OnTap Magazine

ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2024 | 33 I n a suburb inWest London known as Chiswick, nestled between Chiswick Lane and St Nicholas Church in Church Lane, the Fuller’s Griffin Brewery stands as a witness to the past, to a time when beer was part of the very fabric of British society. The area I described above is known as the Chiswick Mall, which is a waterfront street situated on the north bank of the River Thames. This is the oldest part of Chiswick and the houses date back to the Georgian and Victorian eras. Many of these houses overlook the Chiswick Eyot, some have gardens on the other side of the Chiswick Mall, thus detached from their houses, adding to the beauty and serenity of the Mall, a block or two away from the very busy A4 road which runs past London Heathrow Airport. The St Nicolas Church was erected in 1181, in “Old Chiswick”, but the building you see today was built in 1884 by money donated from Henry Smith, a partner of Fuller, Smith and Turner. There is a consistency to this honouring of tradition that is very typical of Britain. It is with great excitement that I discover that with Asahi UK acquiring the brewery part of the Fuller’s business, they have given resources, but not parted with the traditions that made these beers so iconic. I am greeted by Ben Aisbitt and Charlie Long in the lobby situated in the old houses where locals and employees of the brewery had lived in the past. The buildings’ interior had been joined with multiple levels throughout, there is even an original outward facing window in place, presumably still functioning and facing out into the ever-expanding brewery. LONDONPRIDE’SEVOLVINGSTRAPLINE: One of the questions I had off the bat, was related to the style names given by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guide and how it related to some of the Fuller’s beers. The London Pride stands as an example in the BJCP guide of an 11B Best Bitter. Of course, the bottle label has evolved over the years and with a brewery with so much history, one would expect that this would have happened quite a few times. Over the years the strapline has varied from “Distinctive Best Bitter”, “Special Ale”, “Outstanding Premium Ale”, to quite recently “Original Ale”. The latest in the evolution, perhaps driven by a greater beer style awareness globally brought on by a mature craft beer scene, is the current strapline: “Outstanding Amber Ale.” I asked Ben, as the marketing mind behind the rebrand about the decision. He starts with a pregnant silence and then a burst of laughter, admitting that they had taken a bit of flack at the time. “Amber comes from supermarket categorising. [Some] consumer research has found consumers might be put off by the word ‘bitter’ and the term amber is internationally recognised.” And then he clarifies: “Historically, the term ‘bitter’ was used as a differentiator from a mild, which was sweet.” In other words, the 2021 change to “Outstanding Amber Ale” did not change the recipe, it simply brought the description in line with current market expectation. It is worth noting that Bitters have long been called a variety of terms related to the beer colour, such as the commonly accepted term in Britain, Pale Ale. And the Fuller’s London Pride is more amber in colour than pale, which has always been a distinctive characteristic. PARTI GYLE AND THE LEGEND OF CASK ALE: One of the rare and ongoing traditions at Fuller’s is the continuing use of the parti- gyle brewing method. By all accounts, this is still the backbone to the brewery. The method is essentially designed as an efficient manner to produce many beers from a single batch, with minimum energy loss and wastage. Charlie Long, brewing team leader at the Fuller’s Brewery originally qualified as an engineer. The homebrewing bug bit and he obtained a Masters in Brewing and Distilling from Heriot-Watt University. He eventually joined and became Head Brewer at the Wimbledon Brewery. As a cask beer enthusiast, it was, perhaps, inevitable that he would find himself going from Head Brewer at Wimbledon to join the team at Fuller’s. But what I pick up from our conversation is a deeply seeded passion for brewing. I have come with a mission, to understand a bit more about the parti-gyle process, and a passionate brewer behind the beers was exactly who I had hoped to find. Charlie begins by explaining, “Parti-gyle is a batch of wort that has been spilt. Parti, meaning parting [and] gyle being the historical name for a batch of wort created in the brewhouse. We use two identical systems. The same grist goes into each [mash] tun. We extract the strong wort into one copper and the remaining wort to the second.” The “copper” is a colloquialism, a term for the boil kettle and quite commonly used in the UK. Fuller’s Brewery’s old “London” copper still sits proudly in the brewery, having been installed in 1823 and having been coal fired until around 1956 when it was fitted with steam heaters and eventually decommissioned in 1984. “We hope to extract 1.090 SG from our first runnings,” Charlie continues. In layman’s terms, 1.090 SG refers to the standard gravity of sugars suspended in the wort, when you draw the liquid from the mash tuns to the copper. “The strong kettle will have about 1.060