London Pride

If you know me at all, you know that I love beer. I think it is one of the most wonderful things man has ever created. Now, because I also love travel, I love exploring beer when I travel if I am in the right place at the right time. That might be exploring the dusty brewery of the last remaining true lambic producer in the world in Brussels or marveling at the size of the largest single site brewery on the planet in Golden, Colorado or tasting the initial offerings from a brand new microbrewery in Portland, Maine. I've toured breweries throughout the United States and Europe and while I still have a little way to go to cover every brewery on my beer bucket list, I think I've seen a lot of great beer sites over the years.

England, of course, is one of the great brewing countries of the world so my recent trip back home to Britain offered me the opportunity to explore beer history once again. Generally speaking, there are three great brewing traditions from which all modern beer brewing is descended; these are the Belgian, English and German brewing traditions. Pretty much everything else everywhere in the world is a derivative or combination of what happened centuries ago in these three countries. Within England itself there are also three great historical beer brewing areas (with apologies to Newcastle perhaps); these are Burton-upon-Trent, Yorkshire and London. I managed to tour the Bass brewery in Burton when I visited England in 2007. That same trip, I also visited the Samuel Smith and Theakston breweries in Yorkshire. But I'd never visited an historical London brewery. This trip offered the opportunity to fix that hole.

London Pride. The Ox Row Inn, Salisbury.

The history of London stretches back centuries as does the history of brewing in the city. London was established by the Romans about the time of the A.D./B.C. crossover but the development of the city really took off after the unification of England in 974; in 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England from Normandy and shortly thereafter built the White Tower in what is now the Tower of London. Brewing beer in the city was certainly going on at least as far back as the Middle Ages; the Worshipful Company of Brewers was established as one of the earliest trade guilds as far back as the 12th century. In 1345, brewers in London were banned from using the river Thames as their water source and resorted to drilling their own wells to supply clean water for brewing.

In a 1,000 year plus brewing history, which includes a rich ongoing tradition, London's beer heyday may have been the 1700s, when porter, which originated in London and was allegedly named for its most loyal drinkers, became the world's most popular beer. This type of beer, which required aging, tended to be brewed by larger established brewers who had capacity to store beer in the aging process while simultaneously brewing new batches of the same or different brew. Many of the most famous London brewers were either established or grew to prominence in the 18th century based on the popularity of porter, including Whitbread and John Courage.

But time took its toll on London brewers. As property prices rose and better infrastructure and resources became available in the suburbs or even in rural areas, the land on which many breweries stood became too valuable for their owners to resist selling. And so most simply did just that and got out of town. By the turn of the 21st century, the number of historic London brewers still in the city was down to two: Young's, established in 1831, and Fuller's, established in 1845. In 2006, Young's agreed to sell to the Wells Brewery in Bedford and that brewery, like so many before it, left London for somewhere cheaper. Fuller's, though, remains and their brewery in the Chiswick area of London was my destination early on a Tuesday morning earlier this month.

The malt mills; 4,000 kg per hour (red mill) and 3,000 kg per hour (blue mill).

Before I write about my visit to Fuller's, however, it's probably worth spending a couple of paragraphs talking about English beer. Historically, the majority of English beer produced was cask beer, meaning beer that after either fermentation or maturation is placed into casks with a small amount of yeast and continues to "live". Once in the cask, the yeast breaks down the sugars from the malted barley into alcohol and carbon dioxide, just like it did in the initial fermentation. This is to distinguish it from keg beer, which is placed in a keg which looks very similar to a cask, but which is carbonated or nitrogenated (depending on the beer) at the tap in the pub or bar which serves it to you.

The result of cask conditioning is a more lightly carbonated beer (what some English beer novices refer to as flat) with a richer depth of flavor. Depending on the type of malt used, cask beer often tastes very bread-y. It is also far more delicate than keg beer. Keg beer generally keeps about six months; cask beer keeps about five weeks, and only three days after it is tapped. It is a product which over the years has disappeared and which you cannot find at all if you don't live reasonably close to a brewer committed to a cask product. Its taste (particularly from traditional English brewers) is more subtle than a lot of American beers and is best enjoyed at a temperature slightly warmer than the ice cold temperature that less enlightened folks serve beer at.

For the American beer drinker, the experience of drinking English beer is often unsettling. Rather than a frosty cold bottle or can of beer, you are faced with a more refined product that is warmer, flatter and sometimes reminds you of some kind of wheat bread or tea. It is a much different drink but if you can struggle through the first day of sitting in pubs with a pint or two from a hand pump, you start to understand how delicious this stuff is. It's something to be savored slowly in a place much older than I now live in rather than ordered in a bucket at a happy hour discount. It has far more character than most beers you have ever tasted, I promise.

The brewery's original mash tun.

Tours of the Fuller's brewery are offered weekdays from 11 am to 3 pm every hour. Getting to the brewery for most London visitors involves hopping on the District Line of the London Underground to the Turnham Green station, then a 20 minute or so walk south to just before the bank of the Thames. Beer has been brewed on the site of the current brewery since before 1700; the current brewery established by John Fuller, Henry Smith and John Turner as Fuller, Smith and Turner dates from 1845. John Fuller owned 50% of the equity in the original partnership and thus got his name listed first; today, the brewer is simply known as Fuller's although descendants from more than the Fuller family are involved. It is now the largest family owned brewery in Britain.

Fuller's main beer offering is London Pride, a mildly bitter beer with a full flavor of malted barley without a strong hop character. London Pride makes up 75% of the brewery's output yearly so it's clearly their flagship beer. But London Pride is not the only beer brewed by Fuller's. Most Fuller's pubs (more on that later) will have Chiswick Bitter and ESB as cask offerings and either Honey Dew, Fuller's organic beer made with (surprise!) honey, or some other sort of beer on tap as a keg beer. All their beer is produced at the Griffin Brewery on a single site in Chiswick. The griffin, a half lion, half eagle mythical creature is a guardian of treasure; the treasure in this case is Fuller's beer and if I had a lot of that stuff, I'd want a griffin guarding it too.

Casks being cleaned and filled.

Before my visit to the Fuller's brewery, my experience with their beers was limited to keg and bottle London Pride and bottled London Porter, Black Cab Stout and Bengal Lancer India pale ale. All of this stuff is top quality beer and I was anxious to drink a lot of it while in London (mission accomplished by the way!) as well as walking through the halls where it is brewed every day. For me, this was a real pilgrimage of sorts. Tours of the brewery start at the Mawson Arms, the brewery's historic pub at the northeast corner of the property. I was happy to see they were willing to serve me a half pint of Black Cab Stout as an aperitif if you will before the tour, even if it was only 10:40 in the morning; definitely worth getting to Mawson's 20 minutes before our scheduled tour time.

If you have been on a brewery tour before (and from the opening paragraph of this post I hope you understand I have maybe once or twice), you are not going to see any magic tricks or super secrets walking around the Fuller's Brewery. But of all the breweries I've visited, this tour was perhaps one of the top two or three. The explanation of the brewing process on the tour is super clear and the amount of beer available at the end of the tour is plentiful, which is ideal if you have traveled over 3,000 miles across an ocean to get there and you are using public transportation to go home. Our tour guide, Colin Ford, was also excellent, which I am sure had a really positive effect on the tour.

The tour starts, like most brewery tours do, with an explanation of the brewing process and a discussion of the four ingredients used to make beer - malted barley, water, hops and yeast. My tour guide at the Coors Brewery in 2001 explained the four ingredients of beer as rice, barley, water and hops; I questioned him on this and was informed that yeast is not an ingredient because Coors takes it out of the beer before bottling. I cringed at Coors but didn't have to at Fuller's. They get it in London.

Following the introduction to the process, which included a much welcome malted barley tasting, you are walked by the brewery's historic 150 year old mash tun where the water and barley are cooked to make wort; then past the lauter tun (or "old copper" at Fuller's) where the wort liquid is separated from the solids and the hops are added; and then on to the fermentation tanks where the yeast is added and the stuff finally becomes beer. After about a seven day fermentation period, Fuller's beer is placed into finishing tanks before it is bottled, casked or kegged.

There are a couple more stops on the tour that clarify the brewing process. After ogling the mash tun for a few minutes, we were taken by the malt mills which crush the malted barley so it can be cooked into wort. I'd never seen these things before on any of the other brewery tours I have taken; the ones at Fuller's take up a few square feet but crack all the barley for all the beer in the brewery which was pretty amazing. The other interesting stop was the keg and cask filling line, which again was a first for me. I'm used to seeing bottling or canning lines which are typically non-operational because most of the tours I've taken have been on weekends. Seeing the contrast between kegging (which is all automated) and casking (which involves three or four people working full time) was striking.

London Porter, Jack Horner, London.

Most brewery tours end with a few slightly larger than shot glass sized cups of beer and a little pressure to spend some additional money on some of the brewery's beer. Fuller's was way better. One of their old hock cellars (or underground storage rooms) has been equipped with a fully functional bar offering most things Fuller's. Here you can get a good idea of the high quality and excellent flavor of Fuller's beer in half pint (you read that correctly and remember an English pint is 20 ounces) glasses. Considering I was in a bit of a rush, I only managed a half pint each of Chiswick Bitter, London Pride, ESB and Black Cab Stout but I believe I could have had more. The brewery and the Mawson Arms were the only places I found Black Cab Stout when I was in London. This stuff is so rich and smooth and delicious. Next time I visit London I'm going to find a pub that has this stuff and sit there all day one day and drink it. The tasting was not the only reason my experience at the Griffin Brewery was excellent, but it didn't hurt by any means.

Overall, two things struck me about my experience at Fuller's which enhanced my beer drinking experience in England. First, the flavor of Fuller's beer is based more than anything on the malt that is used in each type of beer. I made an effort to seek out Fuller's beer more than any other beer while I was in London because I wanted to drink a product from a brewery with history that still does things largely the same they did in 1845. The brief malt tasting in the beginning of my brewery tour could be tasted with each pint of Fuller's post-tour. This was most noticeable in the draft (or draught, if you will) London Porter I found at the Jack Horner pub on Tottenham Court Road. I could taste the bitterness from the chocolate malt I chewed at the brewery on my palate while drinking a pint or two with a chicken and chorizo pie.

Secondly, the effort required to produce cask beer (rather than keg beer) was obvious. A lot of brewers in England have abandoned or reduced cask output due to the labor cost involved. The process of removing the bungs and cleaning the casks is not easy and involves manual labor which means money. I think Fuller's and other breweries who still produce cask ale deserve some recognition for choosing flavor and sticking to their roots over a quick buck or pound. The product is largely unique to England and I think it is well worth the effort. I've had one or two beers in the U.S. since I got back and I'm longing for some cask beer.

I'm thinking I don't have too many brewery tours left in me but I am way glad I stopped by Fuller's in London. I can truly say this was one of the best tours by one of the best brewers in the world. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how useful their website is. I made drinking Fuller's a priority in London but I wouldn't have been as successful without the pub finder on their website. Their website lists all their pubs (pubs in England are often tied to and owned by breweries, which is significantly different than in America) and what beers are currently on tap in kegs and casks. I found this feature to be 100% accurate based on the four Fuller's pubs I visited in London. Without it, I never would have had any London Porter on tap and it was very very difficult to find. Next time I visit London, I'm going to follow my day sitting in a pub drinking Black Cab Stout with a day in another pub drinking London Porter. This stuff is that good. So I'll end with a thank you to Fuller's. You made my experience in England way better. I wouldn't have missed all this for the world.

This post was mostly written while drinking a couple of cold London Prides in the glass I brought back from the brewery. It was in bottles unfortunately but still delicious.

Playing bartender at the Mawson Arms with a  half pint of nectar of the gods, aka Black Cab Stout.