When I heard that Fullers had sold their brewing business to Asahi, the Japanese company, earlier this year my heart sank. Youngs sold theirs a few years back and their Wandsworth brewery is now no more, having been converted into apartments. The brewery had been the very heart of the area and had delivered beer to the local pubs on wagons pulled by dray horses as recently as 1997. Its closure was a real loss to the community. I’d always intended to take the tour of Youngs brewery but left it too late. I thought I’d better go and have a look around Fullers before anything untoward happens to it.
I chose the hottest day of the year to go. It was 32 degrees outside when I arrived and being there thirty minutes early I had to retreat to the pub on the corner to wait. It turns out that this building, part of the Fullers brewery estate, was the poet Alexander Pope’s family home for a few years at the start of the eighteenth century. This was before the building was turned into a public house – or rather two public houses, because originally this building housed two separate pubs which were later consolidated into one. This is why the pub has two names – The Mawson Arms and The Fox And Hounds – one of a very few in the country to have two names.
The tour was what you would expect. We followed the brewing process and spent time sniffing barley and hops and looking at great vats. The guide was very good – a young woman called Tia who was an excellent communicator and very enthusiastic about Fullers. She was reassuring about Asahi’s intentions for the site, promising that beer would continue to be brewed on this site to the high standards of Fullers and that Fullers beers would only be brewed on site. She was also an excellent host at the end of the tour when she took us to a bar to sample some of the beers she had described.
Things I learnt include:
London Pride is a relatively recent beer. They have only been making it since 1959. Even so it is the beer in the current range that they have been brewing longest.
London Pride is named after the plant London Pride (its latin name is Saxifraga × urbium). It was also the inspiration for Noel Coward’s song which you can listen to here.
The brewery is in effect a campus with a mix of original listed buildings and modern industrial spaces. On one of the listed buildings is a Wisteria that was brought back to England from China in 1816 and lays claim to being the oldest Wisteria in England. It was looking very splendid on the day I visited.
I find beers above 6% proof too strong for me. The Golden Pride at 8.5% was almost undrinkable.
Despite enjoying most of the other beers they make, I would lamost certainly always choose a pint of London Pride if I was in a Fullers pub. There is a reason that it is so successful, being both the longest brewed and biggest seller of all of their ales.
The brewery works from 4:30am until 8:30pm five days a week. It used to be a 24 hour, 7 day a week operation but no longer. This is because the pre-fermenting process has become mush more efficient generating more liquid to ferment, but the available space for fermenting is limited and so becomes a bottle neck. If Asahi is looking to profit from its acquisition, solving the fermenting space issue could more than double production on this site.
Each year they make a heritage ale, going back through the old recipe books to find an ale. They use the old equipment they retain in the process of making these beers.
