Fullers ESB & Strong Bitters

[HighlandTap]

I have a question about strong bitters, directed to those of you who are well schooled in the current state of ales on the east side of the pond.

Fullers ESB has always been at or near the top of my favorite beers list. Which makes it pretty sad for many of us that under Asahi, Fullers has chosen to no longer ship bottles/cans to the US. A few people have found it on tap, but it’s rare. I was last in London in late 2023 and stayed at the Sanctuary Hotel for a few days. Luckily for me, they had ESB on tap in the pub downstairs.

In the US we seem to pay close attention to styles and our conversations often include something similar to “what style is that beer?” Especially with brewers (home or pro), most of whom realize Fullers ESB is in the category the BJCP calls “strong bitter.” Is strong bitter even a thing in the UK? Does anyone really call an ale by that designation? I had a beautiful ale called Rebrook Premium in Yorkshire, but I don’t recall them labeling it as a strong Bitter, but it certainly felt like one.

It seems there isn’t really any specific set of ingredients that make up a strong Bitter, it’s mostly just where the gravity/alcohol level is on the scale from ordinary up through premium or strong. When we were able to find ESB in the US, it seems the bottled version had only base malt and crystal malt. Similar to Old Speckled Hen or Wells Bombadier (which seems to be easier to find since ESB has left the shelves over here). But in London, it clearly had some chocolate or black malt included. And was better off for that inclusion in my opinion. I’ve heard Fullers recently altered the ESB recently .

Any thoughts?

 

[MaxStout]

Ron Pattinson's blog, Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, might have some info on that.

FWIW, I did find this short article on strong bitters, which gives passing reference to Fuller's ESB.

 

[dmtaylor]

Fuller's traditionally partigyles (or you could say "double batch-sparges"?) to make several different beers from the same mash. From straight first runnings they make a barleywine (Golden Pride). Then they use percentages of the first, second, and third runnings in different amounts to make their Extra Special Bitter (ESB), special bitter (London Pride), and ordinary bitter (Chiswick). The grist of the main mash is the same for all of these, just with different percentages of the runnings to hit their desired OG and ABV, the grist for all these being approximately:

94.7% Maris Otter
4.9% Medium-Dark Crystal 75
0.4% Chocolate malt

If they have changed the recipe, it's probably just a very slight variation of what you see here.

The hopping is probably a little bit different for each, but the grist is all the same.

They might enhance color with a little more of one thing or the other but I think by & large, it's all the same. Their Porter is however a bit of a different grist from these, with brown malt likely added, and higher amount of crystal and chocolate malt and/or possibly dark invert sugar.

Play around with partigyling if you want. Or just select your OG and brew with the percentages above. The ESB starts at about 1.060.

Have fun with it.

 

[HighlandTap]

Ron Pattinson's blog, Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, might have some info on that.

FWIW, I did find this short article on strong bitters, which gives passing reference to Fuller's ESB.

That was a short but useful guideline to where strong begins. I was surprised it’s as low as 1.045 but if your attenuation is high that can put it in the right ABV range as I perceive it. I was lucky enough to catch Ron at our local university, sponsored by the fermentation sciences program. All the local brewpubs breweddifferent recipes from SUABP, some really good stuff.

 

[HighlandTap]

Fuller's traditionally partigyles (or you could say "double batch-sparges"?) to make several different beers from the same mash. From straight first runnings they make a barleywine (Golden Pride). Then they use percentages of the first, second, and third runnings in different amounts to make their Extra Special Bitter (ESB), special bitter (London Pride), and ordinary bitter (Chiswick). The grist of the main mash is the same for all of these, just with different percentages of the runnings to hit their desired OG and ABV, the grist for all these being approximately:

94.7% Maris Otter
4.9% Medium-Dark Crystal 75
0.4% Chocolate malt

If they have changed the recipe, it's probably just a very slight variation of what you see here.

The hopping is probably a little bit different for each, but the grist is all the same.

They might enhance color with a little more of one thing or the other but I think by & large, it's all the same. Their Porter is however a bit of a different grist from these, with brown malt likely added, and higher amount of crystal and chocolate malt and/or possibly dark invert sugar.

Play around with partigyling if you want. Or just select your OG and brew with the percentages above. The ESB starts at about 1.060.

Have fun with it.

I’m thinking it had a touch more chocolate, just enough to make you notice something’s different. 1.060 is in the range for me, I like stronger bitter. The parti-gyle method is amazing to me, I’ve got a big enough system to do it, but never chose to devote the time for it. Have you tried it? I like your double batch sparge description.
I also was lucky enough to nab a bottle of Golden Pride while in the pub. A bit like an Imperial London Pride, maybe less hoppy, appropriately.

 

[dmtaylor]

The parti-gyle method is amazing to me, I’ve got a big enough system to do it, but never chose to devote the time for it. Have you tried it?

I have partigyled a few times, yes. Not for Fullers clones, but just for a couple cases where I wanted to brew two batches and figured out that all I had to do for the second beer was steep a little extra dark malt or whatever to hit the style guidelines. Partigyle method can be a very useful tool in the brewer's toolbox, saving a lot of time and energy when you want multiple styles with less work.

 

[HighlandTap]

I have partigyled a few times, yes. Not for Fullers clones, but just for a couple cases where I wanted to brew two batches and figured out that all I had to do for the second beer was steep a little extra dark malt or whatever to hit the style guidelines. Partigyle method can be a very useful tool in the brewer's toolbox, saving a lot of time and energy when you want multiple styles with less work.

With more leisure time this year I should give it a whirl. Put in the work to verify my obsession with British brewing and styles. But I’ve got both a West Coast IPA and a Motueka pale ale on my schedule his year, it would work for those too.

 

[MaxStout]

I have partigyled a few times, yes. Not for Fullers clones, but just for a couple cases where I wanted to brew two batches and figured out that all I had to do for the second beer was steep a little extra dark malt or whatever to hit the style guidelines. Partigyle method can be a very useful tool in the brewer's toolbox, saving a lot of time and energy when you want multiple styles with less work.

Any time I brew a big beer I try to partigyle. With BIAB it's kind of guesswork, but my method is hoist out the bag of grains at the end of the main mash, then dunk it into a smaller volume of water in another vessel. I usually get 2.5 - 3 gallons of a "mini me" brew.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Very few UK beers are called a Bitter anymore it’s
Golden Ale
Amber Ale
pale Ale
IPA
I’ve never seen any a UK bitter called Strong Bitter or Ordinary Bitter. Even Best Bitter is just called Best.
However nothing is as awful as Session this or that.

 

[kevin58]

Somewhere on this site is a lengthy thread about Fullers complete with photos of their logbooks showing the make up of ESB, London Pride, Golden Pride, and Chiswick Bitter. They were all made from the same gyle. For the life of me I cannot find that thread right now. There was also a podcast with Jamil... I believe it was one of their can you brew it series in which they interview former Fullers master brewer, John Keeling, who describes the recipe in detail. If you can find a working link to that podcast good luck. I can't find a single one that works. But, there is a lot of content out there with John Keeling talking about this beer, how it came to be and how it is made.

 

[kevin58]

Found it! Pics of the Fullers log books were posted on (then) Twitter and are shared and discussed in this thread...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...imperials-neipa-from-the-horses-mouth.642756/

 

[HighlandTap]

Somewhere on this site is a lengthy thread about Fullers complete with photos of their logbooks showing the make up of ESB, London Pride, Golden Pride, and Chiswick Bitter. They were all made from the same gyle. For the life of me I cannot find that thread right now. There was also a podcast with Jamil... I believe it was one of their can you brew it series in which they interview former Fullers master brewer, John Keeling, who describes the recipe in detail. If you can find a working link to that podcast good luck. I can't find a single one that works. But, there is a lot of content out there with John Keeling talking about this beer, how it came to be and how it is made.

Full confession, I’m a total John Keeling fanboy. I think the episode you refer to was indeed with Jamil on the Brew Strong show. It seems that episode is no longer archived. As you said there is a lot of Keeling content out there, you have to sift out what is helpful to a home brewer. But the man is always a good listen regardless of the topic. Along with Georgina Young, he sets forth a good strong bitter recipe in the book “Secrets of Master Brewers” by Jeff Alworth. But he does not go into parti-gyling. Thanks for sharing the video with Guy Stewart, really good one there. I’d always wondered how Fullers felt about Americans mistaking ESB as a style, and he clearly was grateful for attention the beer got. Also fun to hear to hear his take on how important ESB was to our craft movement here.

There is also this fun blogpost on ESB, it’s history, Keeling, and the parti-gyle method. Alworth, Martyn Cornell and Ron Pattinson all contribute comments to the blog post.

https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2020/7/9/the-making-of-a-classic-fullers-esb

 

[HighlandTap]

Very few UK beers are called a Bitter anymore it’s
Golden Ale
Amber Ale
pale Ale
IPA
I’ve never seen any a UK bitter called Strong Bitter or Ordinary Bitter. Even Best Bitter is just called Best.
However nothing is as awful as Session this or that.

Thanks Cheshire Cat. I have indeed seen those names attached. Had a Wainwright golden and a Farmer’s Blonde, both seemed like bitters to me, so that makes sense. London Pride is now marketed as an amber ale, do they call it that in the UK now? And I’ve seen several ales marked “best” on the tap & cask badges. Many of which were a bit mundane (pointing a finger at you, Belhaven). I’ve seen the word premium many times too, and assumed it might be another word for strong.
Times change, and so do words. Bitter seems out of fashion for sure.
And I agree with your comment on session anything. We have so much session IPA in the US, it offends me, lol. Many taste like hop water, disgusted me how many UK pubs had All Day IPA on tap. When craft brewing took off over here, a session beer led the way, the pale ale. We miss it.

 

[MaxStout]

The label "bitter" seems like a misnomer when compared to some of the hop bombs we have now.

 

[dmtaylor]

The label "bitter" seems like a misnomer when compared to some of the hop bombs we have now.

Perhaps that's why the term has gone the way of the dodo bird.

 

[HighlandTap]

The label "bitter" seems like a misnomer when compared to some of the hop bombs we have now.

Well said. I suppose the very nature of the term doesn’t make sense by American standards, that’s for sure. Some of the early West Coast IPAs run rampart with bitterness, although I feel they’ve dialed back just a liitle these days. Bitter by British definition really just means balanced nowadays.

 

[THC 13]

A few observations after reading this thread that may help:

Obviously, beer is an agricultural product and no two batches will be exactly the same.

John Keeling stated in an interview that he and Derek Prentice used to tinker with some of the Fuller’s range of beers in order to not only make them better but also to make a beer that they would enjoy drinking. He also said that one variation that was tried with the CB, LP, ESB parti-gyle was using dark crystal in a smaller amount than would be used with the light crystal. (I tried some bottles of London Pride made with the dark crystal and preferred the light crystal version).

BeerSmith’s database rates Simpsons Light Crystal as 52.8 SRM, Crisp Extra Light as 55.8 SRM & Crisp Light Crystal as 86.3 SRM, Muntons 110 (40L) as 60 SRM.

Wild About Hops in NZ has a director who was born in London. They breed hops and sell hop plants and recipe books. They published a recipe book about British Ales that has over 175 recipes, 4 of which are recipes for Fuller’s ESB (Cask 5.5%, Bottle 5.9%, Past Master’s 1981 ESB bottle 5.5% and Special Edition ESB 2005 bottle conditioned brewed at 6.1% which John Keeling estimates it will rise to 6.3% with the conditioning), 2 for London Pride (Cask 4.1%, Bottle 4.7%) and one for London Pride Unfiltered which was a canned and keg beer sold around 2017 - 2018.

 

[HighlandTap]

A few observations after reading this thread that may help:

Obviously, beer is an agricultural product and no two batches will be exactly the same.

John Keeling stated in an interview that he and Derek Prentice used to tinker with some of the Fuller’s range of beers in order to not only make them better but also to make a beer that they would enjoy drinking. He also said that one variation that was tried with the CB, LP, ESB parti-gyle was using dark crystal in a smaller amount than would be used with the light crystal. (I tried some bottles of London Pride made with the dark crystal and preferred the light crystal version).

BeerSmith’s database rates Simpsons Light Crystal as 52.8 SRM, Crisp Extra Light as 55.8 SRM & Crisp Light Crystal as 86.3 SRM, Muntons 110 (40L) as 60 SRM.

Wild About Hops in NZ has a director who was born in London. They breed hops and sell hop plants and recipe books. They published a recipe book about British Ales that has over 175 recipes, 4 of which are recipes for Fuller’s ESB (Cask 5.5%, Bottle 5.9%, Past Master’s 1981 ESB bottle 5.5% and Special Edition ESB 2005 bottle conditioned brewed at 6.1% which John Keeling estimates it will rise to 6.3% with the conditioning), 2 for London Pride (Cask 4.1%, Bottle 4.7%) and one for London Pride Unfiltered which was a canned and keg beer sold around 2017 - 2018.

Great tip THC13. I’ve seen the Wild About Hops website a while back but I’ll check out that book. Sounds like a must have for OCD peeps like myself

 

[HM-2]

BeerSmith’s database rates Simpsons Light Crystal as 52.8 SRM, Crisp Extra Light as 55.8 SRM & Crisp Light Crystal as 86.3 SRM, Muntons 110 (40L) as 60 SRM.

This highlights one of the biggest challenges with many recipes out there for British beers including strong/best bitters- there's a pretty huge difference in what counts as "light crystal" between different maltsters. I love Simpsons T50 in my bitters at 5-7%, its ~130 EBC which is "just right" in my view.

 

[Jocky]

This highlights one of the biggest challenges with many recipes out there for British beers including strong/best bitters- there's a pretty huge difference in what counts as "light crystal" between different maltsters. I love Simpsons T50 in my bitters at 5-7%, its ~130 EBC which is "just right" in my view.

The less talked about challenge not mentioned in British beer recipes is yeast. In British beers the yeast is as important a character as in Belgian beers.

Graham Wheeler didn’t recommend commercially available yeasts in his editions of Brew Your Own British Real Ale, because his opinion was that you really needed to get the real brewery yeast.

A lot of the home brew yeasts - particularly the dry ones - just lack a lot of the subtle estery characters, although Imperial A09 Pub is pretty good. The best ESB I ever made was with yeast grown up from bottles of Fullers 1845.

 

[hooper]

I agree with the Yeast importance. I was not able to get a good Fullers ESB clone until I grew the yeast from a Fullers bottle.

 

[Jocky]

I agree with the Yeast importance. I was not able to get a good Fullers ESB clone until I grew the yeast from a Fullers bottle.

I have a Fullers pub at the end of my road and during lockdown I missed it, so I decided to brew my own ESB, growing yeast from 1845.

The moment I opened the fermenter at the end of fermentation I could really smell the Fullers character.

 

[HighlandTap]

Are most of you convinced the commercially available “Fullers” yeasts aren’t cultured from Fullers? Perhaps to far removed from the original? I have gotten some good British character from the Imperial and WYeast versions. I’ve also had good British flavor from 1469 West Yorkshire. I would agree though, without the authentic British yeast, you won’t get the flavor on ingredients alone. But I’ve never tried

 

[Jocky]

Are most of you convinced the commercially available “Fullers” yeasts aren’t cultured from Fullers? Perhaps to far removed from the original? I have gotten some good British character from the Imperial and WYeast versions. I’ve also had good British flavor from 1469 West Yorkshire. I would agree though, without the authentic British yeast, you won’t get the flavor on ingredients alone. But I’ve never tried

Give that repitched yeast genetically drifts over generations, while I can confirm WLP002 and Imperial A09 aren’t the same as Fullers now, they may well have been isolated from a long distant generation.

 

[HighlandTap]

The drifting certainly makes sense. Do places like WYeast and White labs occasionally do a new, fresh harvest/culture for any of their yeasts?

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I hear what is said about using the dregs to grow an authentic yeast for your clone but having drank bitter for 55 years bottled bitter is different from the draught version. I brew bitter regularly and have my four corny kegs holding four different bitters. All other beers I bottle and I never bottle bitter. I use only dry yeast and I’m sure my version is not like the original but hey it’s still bitter and pretty good.

 

[DuncB]

A good pint. Great venue. An old water mill

 

[madscientist451]

Somewhere on this site is a lengthy thread about Fullers complete with photos of their logbooks showing the make up of ESB, London Pride, Golden Pride, and Chiswick Bitter. They were all made from the same gyle. For the life of me I cannot find that thread right now. There was also a podcast with Jamil... I believe it was one of their can you brew it series in which they interview former Fullers master brewer, John Keeling, who describes the recipe in detail. If you can find a working link to that podcast good luck. I can't find a single one that works. But, there is a lot of content out there with John Keeling talking about this beer, how it came to be and how it is made.

This link worked for me:
https://shrubbery.net/tbn/cybi05-10-10.mp3

 

[Halfakneecap]

A good pint. Great venue. An old water millView attachment 876993
View attachment 876995

Where's that ?! NZ?

 

[DuncB]

Where's that ?! NZ?

There's no pub of that quality / heritage in New Zealand, or with beer like it.

https://www.millelstead.co.uk/


Lovely place although a little cool outside in late April.