End of the Road!

In 1979 I was going to school at the University of Michigan ~GO BLUE!~ Dearborn campus.

I was in my third year but since day 1 I was involved in the school's radio club. There was no broadcast curriculum at that time but I found myself spending so much time building up this club organization that I knew I had to do something about it. So I left UofM-Dearborn without graduating and enrolled in the nearby Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts not too far down the road.


After completing the 6 month course I was immediately tossed into the world of broadcast radio. And when I say immediately I mean I was on the phone with my first employer arranging a job interview while the commencement speaker at our graduation was still talking. That was on a Wednesday, my interview was two days later on Friday and I was on the air in Bad Axe Michigan 130 miles away.

I was there at WLEW for just 18 months when I ran across a want-ad in Radio And Records Magazine for an opening in nearby Saginaw, Michigan 66 miles to the west. Little did I know when I drove to Saginaw that I was taking a first step into a very long career at one radio station.

A lot has happened in my 40 years in radio. I have met stars, sports figures and politicians. I have interacted with tens of thousands of our listeners. Given away tens of thousands of dollars in cash and prizes during various contests. Helped collect truck loads of relief goods for those in need both near and far. Made lifelong friends and close connections and it all comes to an end in just a few months.

Right now, I can't say I'm going to miss it. Maybe later I will feel that way but I've honestly had my fill. It's time to let someone else drive the bus. Now I can spend more time making beer. I can now grow more than just a small square-foot garden. And oh, did I say can spend more time making beer!

Fullers ESB & London Pride Recipe

Let's do a partigyle. One way to partigyle commonly known by homebrewers is to take just the first runnings of a mash and make a strong beer... then sparge and use the second runnings to produce a second beer of lesser strength sometimes called the small beer.

Then there is how commercial brewers have done it for hundreds of years and that is to take the first runnings, boil and hop it as if it were a single beer. Then take the second runnings (maybe even the third or more) then boil and hop those separately. So far so good and here is where homebrewers would stop calling each gyle a separate beer. But the old way blends those different strength beers into the fermenter at varying percentages to make many different beers. Here is how former Fuller’s brewer Derek Prentice describes the process..."They all share a common malt and hop grist. Dark malts typically will be readily solubilized and hence more prevalent in first worts. Once the wort streams are blended into the fermenter, they will impart unique characteristics into the final beers.”

You may be surprised to learn that some of your favorite beers all come from the same malt bill, hops and mash tun. Another former head brewer from Fullers, John Keeling, explains the beauty of the process... “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.”

Fuller's uses a single grist to produce four distinct beers... London Pride, ESB, Golden Pride and Chiswick Bitter. Those beers even share the same hops. Some of these are blended and some are not.

The two that are not are Fuller's ESB and London Pride. You can make both in the same brew day using the partigyle method common to homebrewers where the first runnings will be your ESB and the second runnings will be London Pride. Or you can brew each one separately. The recipe and details all come directly from John Keeling in an interview conducted by the Brewing Network in 2010.

The recipe is quite simple:
95% Pale Ale Malt
5% Crystal 150
Target hops for bittering
Challenger, Northdown and Goldings hops in the last 5 minutes of the boil. Note that Goldings should be only 5% of the total late addition hops.
English Ale Yeast.

The OG of ESB is around 1.058 with an ABV of 5.9%
London Pride has an OG of 1.047 with an ABV of 4.7%

The color of ESB should be about 16 SRM
London Pride will be around 12 SRM

If you treat your water Mr. Keeling says Fuller's says to use a standard Burton-ization treatment.

A single infusion mash is used at 148 F. Fuller's does not use a mash out. Sparge temp is 168 F. Remember, if you are brewing both using a partigyle method the sparge is to collect the second runnings for your London Pride.

The boil time is a standard 60 minutes and Mr. Keeling says their evaporation rate is 7 to 8%. If you want to get into that level of detail.

While the boil kettle additions of hops are identical for both ESB and London Pride, there are dry hop additions used in ESB but not LP. Keeling stated that ESB is dry hoped in the fermenter and then during conditioning which lasts four weeks. However, he did not say which hops are used or in what amounts.

Both beers are fermented at the same temperatures. Yeast is pitched at about 62 F and then let rise to 68 F. Hold there until half the final gravity is reached. At that point chill back down to 62 F until 1/4 of final gravity. Then they chill it to 42 F and let it stand for 2 days before moving it to conditioning.
If you want to simplify you could pitch at 62 F. Let it rise to 68 and hold it there for up to 4 days and then dry hop for another 2 or thee days. 7 days total primary fermentation. Then cold crash and package.

Once again, you could brew each beer one at a time on separate brew days. Just build a single batch recipe to match the OG, ABV, IBU and SRM's described. However, if you do decide to partigyle start with the ESB recipe below and design so that you get enough wort from each of your runnings for the batch size you choose. My recipe below is for a single 6 gallon batch. I would scale that up for the partigyle.

Note: This recipe includes a bit of black malt to get the color needed. This is perfectly fine because the 2018 Fullers recipe does include a small amount of black malt. An image of the more recent Fuller's recipe is provided below.

Oh, and as for which maltster to use, John Keeling said any English standard pale ale malt that homebrewers have access to will work fine. He says that they have contracts with Muntons, Baird, Simpson and Thomas Fawcett to name a few. Sometimes they use 100% from one maltster and sometimes a blend of two or more. Use whichever is available. Cloning a beer accurately is often more about good brewing technique as much as it is about the specific ingredients.

Fullers ESB
Strong Bitter (11 C)
Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5.50 gal
Boil Size: 7.77 gal
Boil Time: 90 min
End of Boil Vol: 6.04 gal
Final Bottling Vol: 5.00 gal Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage
Taste Notes:

Date: 02 Nov 2018 Brewer: Kevin58
Asst Brewer:
Equipment: 01A e5 Gal Ale Efficiency: 75.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 79.1 % Taste Rating: 30.0

Ingredients

Amt	Name	Type	#	%/IBU	Volume
11 lbs 3.0 oz	Pale Ale Malt, Extra (Simpsons ) (1.8 SRM)	Grain	1	94.0 %	0.87 gal
9.4 oz	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 150L (Bairds) (150.0 ...	Grain	2	4.9 %	0.05 gal
2.0 oz	Black Malt (Simpsons) (845.9 SRM)	Grain	3	1.1 %	0.01 gal
1.00 oz	Target [11.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	4	36.8 IBUs	-
0.50 oz	Challenger [7.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min	Hop	5	2.5 IBUs	-
0.50 oz	Northdown [8.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min	Hop	6	2.8 IBUs	-
0.25 oz	Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min	Hop	7	0.8 IBUs	-
1.0 pkg	English Ale (White Labs #WLP002) [35.49 ml]	Yeast	8	-	-

Est Original Gravity: 1.059 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.019 SG Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.3 % Bitterness: 42.9 IBUs
Est Color: 17.7 SRM
Mash Name: 03 e Light Body (148F)
Sparge Water: 5.33 gal
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F 

Mash Profile
Total Grain Weight: 11 lbs 14.5 oz Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Tun Temperature: 72.0 F
Target Mash PH: 5.20
Mash Acid Addition: None Sparge Acid Addition: None 

Here is a look at the 2018 log book as posted on Twitter by Hayley Marlor who is a brewer at Fuller's. https://twitter.com/FullersHayley/status/946762356914352133

New Year Resolutions!

Everybody makes them. Very few keep them throughout the entire year. For 2019 I decided to put aside a single resolution and instead, decide on a few home brewing goals that I would like to achieve.

Homebrewers are like Magpies - always flitting to the next shiny thing. We jump from recipe to recipe and style to style. Because we can and it's fun. But there is something to be said about being able to make that Hefeweizen our friends raved about last summer and have it meet their expectations when they try the next batch.
Not many of us place any import on consistency and repeatability.

So my homebrewing goals for 2019 are...




Recreate one of my favorite Porters from Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids, Mi.

Continue tweaking last summer's Cream Ale recipe.

Develop a Scottish Ale in the style of Dirty Bastard, again from Founders Brewing.

And for the clone beers the goal is more than creating an accurate version of the original. It is to be able to repeat those results time and time again.

Of course plans are made to be broken... or at least changed. Just two days into the new year and the Magpie in me has already been distracted by a new "shiny". I stopped in to a beer and wine store that I don't visit much because it is on the far side of town . Over the weekend I was in that neighborhood so I dropped into Opperman's Cork and Ale where I was pleasantly surprised to find Fullers London Pride and Fullers ESB. Two English beer's I have read so much about but have never, ever found in-or-around Saginaw, Michigan!


I came home with a four-pack of London Pride and another of ESB and fell in love with both. It didn't take long to find an accurate recipe so these two amazing beers must be added to my goal list.

The only question now is do I have time to brew each of these as many times as it takes to develop both accuracy and repeatability within the span of a single year?


That will be part of the experiment. I will not rush any of them just to get to the next. If I don't get to them all there is always next year. So much beer to make. So little time!