The Making of a Classic: Fuller's ESB
During this time of pandemic, when we have more time for reading than sampling new beers, I thought it would be a great time to explore some classic, much imitated (but rarely equaled) beers and what makes them tick. Click here to see other beers in the series.
There are a couple obvious reasons one might select Fuller’s ESB as the example of a classic English ale. Fuller’s is the last old ale-brewery standing in London, at one time the most important brewing city in the world. (That Fuller’s was recently sold to Asahi does tarnish the brewery’s standing somewhat, but leave that aside for the moment.) ESB, for its part, was such an important beer to Americans during their late-1970s revival that it became a model for much of the American ales that would soon populate brewpubs across the country. Beyond that, it’s just a fantastic beer and one of the most decorated in Britain.
All of that is true, but other British bitters are loved and lauded, too. Yet even more than these reasons, it’s the way ESB is made that makes it truly special.
Strong Bitters
Extra Special Bitter is a bit of an oddball in British terms. Among traditional cask ales, low-alcohol bitters, usually somewhat below to somewhat above 4%, are the bog standards. The weakest are just plain “bitter,” while those coming in above 4% are usually called “best” bitters. A much rarer category is strong bitter, which might float up to around 5%. Fuller’s strong bitter, styled Extra Special, is even stronger than that—5.5% (5.9% in the bottle). In British terms, that was until recently a very strong beer.
It makes sense this was the British ale Americans discovered. With more hops and alcohol, it traveled better than Chiswick or London Pride did. I recall early encounters with the beer, and its bitterness seemed notably aggressive. (It’s currently around 35 IBUs.) Compared to the more subtle flavors in regular bitters, it’s bold and flashy. Of course Americans would have liked it.
If an American were going to make a beer, they would naturally gravitate to the one called “extra special,” particularly if it had more flavor and oomph. Consequently, for decades ESB was what most American breweries called their bitter. If they had two, they didn’t realize the one they called “bitter” was actually a best bitter. And if they had an ESB, they didn’t realize that’s not what English brewers called their styles—they assumed that all strong bitters were “extra special,” not realizing it was a product name unique to Fuller’s. Thus they elevated Fuller’s by creating the “style” of ESB. In the 1980s and ‘90s, Fuller’s ESB may have been more famous in the US than Britain.
Parti-Gyle Brewing
To make ESB, Fuller’s conducts one of the more remarkable practices in the world: parti-gyle brewing. It’s a process that dates back centuries and is almost entirely extinct. (I always write “almost” on the assumption that someone somewhere must do it—but no one has ever come forward to admit it.) It’s so obscure now that most people misunderstand how it works. The idea is to pull multiple worts off a single mash, boil them as usual, and then blend them back together to get beers of different strengths. Most people glean the first two steps but not the third, believing that each gyle produces a single beer. The system was made obsolete when breweries started sparging—or washing the sugars from the grain bed with water, so that a single mash produced a single wort.
Fuller’s parti-gyle works like this. They begin with a grist of 97% pale English spring malt and 3% light crystal. For efficiency, Fuller’s use two mash tuns, staggered so one is draining while the other rests during conversion. Brewers take the first runnings from one mash tun of strong wort and then follow it with the second mash tun, combining the strong worts from both mashes in the same kettle. Next, they run the weak worts from both mash tuns into a second kettle. The runnings at the end of the second mash are barely more than water—the wort has a gravity of just over 1 Plato or 1.005. So again, both strong worts go into the same kettle, and both weak worts go into a second, different kettle. (This may affect the flavor, as we’ll see.)
The boiling process for both worts is the same—60 minutes, with two hop additions, one at the start of boil, one with five minutes left. (Of course, the strong wort gets twice as many hops as the weak one for obvious reasons, but they are the same varieties in the same proportions.) Only once the worts are cooled and pitched with yeast do they begin to combine them to get the beers they want. Before Chiswick Bitter was demoted from the regular line, the brewery could produce it, London Pride, ESB, and, when needed, Golden Pride from just these two worts.
Extra Special
Why would a brewery continue to use a process that was considered obsolete a hundred years ago? I put this to then-head brewer John Keeling a few years back. He wasn’t having any of that romance nonsense from an American writer, though. “It is quite simple, really,” he said in his thick Mancunian accent. “Parti-gyles are the most efficient way of using a mash tun both in terms of speed and in terms of extract. It is not complicated and is rather simple and elegant.”
This is the kind of thing brewers say when you ask them about any weird process they employ. But if it were such an obviously superior way of brewing, every brewery would use it. I have yet to hear a brewer tell me the real reason, which would sound something like this: “you know, the truth is this is the way we’ve always done it and now there’s all this superstition and myth built up around it and there’s no way we can stop.”
Here’s (noticeably younger) podcast partner Patrick in front of the mash tuns with Derek Prentice.
In Fuller’s case, I’m willing to allow that it actually does have an effect on the flavor of the beer. The legendary brewer Derek Prentice had a stop at Fuller’s after his brewery, Young’s, closed down. He answered this same question differently, pointing out how the chemistry does differ. “As you appreciate from your visit here,” he told me, “it is considerably different from producing different gravity beers from a single wort or fermentation. Dark malts typically will be readily solubilised and hence more prevalent in first worts and the copper loading of the hops into the different copper lengths are adjusted for the specific parti-gyle. Once the wort streams are blended into the fermenter they will impart unique characteristics into the final beers.”
I am a romantic American, and I like to think the process accounts for at least some of the unique character in ESB (and London Pride, for that matter). ESB is a complex and robust beer. In brief, I’d describe it as having a rich toffee malt base that is accented by peppery hops fading into a twist of lemon that have been stiffened by hard water, all wrapped up in lovely orange marmalade esters. And while that’s accurate enough, careful attention reveals subtleties I don’t find in other beers, particularly with in the malts. They have the bready/biscuit flavors characteristic of English malting, the hint of toffee from the crystal malt; yet there’s also something woody about them as well as an unusual smoothness in the texture. They seem deeper than other malts.
Do these qualities come from the process? I am reluctant to assert it—too often I have gone looking for special flavors in beer and found them whether they exist or not. On the other hand, this is what happens when we develop a decades-long relationship with a beer we adore. It may be the very definition of a classic—a beer so good and enduring that drinkers pour into it the very meaning that makes it a classic. That ESB is made through this strange, ancient process adds the mortar that cements its status in our minds. Or my mind, anyway. Fuller’s ESB is a legendary beer purely for the way it tastes—add they parti-gyling and it becomes an irreplaceable brewing heirloom.
Don’t screw it up, Asahi—you are now the keeper of this artifact.