IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 39

Text A — OLD TOLL BRIDGE BREWERY: GUIDED TOUR INFORMATION

Old Toll Bridge Brewery has been producing traditional ales on this site since 1841. We typically welcome visitors throughout the year on the following basis. Standard guided tour (90 minutes, £18.00 per adult) - Departures: Tuesday to Saturday at 11:00, 13:30 and 15:30 - Generally includes the malt store, the brewhouse, the fermentation cellar and the cask-racking line - Concludes with a tasting flight of four 100ml samples in the visitor tasting room - Pre-booking is essential; same-day availability cannot be guaranteed

Extended brewer's tour (3 hours, £42.00 per adult) - Departures: First Saturday of each month only, at 10:00 - may include everything in the standard tour plus the cooperage, the laboratory and the maturation cellar - Concludes with a six-sample paired tasting and a complimentary half-pint of the head brewer's seasonal special - Minimum age 18; pre-booking essential at least one week in advance

Children's brewery experience (60 minutes, £6.00 per child) - Saturdays at 12:30 only, school holidays only - Open to children aged 8-15 accompanied by a paying adult - No tasting element; participants instead make their own labels and sample our house-brewed root beer

Group bookings of twelve or more generally receive a 10% discount on the standard tour. Wheelchair access is available throughout the brewhouse and tasting room but not in the cellars (steps only); a virtual cellar tour is provided on a tablet for visitors who cannot access this area in person.

All visitors should wear closed-toe shoes. The brewhouse floor is sometimes wet, and steel-capped boots can normally be borrowed at reception (sizes 4-12) at no charge. Visitors are certainly not permitted to smoke, vape or use mobile telephones inside the brewing areas; phones may be used briefly in the visitor tasting room and the gift shop. Photographs are welcome anywhere except in the laboratory.

Refunds are available up to 48 hours before the tour. Within 48 hours, tours may be rescheduled once, free of charge, to any available date within the following twelve months.

Text B — TASTING ROOM RULES FOR VISITORS

The visitor tasting room is part of every tour and is also open separately on Friday and Saturday evenings (18:00 - 22:00, last entry 21:00) for ticketed tasting events.

Age policy: No alcohol is served to anyone under the age of 18 under any circumstances. Visitors who appear under 25 will be asked for photo identification. Acceptable forms are: a current passport, a photocard driving licence, or a national PASS-accredited proof-of-age card. Photocopies, expired documents and digital photographs are not accepted.

Designated drivers: Any visitor on a guided tour who is the named driver of a vehicle may exchange their tasting flight for a non-alcoholic alternative (a brewery-branded soft drink and a packet of locally-made crisps) at no extra cost. Please tell your tour guide at the start of the tour.

Conduct: Loud or disruptive behaviour will normally result in immediate removal without refund. Outside food and drink may not be consumed in the tasting room, although small bottled water is permitted on hot days. The brewery reserves the right to refuse service to any visitor who appears intoxicated on arrival.

Cellar door sales: A maximum of six 500ml bottles or two cases of twelve may be purchased per person per visit, subject to a valid photo ID for any purchase over £100. Spent grain (free, by arrangement) is available for collection by allotment-holders and small-scale livestock keepers on weekday mornings only.

Allergens: Most of our beers generally contain barley, wheat and traces of nuts may be present in seasonal specials. A full allergen sheet is displayed in the tasting room and is also available by email on request.

Text C — OLD TOLL BRIDGE BREWERY: CELLAR-MASTER APPRENTICESHIP

Old Toll Bridge Brewery is currently recruiting two apprentices for a three-year cellar-master apprenticeship, beginning in October. This is a fully paid Level 4 brewing apprenticeship recognised by the Institute of Brewing and Distilling. Successful candidates work alongside the head cellar-master and the brewing team while studying for a recognised qualification.

The apprenticeship is divided into three years:

Year 1 — Foundations Apprentices typically spend most of their time on the brewhouse floor: weighing in malt, mashing, sparging, boiling, hop additions, transfer to fermenter and cleaning of vessels. One day per week is set aside for college release at a partner institution, where apprentices study brewing science, raw materials, fermentation theory and quality assurance.

Year 2 — Cellar work The second year transfers the apprentice to the cellars. Tasks typically include cask conditioning, racking, fining, dry-hopping, monitoring of cellar temperature and yeast management. Apprentices begin to work some weekend and evening shifts during this year, and are introduced to the management of cellar stock.

Year 3 — Quality and management The third year combines laboratory work (sensory analysis, microbiology and basic gravimetric tests) with introductory cellar-management duties: supplier ordering, stock rotation, mentoring of new starters and assistance with the visitor tasting events. The year concludes with the End Point Assessment, a combined practical and written examination set by the Institute.

Pay starts at the apprenticeship minimum and rises with each year completed. By Year 3 apprentices earn approximately 80% of the qualified cellar-master rate. Working hours during the first year are 37.5 per week, day shifts only; weekend and evening work begins in Year 2 (rota basis, with at least seven days' notice).

All necessary protective equipment is provided: chemical-resistant gloves, eye protection, brewery-issue boots and high-vis jackets for the racking line. Apprentices are expected to provide their own black trousers and a plain black t-shirt for the tasting room.

Eligibility: Applicants must be at least 18 on the start date and entitled to work in this country. GCSEs at grade 4 or above in English, mathematics and a science subject (or equivalent) are essential. Practical experience of homebrewing is welcomed but not required. We particularly encourage applications from women and from candidates from local communities under-represented in the brewing trade.

Application: Submit a CV and a one-page covering letter to cellar-apprenticeship@oldtollbridge.example. The closing date is the 1st of May. Shortlisted candidates are invited to an assessment day in early June, which includes a sensory-evaluation exercise and a tour of the cellars. Offers are normally made by the end of June.

Text D — APPRENTICE FIRST-WEEK INDUCTION

In the first week, every new apprentice completes the following induction with the assistant cellar-master.

Day 1: A tour of the entire brewery, including the rarely-visited cooperage. Issue of personal protective equipment, locker key and security pass. Introduction to the brewery's hazard register and to the location of all emergency-stop buttons.

Day 2: Cask hygiene. Apprentices observe a full cask wash and learn the procedure for caustic and acid handling. No apprentice may handle caustic cleaning chemicals on their own until a written competency check has been signed off by the head cellar-master; this normally takes place at the end of week four.

Day 3: Manual handling. A practical session covering safe lifting of casks (firkin: 41kg net; kilderkin: 82kg net), the use of pallet trucks and the brewery rule that casks above firkin size must always be moved in pairs.

Day 4: Working at height and confined spaces. Practical familiarisation with the fermentation vessel walkways and an introduction to the brewery's tank-entry permit system. No apprentice is permitted to enter a fermentation vessel during the apprenticeship; entries are made by qualified contractors under a senior brewer's supervision.

Day 5: First aid for the brewery floor, including an introduction to the brewery's chemical splash protocol and the location of all eyewash stations. Successful completion is recorded on the apprentice's induction card. A refresher first-aid module is delivered annually.

A mentor — a qualified cellar-master with at least five years' experience — is allocated to each apprentice for the duration of the three years. The mentor normally meets the apprentice weekly during Year 1 and fortnightly thereafter.

A Beer has been brewed in the British Isles for at least three thousand years. Archaeological residues from the late Bronze Age reportedly include the chemical signatures of fermented barley, and Iron Age sites have yielded pottery vessels with traces consistent with grain alcohol. For most of this long history beer was a domestic rather than a commercial product, brewed in the household alongside bread, and broadly drunk by everyone — including children — as a safer alternative to often-contaminated water. The story of British beer is therefore generally older than the story of British brewing as an industry, and it is the industry, rather than the drink itself, that has been transformed in the last three centuries.

B The single most important early change was the introduction of hops. Until the late Middle Ages most English ale was unhopped and was flavoured instead with a mixture of bittering herbs known as gruit. Hops were grown commercially in Flanders from the thirteenth century and the technique of hopping crossed the Channel into Kent and Sussex from the fifteenth century onwards. The new drink, distinguished from old-style "ale" by being called "beer," kept far better than its unhopped predecessor because of the natural preservative properties of hop acids. The displacement of ale by beer was contested — sixteenth-century records contain repeated complaints that hopped beer was unwholesome — but by 1600 the technique was almost universal.

C For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, beer was brewed at three quite different scales. Domestic brewing for household consumption was carried out by housewives or servants and remained legal and common. Public-house brewing was performed by tenants of small alehouses, often using equipment supplied by their landlord. The third scale — and the one that would change everything — was the rise of large commercial breweries in London. By 1750 a handful of London houses, including Whitbread and Truman, were each producing more than 100,000 barrels a year and supplying tied trade across a growing portion of the south-east.

D The eighteenth century also produced what is sometimes called Britain's most influential beer style: porter. Originating in London in the 1720s and named for the working-class porters who drank it, porter was a dark, well-hopped beer matured for months in enormous vats before being shipped to publicans. Porter could be produced cheaply at a large scale, kept well in transit, and remained popular long after the working day finished. By 1800 porter was the dominant style in the capital and was exported worldwide. The introduction of mechanised brewing in the nineteenth century — steam engines, thermometers, hydrometers, and large refrigeration plants — was driven in large part by the requirements of the porter trade.

E The nineteenth century was the century of consolidation. Industrial brewing concentrated in a small number of large firms in London, Burton-upon-Trent, Edinburgh and Dublin; the gypsum-rich waters of Burton produced a distinctive pale ale that travelled well, and the Burton breweries developed an extensive export trade. The taxation system steadily favoured larger producers over small, and the Tied House system tied retail outlets to the breweries that supplied them. By 1900 the country had fewer than a thousand commercial breweries; in 1830 there had been almost ten times as many.

F The twentieth century was, until its closing decades, broadly a period of decline for British beer in cultural terms. Two world wars cut grain supplies and pushed average gravities down. The mid-century preference for keg lagers — pasteurised, carbonated and supplied under pressure — squeezed out traditional cask-conditioned ale. By the early 1970s a number of British classics, including most surviving porters and many regional pale ales, looked likely to disappear altogether. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), founded in 1971 by four men in north-west England, set out specifically to reverse this trend. Within a decade the campaign had achieved unexpected success: cask beer was widely re-stocked, several closed regional breweries reopened, and the surviving small brewers gained a vocal customer base.

G The most striking change of the past forty years has been the return of small-scale brewing. A regulatory change in 2002 — Progressive Beer Duty — gave a tax discount to brewers producing fewer than 60,000 hectolitres a year. The result has been a flowering of microbreweries: from around 140 in 1990, the United Kingdom now has more than 1,800. Many typically produce hop-forward beers in the modern American craft tradition; others continue century-old recipes for cask-conditioned mild and bitter. British beer at the start of the third decade of the twenty-first century is therefore more varied than at any time since the nineteenth: a small number of multinational owners on one hand, and a long tail of independent brewers on the other.