PUTTING in a longer service than most of the fine wines around him, stalwart cellarman Lionel Porter has retired from Arkell’s after almost 40 years.

The Swindon-based brewery has said goodbye to Lionel after an impressive stint which has seen him clean and fill almost a million barrels of real ale.

Lionel joined Arkell’s on June 27, 1966 and spent almost his whole working life at the brewery.

For a brief 20 months he worked at the nearby Honda factory, but returned to Arkell’s and the brewery was delighted to welcome him back.

The job of cellarman is an essential part of brewery life as they are responsible for one of its key processes: cleaning and sterilizing the casks before refilling them with ale, and when they are returned from the pubs starting the whole process again. It is also a job of very early starts.

Cellarmen typically arrive at 5am or 6am to fill the barrels before they’re loaded onto the dray, and after 40 years of being up with the lark, chairman James Arkell reckons Lionel fully deserves a few lie-ins.

He said: “Cask washing is at the very core of a brewery such as ours.

“When Lionel joined the brewery we used oak casks. After around 1971 we began using metal or stainless steels casks, but the method is still the same – steam cleaning.

“Now our team can wash and sterilize up to 200 casks per hour.

“Lionel wasn’t the first member of the Porter family to work at Arkell’s – his father Trevor, was our foreman painter for many years, before retiring in 1997.”

The brewery reckons that over his working life, Lionel must have washed and filled almost a million barrels of beer.

Lionel’s is not the first long-serving member of staff to retire this year.

In March, the company lost head brewer Don Bracher, 62, who retired after two decades.

He passed over the mantle of head brewer to Alex Arkell, who has spent the past two years with the brewery learning from the best