supervised by a technical brewer who would be responsible for the entire brewing process.
You’d need to have a reliable and responsible approach to hygiene, and health and safety issues.

Hours
You would usually work 40 hours a week on a shift rota, which could include weekends and nights.

Environment
Conditions are likely to be noisy and humid, with strong smells particularly in the brewing area. The warehouse or canning plant is likely to be much cooler. You would normally be expected to wear protective clothing like overalls and safety boots. You would also work in the loading area in all weathers.
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Top specialised skills
These are the top specialised skills that have been found in job vacancies across Scotland. From April 2024 to April 2025.
- fermentation
- production process
- hazard analysis and critical control points (haccp)
- chemistry
- production schedule
- process development
- development environment
- general mathematics
- biology
- standard operating procedure
Meta skills
Here are some of the meta skills you'll need to do this job.
- managing resources
- concentrating
- attention to detail
- observation
- cooperating

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