Victory Brewing Co. :: Taste Victory

Background: Several months ago, while in the Philadelphia area for a promotion, a few key Fuller’s employees stopped by Victory Brewing Company. During that visit, the idea of a brewer’s exchange between our two companies was formed. The spirit would be purely intellectual, with the thought that both companies would ultimately benefit from seeing how each other goes about achieving the same end goal. Lucky for me, I was chosen as Victory’s representative for the first journey across the pond. Following is my journal-style account of the trip, my first time to London…

Eve of flight: Forces appear to be conspiring against my travel plans... The remnants of Hurricane Ernesto are making their way up the east coast. This, combined with Labor Day traffic, made travel to the airport somewhat of a nightmare. Upon arrival at the airport, the newly imposed carry-on item restrictions were causing everyone to check their bags, creating one of the longest baggage check lines that I’ve ever confronted. One of the new rules, no liquids allowed in non-checked baggage, has definitely made my desired task of bringing over some liquid refreshment as an offering to Fuller’s much more difficult. In the end, I still managed to check two six-packs by carefully packing bottles amongst my clothes. I’ll let you know tomorrow if my first order of business upon arrival in the UK will involve heading to a Laundromat.

Saturday (i.e. Day One):
I arrived at Heathrow around 10am (aren’t red-eye flights fun?). Upon collecting my luggage, I found no need for a trip to the Laundromat – thankfully, the bottles had arrived in excellent condition! I was greeted at the airport by Paul, the leader of Fuller’s quality assurance laboratory. This was followed quickly by my first venture into the London Underground and a ride on the Tube to my hotel in Central London. Fuller’s was kind enough to put me up in one of their pub hotels, which apparently have varied themes. This one, called the Sanctuary House, was of the ‘Ale & Pie’ variety, which turned out to be in the old English pub tradition - a bounty of wood and leather made up the décor.
Not to waste any time, I quickly began my whirlwind pub tour, of which Paul was a fantastic host. Downstairs from my room, I had imbibed my first English pint (Fuller’s London Pride) at the Sanctuary House by 2pm. Then, we were off to see some sights (i.e. more pubs). For the sake of brevity, I’ll just mention one of the many pubs visited today. This was Waxy O’Connor’s (Paul is Irish, after all), a pub located between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. The entrance gives the appearance of a relatively small place; however, the pub turns out to be quite cavernous inside, with cozy smaller rooms positioned around the outside of the central space. Most cool, was the giant tree that exists jutting up through the center of the pub…quite the focal point.

Sunday:
Climbed the 311 steps to the top of the 202-foot high Monument Tower for a fantastic view of London on a beautiful day (after consuming a couple of pints, of course). Later that day, as we walked past Buckingham Palace, it was noted that the queen was in residence (marked by the flying of the flag at full mast). One of our mid-afternoon stops was a visit to the magnificent Blackfriars pub – truly amazing décor! Here, I had my first taste of a beer called WychCraft from the Wychwood Brewery. Another stop of note today, was at an Irish microbrew chain called the Porterhouse located in the Covent Garden area. True to its name, I found an excellent selection of porters on draft.

Monday:
As was to become my routine for the week, I rode the Tube from my hotel to the Turnham Green station (a 30 to 45 minute ride depending on the speed of the train) and walked 15 minutes to the Fuller’s brewery. And, yes, I made sure to “Look Right” and “Look Left” as painted on the street at each intersection. Upon arrival, I was given an extensive tour of the brewery by Simon, Fuller’s Quality Systems Manager. I doubt I could have had a better tour guide, as I soon learned that the brewery had gone through a number of changes during Simon’s extensive tenure at Fuller’s. He provided me my first insights into the amazing blend of old and new that exists at Fuller’s. As the transition occurred from open fermentation to modern conical fermenters, Simon explained to me how they had to re-train the Fuller’s yeast strain to be able to harvest yeast from the bottom of the new closed conicals following fermentation. Fuller’s has preserved one of the ‘old square’ open fermenters for display in amongst their multitude of new fermenters. The old coal-fired brew kettle (or copper, to use the term used at Fuller’s) still sits in its original location very near to the new, modern brewhouse. The claim is that the kettle is still operational, although they laughed at me when I asked them to prove it. It was during this tour that I also learned the challenges caused by the limitations of space in a metropolitan area. After all, Fuller’s is sitting on the location of London’s oldest brewery – beer has been brewed on the site for over 350 years. Surprisingly, the Fuller’s brewery exists on a plot of land not much greater in size than ours at Victory, even though their brewery produces nearly ten times the volume of beer that we produce.
Monday evening, I was taken to my favorite pub of the trip so far – the Churchill Arms. Apparently the landlord (a.k.a. general manager) is quite the character, although I didn’t actually get to meet him. The pub has a wild array of random items hanging at every possible square inch of the ceiling and walls. These range from cast iron pots to gas masks and photographs of Churchill himself (along with several US presidents). Attached to this English pub was a fantastic Thai restaurant. In a similar fashion to the pub, every square inch of space was also occupied here – this time, though with a diverse array of hanging plants as well as an amazing butterfly collection dispersed throughout. Tonight, I also had my first Young’s beer (ESB). I mention this because of the apparent controversy with the merging of the Young’s and Charles Wells breweries. As of writing, the plan is to shut down the Young’s brewery and transfer brewing to the Charles Wells brewery…a major controversy as Young’s was London’s oldest family brewer.

Tuesday:
I spent the workday rotating through the various departments of the Fuller’s laboratory (my forte back at Victory). The Fuller’s labs were very up-to-date, with an excellent mix of technology for testing virtually every aspect of the beer. I was amazed at Fuller’s attention to detail. As an example, the brewery is meticulous about label placement on the bottle, so much so that even the neck labels received a great deal of scrutiny. This really gave me a feel for the great sense of pride that the brewery has in the product that it provides to the public. Working in the lab also gave me the chance to see the excellent hold that Fuller’s has on the microbiological aspects of its process. Multiple tests are routinely performed at a number of critical points as brews progress from the brewhouse to the cellar and on through to cask, keg or bottled product. One note here: Fuller’s has recently purchased Gale’s brewery and are now brewing the Gale’s beers at the Fuller’s brewery. In order to preserve the Gale’s house character, Fuller’s has gone to great lengths. For example, Fuller’s has preserved the utilization of the Gale’s yeast strain, which also had to be re-trained to get it to behave properly in the Fuller’s tanks as Gale’s was still using unlined wooden fermenters at the time of the brewery shutdown. In addition, the brewing water is also altered for the Gale’s brews in order to more closely resemble the constitution of the water that was used at Gale’s. I bring this yeast up because the lab workers were attempting to explain to me the onerous burden of keeping two yeast strains going inside the brewery – that is, until I told them about the 30 strains that I keep alive at Victory. Needless to say, they didn’t share with me another yeast complaint for the rest of my visit…

I was treated to lunch today by Sam, Fuller’s North American sales representative. We strolled down the Thames to a little pub named “The Dove” that was purchased by Fuller’s in 1796. It has the distinction of being in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the smallest bar in the country. More importantly (in my mind) was the beautiful patio on the back of the bar that overlooks the river.

This evening, I traveled to a pub called the White Horse in Parson’s Green that had been recommended to me by co-workers at Victory. I had the pleasure of dining with the landlord, Mark Dorber, who brought a fantastic barrage of beer up from his cellar.

One of the most notable of the night was a Chocolate beer from Meantime Brewing Company in Greenwich. A bottle of Ten Year anniversary beer from Porterhouse (10% abv) was terrific as well. Mark is definitely a visionary when it comes to beer – his pub had the largest selection of American bottled beer of any that I went in. In addition, he is supposedly the only account in England to serve the export version (a bigger version intended for the US market) of Fuller’s London Porter.

Wednesday:
I spent a good portion of the workday in the Fuller’s laboratory again today, allowing me to gain additional insight into the workings of their quality control systems. In addition to the lab work, I occupied some of my day observing the cask-filling line. Unlike most cask products you’ll find in the US, cask beer in England is nearly perfectly clear. Fuller’s has this clarification (or fining) process down to a science. In fact, this process continues all the way to the pubs (an advantage of actually owning the pubs where most of your beer is served). Landlords have strict instructions on how to treat casks when they arrive, including how long and in what position they need to sit before serving. This explains the “Coming Soon” signs that I have occasionally seen on handpumps at pubs…the cask has arrived, but isn’t yet ready for serving. Last but not least, today was also special in that I was given the opportunity to participate in a tasting of all of the years of Fuller’s Vintage Ale that have ever been produced (1997 through 2006)...no doubt, a brilliant set of beers.

After work, I was promptly whisked away from the brewery to attend a “Beer & Food” dinner hosted by John Keeling, Fuller’s Brewing Director at the Swan Hotel in Staines. Little did I know that I was in for a whopping nine-course dinner, where each course was paired with at least two different beers. Upon perusing the menu, I was pleased to find out that my palate would soon be challenged with a number of decidedly English food items such as black pudding with bubble & squeak, Hereford hop cheese, Cropwell Bishop stilton and Chiswick Delight as a few examples. It was obvious that the emphasis of the dinner was firmly on the pairings, with beer choices that in some cases were intended to contrast with the food and in other cases showcased complimentary flavors. The list of beers included a wide range of styles, including such things as Belgian lambic, German weissbier and even a number of US brews – in other words, this was far less an endorsement of Fuller’s ales than it was an extraordinary promotion of food and meant to encourage exploration of your individual palate. I found it quite encouraging to hear that Fuller’s apparently hosts similar dinners quite often. Now if I can just find a taxi back to my hotel…

Thursday:
Some of my time today was occupied by the packaging (bottling and kegging) lines. Here is where I discovered that Fuller’s packaging line manager’s name is Steve…oddly enough, so is Victory’s packaging line manager. Yes, an unknown connection between the two breweries that made me secretly laugh. The bottling line was remarkably similar to Victory’s, with a bit of increase in the size of Fuller’s system. I learned here that variety packs are actually created off-premises by a re-packing company – I’m sure our Steve would love it if we did the same for our Victory Variety cases…
Fuller’s kegging line was very impressive, and I soon found myself staring in awe at one of the more recent installations…a giant robotic arm that splits time between placing dirty kegs on the start of the conveyer and removing filled kegs off of the line at the end, perfectly palletizing them for removal by fork truck. The amount of grunt work that this machine handles is much appreciated by the current kegging line staff, most of whom know what it was like to have to pull kegs on and off manually in the years before this upgrade. The excitement in their stories of having to learn how to use computer programs to instruct a robot after years of huffing kegs on the line provided me with a great picture of Fuller’s continuing evolution.
In addition, I spent a portion of time today in the brewhouse working with Joe, one of Fuller’s brewers. As was the case for a number of the people that I met during my stay, Joe has worked at Fuller’s for an extended amount of time. The brewhouse is where I learned the added challenges associated with brewing organic beer. Everything, including the brewing water, was kept completely separate from any non-organic ingredients. The growing organic market obviously makes these tribulations worthwhile.

After work, I was treated to a walk along the Thames, along the way making stops at some nautical-themed pubs: The Old Ship as well as The Blue Anchor (apparently this pub appears in the movie Sliding Doors for you film fans). I was able to get my hands on some delicious Indian food and ended the night at ‘The Salutation’, a wonderful Fuller’s pub in Hammersmith.

Friday:
A good portion of my day involved learning about Fuller’s quality control system. I was amazed to find out that every piece of equipment in the plant has an electronic entry in an internal database. By instituting this type of program, all equipment has someone responsible for its maintenance. As well, all customer inquiries (something that I deal with quite a bit at Victory) get logged into the database system, and persons responsible for replies get notified automatically. The system also keeps a record of all correspondence (both internal and external) that has do to do with any of these issues. It became very clear to me that this system was a very efficient way of preventing even the smallest items from falling through the venerable cracks that can exist in a large company. My remaining time at the Fuller’s brewery involved perusing the ‘Hock Cellar’. While once a location where casks were stored, the site now serves as a Fuller’s brewery museum and tasting room following brewery tours. Stored there is a collection of, amongst other things, old brewery equipment and casks, vintage bottles and cans, and even a token-operated handpump that used to dispense two pulls worth of beer for brewery workers (apparently they used to get 2 tokens per day during their shift).

This evening, several of Fuller’s employees sent me off in style with a night out in Kingston. We started the evening with dinner and ale at a Fuller’s hotel. From there, we moved on to some of the trendier bars that I visited on the trip. Number of bars visited? Your guess is as good as mine. I do, however, remember the sink in the ‘loo’ of one of the bars being completely filled with seashells…it was quite the sight. The night ended, back at the original Fuller’s pub where we had started the evening and a subsequent taxi ride back to my hotel (arrival time of 3am…but the night was worth every minute!).

Saturday:
My hosts were kind enough to drive me out to Windsor, where we enjoyed most of the afternoon walking around in the shadow of Windsor Castle. The queen was in residence once again (is she stalking me?). It was in Windsor that I spied my first view of a live cricket match…quite entertaining even though I must admit that I really couldn’t get a good grasp of the rules. Apparently these matches can last for days, so, rather than stick around for the finish, we found a pub where we could have lunch. In the early evening, we found ourselves back in London for my final night in England. We decided to head to London’s Borough Market area to hunt down some pubs that had been recommended to me. The first of these that we found, the Market Porter, was a fantastic drinking environment…apparently a significant number of market-goers and workers end up here drinking on the surrounding street corners. Much lively conversation, as well as a few off-key songs, rang out as we stood and enjoyed a few pints, drinking in the atmosphere as much we were the liquid in our glasses. After this, we walked (next door, mind you) to the Wheatsheaf, a Young’s pub. A pint later, we headed down the street in search of the Brew Wharf, a London microbrewery. We weren’t disappointed as it was only a couple of blocks away. This pub was a spectacular blend of old and new (much as Fuller’s had grown to be, so it seemed fitting to find this on my last night of the trip). The décor was modern, but the building was obviously old and rich in history. Two cask ales, brewed in house, were available, as well as a wide selection of Meantime beers. In addition, a decent selection of US microbrew was available in bottles. Following this, we walked up in search of food and ended the night in a traditional English pub…the perfect ending to my stay.

In summary, my experience has given me a great respect for the Fuller’s brewery and its workforce. Even though hugely rich in brewing tradition, Fuller’s has managed to continue to renew itself as brewing has advanced. Not the least of these renewals is its adaptation to the changes in the marketplace that have occurred in a time of existence that US craft brewers can only dream of experiencing. I owe an enormous thanks to Fuller’s and Victory for this invaluable experience and very much look forward to hosting a Fuller’s employee at our brewery in the next few weeks…I have no doubt that their visit will be just as rewarding.