Beer and wine expert and television personality Oz Clarke, was the guest of honour at the official opening of the Tun Room at Fuller's Griffin Brewery.

This exciting development has seen the transformation of an unused area of the brewery that once housed holding vessels known as tuns. It is now filled with state of the art fermentation and maturation vessels that will increase the brewery's capacity for making its award-wining beers.

Oz was joined on the day by fellow beer luminary Roger Protz, author of the Good Beer Guide 2004, as well as Fuller's chief executive Michael Turner and a large contingency of brewery employees.  Following a plaque unveiling the guests at the event were taken on tours of the new area by head brewer, John Keeling and other members of the brewing team.  Afterwards Oz Clarke joined other guests in a celebratory drink in the Hock Cellar, Fuller's museum and visitor's centre, to toast the future success of the new Tun Room.

Work on redeveloping the area has cost £1.6 million and has been underway since 2001 to ensure that Fuller's can satisfy the increasing demand for London Pride and its other beers.  The area now holds six new fermentation vessels and 12 new maturation vessels, increasing the brewery capacity by an extra 30,000 barrels of beer - or 8,640,000 pints.

John Roberts, Beer and Brands Director at Fuller's said: "Over the past few years our beers, such as London Pride, have become increasingly desired products by our customers and to meet this demand we have had to invest to ensure we don't disappoint.  We are proud that London Pride is seemingly bucking the drinking trends at present and all the extra pints we can now brew, thanks to the Tun Room, is a testament to the success of the brand. 

"It was great to see such leading beer experts as Oz and Roger at the brewery last week to commemorate this significant investment in our future and also to join us in thanking all of those at the brewery who have worked hard to ensure the project came to fruition."