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Read More About Stephen Beaumont
A Visit to the Griffin Brewery - September 2004When I first began drinking beer in southern Ontario, several years before I reached legal drinking age, there was precious little in the way of British beer available to Canadians, and only a very small percentage of that could be found on draught. In fact, as an underage regular in my local pub over two decades ago, about the only choices available to me and my friends in terms of premium, imported draught were Double Diamond, Bass and Worthington E. (The last, as much a symbol of the decline of British beer during the 1970's as was Watney's Red Barrel, is mercifully long out of production, although Double D remains rather inexplicably popular in certain quarters in my home province.) And so, save for the occasional pint of Bass, enjoyed only when my student budget could afford the extravagance, my experience with English ale remained slight until well into the 1980's. Then things started to slowly change, first with one or two, mostly major brewery brands reaching Canadian shores, followed by a moderate influx of keg beers such as Flowers Mild and John Smith's. But the biggest shift in the landscape came a short while later when an importation deal was struck between a local microbrewery and the London brewer Fuller, Smith and Turner. At last, Pride had come to Ontario. (Alas, Fuller's flagship London Pride and excellent ESB did not stay in the province long, as the deal withered and died within an all-too-short time, making Ontario yet again a Fuller's-free zone for most of the 1990's. Within the last couple of years, however, the brewery has returned to Canada with not only the Pride and ESB, but also their very fine London Porter.) Fast forward a couple of decades and, after at least a half-dozen trips to London, I finally managed to make it to Fuller's Griffin Brewery in Chiswick, west London. It was a visit far too long in the making. My first challenge was to actually find the brewery, since I had rather foolishly paid heed to the desk clerk at the Fuller's-owned hotel where I was staying in central London and ridden the tube to Chiswick Park station rather than Turnham Green. I quickly rectified that problem with a call to Fuller's North American sales director Stamford Gallsworthy, in town as I was for the Great British Beer Festival, and soon I was standing on the site where brewing has taken place for closing on four centuries. Although it is most surely one of the U.K.'s most recognizable regional breweries, Fuller's produces only a relatively modest 205,000 barrels of ale per year, some 80% of which, I was told, is served in cask-conditioned form. Of the remainder, a portion is kegged for export trade and, to a very limited extent, domestic consumption, while the rest is largely filtered and bottled. (Fuller's only bottle-conditions two of its line: 1845, a strong ale of considerable rich maltiness tempered by a good dose of Golding hop, and the age-worthy, annual edition Vintage Ale.) Having enjoyed the Fuller's brands for many a year, in particular the robustly malty, spicy ESB, I was surprised to learn from Fuller's head brewer John Keeling that it was not ever thus. In fact, said Keeling, around about the mid-twentieth century, the firm of Fuller, Smith and Turner was rather sarcastically referred to as "Full of Shit Turnips" and their wares were supped by only the most regionally loyal of Chiswick drinkers. That sad situation had completely changed long before he first came on board the Fuller's ship, Keeling hastily added. Another surprise was furnished by the declaration that ESB, Pride and the standard Chiswick Bitter are all crafted from the same two worts, although combined in decidedly different ways. The way this works is that the brewer takes two runnings from the same bed of grain, the first yielding a more fermentable sugar-rich wort and the latter picking up whatever sugars remain in the grain. These worts are then differently hopped during the boil and combined in varying proportions to create the three ales. Aging times also contribute to the disparate characters of the beers, with Chiswick getting as little as a week, London Pride doubling that and ESB receiving a full month of conditioning. And finally, both ESB and Chiswick are dry-hopped in the fermenter and the cask, while Pride is not. In the end, these three core brands give Fuller's a powerful trio through which to address both the domestic and export markets, and judging by the success this brewery appears to be enjoying, it's also a trio that is doing its job very well. Certainly, to the ale-drinking public beyond British shores, they are a far more flavourful and enjoyable introduction to the beauty of English ale than were the sad collection of beers I had available in my early days. Feature Articles
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