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All Fuller's beers are brewed with pride and passion in the Griffin Brewery,
Chiswick.
Below is some interesting information on how your pint is made, from the grain
through to the glass.
The Brew Process
Ingredients
Four basic ingredients make your pint of London Pride - water, barley, hops and
yeast. All of these are sourced with great care to make sure we use the best
raw materials available. Because all the ingredients are natural, the quality
and character of the sources can vary from year to year, so no beer, from
whichever brewery, will be exactly the same every time it is brewed. It is a
combination of brewers' experience and modern quality control techniques that
help us to achieve a high degree of consistency over the years.
Malting
Raw barley is steeped in water to start the germination process and then dried
at high temperatures in a kiln. This breaks down the starch of barley ready to
be turned into fermentable sugars. The malted barley is then milled to form a
coarse powder form known as grist.
Mashing
This is the process of mixing the grist and the water in a vessel called a mash
tun at around 65ºC. This allows enzymes within the malt to turn the basic
starches in the malt into simple sugars (which is later converted into alcohol
during the fermentation stage). The resulting solution is called wort which
is high in dissolved sugars.
Coppers
The wort is passed into another vessel called a copper, here it is boiled and
the hops are added. Our special blend of hops give London Pride flavour, aroma,
a good head and a characteristic bitterness.
Fermentation
In fermentation tanks yeast is added to the wort to allow fermentation. Now the
simple sugars are converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide is formed to give a
sparkle and release complex flavour compounds that are to be enjoyed in the
final beer.
Maturation
Fuller's uses a longer maturation period than other British ale brewers - up to
2 weeks. During maturation a small amount of yeast is re-introduced to start a
secondary fermentation which gives more rounded flavours to the beer. It also
gives our beers greater stability, so they are easier for licensees to look
after and you, the drinker, get a more consistent pint.
Cask beer is live when it goes out to trade, meaning that a small amount of
yeast remains in the cask. Because of this, storage conditions in the pub are
crucial, and we rely on the expertise of the licensee to store and serve the
beer well.
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