Dear John | Give and Take

Many brewers have learned from John Keeling, the former head brewer at Fuller’s. Equally, he spent much of his brewing career seeking wisdom from others, too. Here, he touches upon some of the changes to take place during his time at Fuller’s and explains that the power of the team is always greater than the individual.

I joined Fuller’s in January 1981. At that time,Fuller’s produced about 70,000 barrels per year and it owned 90 pubs. Around 80% of the brewery’s beer went to their pubs while the rest went to free trade.

Bottling mainly produced bottled Guinness, the kegger mainly handled lager bought in under contract and the cask line, by far the biggest volume, produced London Pride, ESB and Chiswick. 

Indeed, such was the demand for cask beer that each one of those was produced in barrels (36-gallon containers) and firkins were a relatively small volume. As an aside, the bottled Guinness from Fuller’s had a very good reputation and at the time, Fuller’s used flash pasteurisation for their beers rather than tunnel pasteurisation. This meant we were very good at sterile filling, something that helped enormously when we went on to produce bottle conditioned Fuller’s beers.

Now, Fullers produces around 205,000 barrels of beer per year and own nearly 400 pubs. Nearly 80% of the beer is sold outside of Fuller’s pubs and barrels have long since disappeared, while firkins are nearly 100 % of the racking output with very few kilderkins produced. Bottled Guinness has also sadly disappeared, with the bottling line running flat out producing Fuller’s beers for the export market and supermarkets. Kegging still produces lots of keg contracted lager but Fuller’s keg beers have grown considerably.

The market has changed and Fuller’s have changed with the market.

When I was interviewed for the job of junior brewer, which carried a starting salary of £5,000, the process was carried out by Graham Ure the retiring brewing director and Reg Drury, the newly appointed brewing director. I later found out that Graham had been a brewer for the Army during the war and had served on a ship that was a floating brewery.

Reg, of course, was a great influence on me. He was the person who taught me how to be a head brewer in their brewery, how to plan for the future, how to deal with other departments and how to look after your team. During my time with the brewery. Fuller’s has always been great investors in the future and new technology.

I worked for Reg on many great projects including Fuller’s first new brewhouse for 125 years. Other projects included a new cask line, kegging line, warehouse, bottling line and numerous tank farms. In fact, we rebuilt the brewery under Reg and I saw first hand the pressure put on him to succeed. The future of Fuller’s was in his hands.

When Reg decided to retire, he told me that one of the reasons was that the cask line was wearing out and he didn’t want to be the man to replace it. He was tired of the stress and strain. 

Instead, I would have to do it

I remember when we first produced London Porter.  After racking it into cask, it turned out to be very flat and Reg was worried. We stood next to the casks sampling them and realising they were all flat. Reg said what should we do? 

I answered by saying that the beer had enough fermentable sugar and the yeast was viable. 

All it needed was time. 

Reg seized on this and told me I was right and that we would give it four days on the floor to make the condition. Of course, Reg would have realised this but with all the other pressures on him he hadn’t got the time to think. I was glad that on this occasion I could do his thinking for him. This made me realise that a problem shared is a truly a problem halved. The power of the team is always greater than the individual.

Fuller’s were one of the first breweries to use conical fermenters for ale and started to use centrifuges in 1976! At the time they dabbled with becoming an all keg brewery for draught beer. They quickly decided against this when CAMRA arrived on the scene, but quickly adapted new technology for the production of cask beer, which gave the beer greater consistency and quality. Fuller’s never won a prize using the old open squares, all their prizes were won with conical brewed and centrifuged beers.

“A problem shared is a truly a problem halved. The power of the team is always greater than the individual.”

Funny enough it wasn’t Reg’s idea to get centrifuges but Philip Eliot’s. Philip was what everybody called a character. He was, in actual fact, the uncle of Anthony Fuller and the assistant head brewer. He ran brewing, fermentation and maturation. My first job was to work for him. I greatly enjoyed it even though Philip had a bit of a temper which would blow up quickly but just as quickly disappear. He was a very fair man who after bawling you out would then insist on buying you a pint, although it would be Chiswick Bitter (he never drank or bought anything else). 

When he retired we calculated that he accounted for 0.5% of the total Chiswick sales.

One of the things he did for me was tell me months before informing the company that he was to retire. He then told me I had six months to learn his job so that I would be the logical choice to take over from him. He got me my first promotion, although I dare say Reg had me marked out for this also.

Another person who had a great influence on me was Ken Don, the head brewer of Wandsworth-based Young’s. He really showed me how to be a head brewer outside of your brewery. Ken has always helped young brewers and put plenty back in to the industry he loves. 

He was chairman of the Heriot-Watt former brewer’s association, sat on the advisory board and was chairman of the London and South Section of the brewer’s guild. I too have held all those positions because I also want to put something back in the industry. Finally, Ken loved meeting drinkers and did many meet the brewer events, something I enjoy doing to. This really does keep you in touch with the drinker and enables you to interpret marketing data better

I have tried to take all those influences and use them as an inspiration for my own work in brewing. Hopefully, in another article, I will write about my years as a brewing director and look at how Fuller’s changed in that period and how I put into practice everything I had been taught.

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