Where else for booze but the local brewery?

Photographs – Fuller’s Griffin Brewery Shop and Head Brewer Georgina Young

Bridget Osborne meets Fuller’s Head Brewer Georgina Young

If you want to avoid the queues in supermarkets to stock up on your Christmas booze, pop in to the shop at Fuller’s Griffin Brewery. There’s something pleasantly Dickensian about buying your beer in the premises of a two hundred year old brewery. The brewery may be old but the shop is new, or at least it has had a major refurbishment this year. You can tell from eavesdropping on consumers’ conversations that it clearly attracts afficionados and the enthusiasm of the customers is equalled by the cheerfulness and pride in their product of the staff. The really good news is that holders of a Chiswick Calendar Club Card are entitled to 10% off purchases from the shop.

“Which is the real old one?” I heard a passing American ask. I can’t really claim any great superiority when it comes to zythology. I thought it best to come clean when I met head brewer Georgina Young and admit that I wasn’t really a beer drinker and had little knowledge of beer making. She tried, but failed to mask the distain on her face when I said my tipple of choice was a pint of Stella with lime. I’m not sure whether Stella Artois doesn’t meet her taste requirements, or she disapproves of drinking Belgian beer when there’s good home brewed ale to be had, but I think it was the “with lime” that put my choice beyond the Pale. “I’ll convert you into a beer drinker”, she said. “Drink this. This is what I give anyone who claims they don’t like beer”. She poured me a glass of Honeydew, which did indeed slip down very nicely; a “golden ale” rather than “pale” and, as promised, I could taste the honey.

Georgina claims to like the taste all the 44 beers Fuller’s currently has in production. “Of course I like them all” she said in mock horror, “they’re my beers”. As she warmed to her theme, explaining that one was more ‘hoppy’ and another favoured ‘citrus’ or ‘Thai’ flavours I realized this isn’t just pretentious marketing twaddle, the names of the beers really do reflect the contents. There are beers made with grapefruit, mango and lemon grass. She’s trying out new recipes all the time and her current preoccupation is experimenting with the new Pilot brewery.

The micro-brewery, which you can see behind the glass wall of the shop, opened in September and is her baby. It enables her to be a lot more daring with recipes, as it’s easier to get rid of a ten barrel batch of beer you don’t like than it is to ditch a 160 barrel batch produced by the main brewery. “You have to play a lot safer if you’re making 160 barrels” she said carefully. For those who know their brewing, it has an infusion mash tun, a copper/whirlpool with an external wort boiler, four fermentation tanks and two bright beer tanks – all provided by Gravity Systems Ltd.

The first beers out of the gate were ‘Beer One’ (7.0% ABV)- a strong ale based on the Golden Pride recipe, ‘Galaxy Pale’ (4.0%ABV)- a pale ale made with Galaxy hops, ‘Grapefruit IPA’ (5.7% ABV)- made with real grapefruit peel and juice, ‘Thai Stout’ (4.8% ABV)- made with Thai spices and ‘New England IPA’ (5.5% ABV)- which consisted of experimenting with the use of Cryo Hops for the first time. The fact that 50% the brews produced did not go for sale is not a measure of failure but a reflection of experimental nature of the brewery. The whole idea is to think outside the barrel and trial-test different raw materials such as new malts, hops, herbs, spices and fruits.

The market for the diversity and constant production of new beers is driven by the trend for craft beers which started in America in the 1980s and ‘90s. Whereas older people are more likely to know what they like and stick to it, the younger generation want constant new flavours to taste. Already conscious that I was slightly out of my depth I asked her to define ‘craft beer’. In America there is a precise definition, she said, “but Fuller’s has been making craft beer since 1845”. That is to say, beer made in a traditional way.

Georgina, who has worked at Fuller’s for the best part of 20 years and became head brewer nearly two years ago, studied Biotechnology at King’s College and did a Masters in Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Her love of beer stems from her student days spent in riverside pubs such as the Dove at Hammersmith.

You’d think that churning out the tried and tested beers they sell most would be easy after all these years, but there you’d be wrong. “It’s surprisingly hard to keep the taste consistent” she says. I’d never really thought of it but of course beer, like wine, is affected by the weather. The taste of hops and barley changes with the amount of sunshine just as the taste of grapes does, so making London Pride keeps her on her toes every bit as much as creating the latest new beer.

Her current creations, limited-edition Christmas and winter beers include ‘Snow Globe’, ‘Off Piste’ and ‘Espresso Stout.’ Fuller’s also produces a Vintage Ale each year. This year’s has been brewed using exclusively home-grown ingredients, including British Olicana® and Ernest hops from Kent which give it fruity and spicy notes and Maris Otter malt, which Georgina describes as the “best of British” ingredients. There’s also ‘Wise men’ beer, from which 50p per pint will go to the Prostate Cancer charity.

She’s currently working on  producing next year’s seasonal beers. The Brewer’s Journal noted in October that ‘Young has overseen a beer release schedule for 2019 that will enable every member of the brewing team to flex their creative muscles’. Next year Fuller’s will release a new cask and new keg beer each month. She is working, amongst other things, on a white stout.

If you’d like to sample the produce of the Pilot brewery, you can taste the latest batch in the shop and if you buy a ‘growler’ (a flagon you can take home and bring back for a refill) you can sample her latest recipes at home.

Fuller’s sponsors The Chiswick Calendar, as it does many other charitable and community groups in the area.