Vignette #6, John Keeling (Fuller's)

Brewer vignettes feature quotes from brewers I picked up in my travels around the world.

“On one side of the equation you have to have quality and consistency and that is balanced on the other side of the equation by flavor and character. There are breweries that specialize in producing high quality, very consistent beer—companies like Budweiser and Carlsberg and Heineken. They produce high quality, very consistent beer, but maybe they forgot about the other side of the equation, which is to have some flavor and some character.”

”What I want from London Pride—or any Fuller’s beer—is that when you order a pint of it, I want you to recognize it as London Pride. Yes, I want it to occasionally surprise you—today it’s a little bit more malty or caramelly or hoppy or fragrant or whatever—so that you are having a dialogue with that beer. You’re noticing things about that beer and it interests you and involves you because of that. And that’s really what we call character. So when you go into a pub and order a pint of London Pride, you drink it and you recognize it and you make a note of all these things. You can never make batches of beer that are exactly the same no matter how good you are, and in fact, to try to make them exactly the same, that means taking flavors out because they’re so hard to manage on that consistent basis. That’s why companies that want consistency above all do not produce very flavorsome beers.”

Derek Prentice (l) and John Keeling (r)