E80 John Keeling, Fuller's Brewery MAIN FEED 1

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Welcome John Keeling!

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[00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Respecting the Beer. My name is Gary Arndt.

With me again, as usual, is the historian of Hops, Joel Hermansen and the man who just joined the new cover band, Tom Petty and the beer makers, Mr. Bobby f Fleshman. Nice. We got a great interview today. Coming to us all the way from the United Kingdom is the former brewmaster at Fullers. John Keeling, a man who's probably forgotten more about beer than we know.

Um, John, thanks for being on the

Thank you for having me.

Uh, why don't we get started?

John Keeling's Journey into Brewing

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Why don't you just briefly kind of to give us your story about how you got started in beer and

Alright.

The official story or the

unofficial story.

The unofficial one's probably more

Well, um, what happened was I, I left school when I was just over 16. And, uh, I didn't want to go back to school and [00:01:00] I didn't quite tell my mother I was doing that. And eventually she got fed up in me hanging around the house and she said, well, if you're not going back to school, you better get a job.

And I was not keen on that either, but she said, but fortunately, she'd got me an interview at the local brewery. So I went along for this interview and lo and behold, I got the job at the local brewery, which was in Manchester where I'm born. And it was Wilson's Brewery in Newton Heath, Manchester. And they were part of the Watney group, uh, way back in the seventies.

And I got the job, and I, I liked it so much. I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. So after a couple years at, at, uh, Wilson's, I left Wilson's to go and study at Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh for a degree in brewing and distilling. Which I got. And then, so three years after of study at Harriet Watt, and then [00:02:00] I got a job at Fullers Brewery as a junior brewer.

And I've, I was there for 38 years, um, and 19 years as their brewing director, head brewer that in,

If you're Manchester, I have to ask, do you support City

Uh, United.

All right.

I as, as did my father before me. It's, it's a well known fact that, uh, Manchester City fans think they're manian, but they really all come from Stockport. They see the reds that come from Manchester.

That's a little football joke to all you football fans,

right? I, I, I'm sure you know Charlie

Charlie. Sorry. Yes, I do. Yes. I, I I do know Charlie. Yeah. The, uh, the

pule of foam.

I would imagine that we would have some, some soccer, football discussions if he were here, we would derail. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. I [00:03:00] don't know what you have there, Gary. Uh, maybe how we, how we quote met we, so I'm, so, I'm, I was on a podcast called, uh, brewers Journal, I think it was maybe five years ago. And the producer after the fact connected me and you by email for whatever reason, he thought that.

Our passion for cask married with yours. And, and, uh, so I reached out and I've asked you for advice over the years on ordering hops and how to use them, et cetera, in these English beers. And the opportunity came up for the Great Taste of Wco or great, great taste of the Midwest

in Madison. Yeah, in

Madison, Wisconsin.

They were, they were wanting us to reach out to brewers outside of the state, uh, for collaborations. Uh, it's, it's the lar largest beer fest, I think, outside of the Great American Beer Festival in the United States. In any case, I, I went farther than that. Reached out to you in London or in England to, to maybe [00:04:00] pull this together remotely.

And I guess we'll get into how you, how Fullers made beer and how, how we try to simulate it. Uh, but yeah, that's sort of it. We've never physically met and we hope to get you here stateside soon, uh, at some point to see what we've done. But in the meantime, this is a beer we did, uh, virtually

that would, that would be nice. It would be nice to see you.

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

The Art of Brewing at Fullers

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So, uh, do you wanna, you wanna talk about how Fullers makes beer and how they've made beer Historically? It's, it's a unique

Yeah.

Well, uh, you know, there's lots of different ways to make beer and little variations on, on how you make beer. And I used to say to people. That my job is not to be the best brewer in the world. My job is to be the best fullest brewer in the world because the way Fullers make beer is different from other people.

The way Adnams makes beer is different from other brewers. The way St. Ael [00:05:00] make beer is different from others. So when you go and work for these companies, you've got to, uh, get used to the company, get used to their style, uh, how they make beer and immerse yourself in that because it, it is part of the culture.

When I was first of Fullers, uh, Fullers was really a, a, a London brewery at that point. We, we had gone a little bit out of London, but we were still a London brewery. And, and drinking in Fullers pubs was, was like supporting your local football team. People who drank Fullers thought thought that Fullers was the best beer in the world.

They didn't drink a great deal of anybody else's. They drank Fullers and then, and I think where I was from in Manchester, Boddington's was the best bearing because that's what Manchester people liked to drink in your local brewery. You immerse yourself in the culture of that and the culture of the pubs.

And, and then [00:06:00] gradually Fullers became bigger and bigger and we spread our style of beer around the world, you know? And the mo, one of the most famous beers of ours was ESB, full as ESB. And that became a style in its own right. Originally it was just one beer, it wasn't a style. Uh, but Fuller's way of making beer is really goes back to the Victorian era of making beer.

We use a system in, uh, called the Party Gale System, which really means that you have two mastone and two coppers. You bash, you, you, you mash in, in, uh, first thing in the morning, both mash tons at the same time, and you then run off both at the same time and they fill copper number one. Copper number one is therefore very strong because it gets all the first runnings from the masto.

And then when cup one is full, you start that to [00:07:00] boil and then continue filling copy number two. Cup number two becomes quite weak because it has the last run-ins from the masto and to get the different styles of the different types of Fullers beer. So we would make a, a beer called Chisik Bitter, a beer called London Pride and ESB, all from that same mash.

And we did that by blending the two coppers together in fermenting vessel. And uh, then adding the yeast in fermenting. The other thing we did would, we would add two thirds of all the hops to the first couple. And one third to the second copper. And that's because we wanted the stronger beers to have more bitterness than the weaker beers.

And, and also I think, uh, the hops, uh, optimize better in weaker words as well. So you would get, uh, a proportionally more bitter. Second words, uh, which we didn't want so much. So we put two thirds of the hops. This was [00:08:00] developed over, they first started Party Island in about the, the early, uh, the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds.

And it evolved and evolved and become, uh, when I left, it was fully automated computer run, uh, and everything. Nothing could go wrong once you'd committed to, to making the beer, unless the plant and machinery broke down In the early days, it was very hands-on.

Historical Beers and Emotional Connections

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Uh, a very manual job in, in fact, when, when we come to reviewing the brilliant records in my time there, uh, we was looking to make beers from the past, we call them past masters, and we wanted to make the exact same recipe in the place where it, it, it was made originally.

And that brought forth a, a, a lot of different beers that we brewed in. And I realized at that time as well that people must have an emotional, [00:09:00] uh, connection to, to beer. And that brought it on to me, brewing those beers from the past. I just thought we were just gonna do recipes. But then we picked a recipe to brew from 1914, which was the beginning of the, of the First World War.

And this recipe we, we made. And partway through making it, people started talking about the First World War, saying, you know, this beer we made, which. Would've been drunk by all the troops in, in Middlesex and in Surrey. Um, it was stationed there going out to the second World War because that's where Fullers were strong.

All those troops would've drank that beer. It might have been the last beer they drank. It might have been the last British beer they drank. Certainly. And that big gives you an emotional attachment to that beer. There was another beer we made from 1966. We wanted to prove this, uh, because England won their [00:10:00] only football World Cup in 1966.

And we wanted to prove that because, uh, uh, we wanted to recognize that fact. And then one of the old brewers who was just about to retire, tapped me on the shoulder when I was looking at this recipe, and he said, John, you know what? I brewed that beer on that day. And he had made that beer, so we made him make the next beer.

Which is the one, the one for the past masters. So Brendan, who, who was one of our brewers, he'd made the beer in 1966, we decided to call it past masters, which, which again just shows that connection you have through history. But when you make beer, and we've been making this beer, you know, in this patal system since the late 18, 18 hundreds.

Uh, and we still do that today. We still, we other, we make other types of beer as well, but that's the main, uh, type of beer that we [00:11:00] make is on the Patal system, which was a Victorian invention really to get the best outta Mastone. Uh, because Mastone were the only way of making beer in the late 18 hundreds.

They, that was a standard way of making beer, um, the lanterns. Uh, we certainly not in British brewing. They might have been in European brewing and mash filters were not in British brewing. They were not inve invented for another a hundred and so years. But Ashtons were the old fashioned way of making beer.

And it's also what was good about mash duns, I feel it's a very calm situation. You don't rank the bed, you don't stir it or anything like that. And so when you get words off and when it runs properly, it becomes very clear because the mash itself forms its own filter. And if you don't disturb it, that filter runs all the time.

You run in the maton and, and it gives you a very clear word, which, which helps cas [00:12:00] beer because Casper is not filtered. So if you, if you bring, uh, a lot of cloudiness out of your mash, you're gonna get that in the end product as well. And people wanted a clear beer. And, and that's why the Ashtons were so good at making cask beer, which was, you know, for hundreds of years, the, the, the traditional beer of, of Britain.

And it still is, uh, really the traditional beer, but it's not the most popular beer anymore. But

How, how, how is Cas doing today? I, I hear it's, it's down and it's down, but then occasionally I hear that it's maybe coming back up and I'm thinking about it in England.

I, I

mean, I mean, in Britain, full Stop is, is really the only place that you can get Cas beer. I, I know other, other breweries do do it, but it's really just for their tap rooms and et cetera. It's not widely distributed as it is in [00:13:00] Britain. And, and Britain has the malt for it, the Ashton for it. It has, uh, the, uh, you know, we know are cool or hot in our weather.

So it it, it is the ideal temperature. For, for making cas beer and, and storing it and distributing it. It's, it's not too cold. Casper does not like being freezing cold, and it does not like being too warm either. It's got to be in that correct temperature, temperature range. And what is it doing in Britain?

I think in Britain now, it's really the beer of specialist breweries. Specialist pubs and specialist beer drinkers. Probably. It's of the total beer sales in Britain, four to 5% of the total five beer sales. It's about eight to 9%, maybe even 10% of the total beer sold in pubs. So you, you know what, when I started drinking beer, it was 40% of the beer.[00:14:00]

Right.

John, I wanted to ask a quick question. First of all, thanks for being here. It's a privilege to talk with you. Your reputation, uh, precedes you. Um. I, we do a lot at McManns focusing on history. So listening to your story about the past masters and, and, uh, the soldiers in Middlesex, et cetera. You know, going off and having their last beers is pretty inspirational for us.

Modernization and Consistency in Brewing

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Um, but I know that that isn't your whole story because I know you're also someone who has overseen, uh, the transition of Fullers to, uh, a larger, more modern brewery as well. So I'm wondering if you can, uh, in addition to the historical, if you can talk a little bit about the science and technology that you ushered in, uh, at Fullers.

I think

if you look back. [00:15:00] Full as we used to use open Squares. Uh, our Ashton was built in the 1860s. Uh, everything was old and

Where, where is that match time these days? I have to interrupt. Where did that equipment

Um, it's still there. We still keep,

It's still there. Okay.

it in a museum. They, uh, sort of like, there's bits and pieces all dotted around the tour. So in between all the modern plant, you have some of the old plant which is left so that people who come on the tour are Fullers. And I, I recommend it to go home when you're in London is using, we will see the old equipment as well as the new equipment.

So you can see how we, we used plant in, you know, 50 years ago and how we use it today. And I think that the difference between the two is, um, the automation that's come in, uh, the, the fermenters have gone to enclosed fermentation. Um, we found that, uh, we started using them in the seventies [00:16:00] and, and eventually became a hundred percent enclosed fermentation.

Our yeast prefers enclosed fermentation than it did the open squares. I I, I used to speak to the old brewers who used to brew on the open squares, and they brewed on the Conicals as well, and I, I, and we moved all to the conicals for, for the reason we thought it made better beer. But they said once in a blue moon, the open squares would produce the best beer, but it also more often than not, produce the worst beer.

And for sheer consistency, the enclosed fermentation vessels were, were much superior. And I think that is, if there's anything I, what sum up in one word, the change of Fullers is, is inconsistency. And that's brought about by modern equipment, modern plan. Designing recipes around that modern plant. So if you say we are going to [00:17:00] boil, uh, for an 8% boil off, the computer says, we've now just did 8%.

There's no guessing in that. I I, I also remember talking and reading old brewing books and, and this is the, the revolution, the evolution of brewing has occurred ever since we started brewing. But how did they know the right temperature to mash in when they mashed in without a thermometer, when thermometers weren't invented?

How did they know that? And the answer in those old books was the water was at the right temperature to mash when it showed you the reflection of your face bet the best. So if you could see your face in the water, the best you knew, you had the right temperature to m in. Which is an amazing fact. And what is also amazing fact when, when thermometers were invented, [00:18:00] brewers did not want to use them.

And why was that? Because it took away a skill that they had. Nobody else knew the right temperature. Only the brewer. Yeah. But when a thermometer was invented, it was easy to know when the right temperature. And I think that's what Fullers did. During my time there, we moved to make more consistent beer and also a longer shelf life.

Beer. The beer didn't go off as quickly because we brewed it better and better. And we use modern science to inform us on, on how to do that. Especially say for for small pack, you know how to produce a beer for small pack that will last six months. It, it's much different from producing a cas beer, which you want to last four weeks, and it's different.

So, and it, and, and the science teaches you the differences, what you have to [00:19:00] remove from the beer to make sure it doesn't go off. For instance, the roll of oxygen in, in the brewing process, again, lots of people think oxygen, oxygen is so negative, it produces poor flavors. But when we started bottling con conditioning our beers, and the most famous one we do is vintage L or 1845, we found that they were better after 12 months than they were after one month.

And we found that natural fact my favorite vintages are often more than 10 years old. And that was the role of oxygen in aging. And if the oxygen, to me, if the oxidation is slow. And lengthy and measured in years rather than weeks. It produces a, a much better flavor than when you accelerate the oxidation process.[00:20:00]

So by having too much oxygen in there, and again, the, the bottle condition bears have yeast in them, which constantly mop up any oxygen that comes past the cap, uh, on the, on the bottle top. So I, measuring and, and, and, and understanding the role of oxygen in bare flavor, I think, you know, again, science has shed that light on there.

And brewing science has gone forward in, in leaps and bounds, even from when I started in, in the seventies. Uh, and, and, and one, I think one of the reasons why this is a, a lot of the science in the seventies was designed to. Produce to remove flavor from beer so that it was easier to hold for 12 months.

Making a beer consistent is easier if it hasn't gotten a lot of flavor with the advent [00:21:00] of craft beer they want with wanted beer with flavor. And again, that gives us a different problem. How do you make a beer with all these flavors in last six months? Because flavors constantly change. It's the biochemical, um, change in in the beer flavors and, and also the biological, if you have yeast in there as well.

And how do you manage that? And, and the conclusion I came to is you've got to seek to make those changes positive rather than negative. Beer will change in flavor. Uh, when you taste the beer at three years old and, and having tasted the same beer at one month old. It will change in flavor. There's nothing you can do to stop that and instead of trying

to

How many thoughts do you have going through your head right now after that?

You, you know me well, yeah,

I do.

I, I don't even know where to go because there's so many ways to go with that. I would say one thing we [00:22:00] did was with this collaboration, we, we used Fuller's yeast for the first time at this brewery.

We generally use Timothy Taylor, uh, and 'cause we have open

Yeah.

on all of our English ales. And I will say that it does manifest very differently in, in that open, that it does the, the fuller strain. I, I was surprised. I'm always surprised when we do, when we see like how they manifest on the surface and how you can tell just by looking at that, which you're working with.

But it, it's funny you would say that, that maybe one has been sort of selected at this point for closed fermentation.

Yes, yes. But again, one of the things, I mean, I've worked a lot on, on, on, on this aspect and. When we come, we, we took over a brewery called Gale's. It would open fermentation as well. And we converted them to being an enclosed fermentation. And what, what you have to do is you have to look in a common sense way at fermentation.

All fermentation out is not top or bottom. [00:23:00] It actually happens in the middle. Yeah. That's where the yeast ferments. What happens, it either settles at the bottom or it floats to the top and you skim from the top to collect your yeast or you collect from the bottom. And what I observed in using open squares was there was a lot of yeast at the bottom after we emptied the vessel.

So I knew some of our yeast was settling at the bottom as well as floating on the top. If you select the bottom yeast, eventually you'll convert it into a bottom collection. And that's what we did with both the fuller yeast and the Gales yeas. So you can select to make it. So what? To reselect the yeast to be a top fermenting yeast, all you do is you, you collect the yeast that floats to the top.

And, uh, when you open up a fullish conical, you will see yeast on the top. It'd be a thin layer, but you [00:24:00] will see it. And if we collected that yeast, we could turn the, the Fullers yeast into a top, uh, collection. Collection yeast where a lot of yeast is at the top instead of just the thin layer.

This is turning into a multigenerational collaboration. I can see, we'll select a couple times over that. That, that's a rabbit hole. I'd love to dive down. My wife is not here with us, but if she were there would be two against one, I think when it comes to cast sitting at the table here. Yeah. Three, including yourself.

And, uh, Joel. Joel is, uh, how we were talking a little bit about this, how you guys were the yin and yang of beer. Yeah, there,

I I was reading a quote that you, you had, uh, from 2015, uh, and I'll quote you right here. For example, you said, but for some people, their prejudice won't allow them to taste and like a good beer and you can't win with people like that.

Um, I don't wanna say I am the person like [00:25:00] that, but I'm probably the person like that. Um, I, I'm a. I'm, I'm not a prejudicial drinker. I can appreciate, I prefer the prefer term simple

man. Yeah. Right.

I,

I, I, or simpleton, whichever you thank,

thank you. Yeah. I, I can appreciate the merits of cask beer. Um, I, it's just, it's, it's just not something that I, that I like.

I've got two answers.

I'm a monochromatic

I've got two answers. A and answers to that is firstly there, there is only actually two types of beer in the world. Yeah. There's bears I like, and beers I don't. And those are the only two types. And the second thing is if you, if you don't like Cas beer, it it's, you have to work hard to try and like it.

So if you were to drink just a half pint [00:26:00] every night for 12 months, you would like it.

Okay.

be a long 12 months for you. But you'll get that.

and yeah, part of it. And like, I don't like coffee either. I'm like a, I'm a strange person when it comes to drinks. I don't like coffee. You're gonna hate me for this too. I don't like tea. I don't like warm things.

Well.

When I'm drinking something, I really only drink four things. I drink water, I drink milk, I drink fruit juices, and I drink West Coast IPAs.

That, that's the extent, that's like the extent of

Well, I, I suppose if you were going to, uh, only pick four, you know, that's, that's not a bad.

right.

Well, and I would say that I was already in love with, uh, Sam Smith and Fullers when my wife and I made a trip to, to England in 2008. And, and at that point I think it seeded the beginnings in their [00:27:00] minds of what became this brewery. And I got to experience cask in, in a way that you can't convey in words.

I got to be in these pubs across and, and you get to, to be a part of the community in a, in a certain way. So we were, we were thinking about building our tap room and if you look online, you can see pictures of it to, to try to do, be the best we could to transport what you might find in England or Ireland or Scotland back here.

And then brew beers that would, uh, would do them justice. Speaking of which, we just got a silver at the US Open for our English.

Well, that's good. Yeah.

one one in which that I've communicated with you about and you, and you told me to to stop. I think you did not say stop fucking with it, but a lot of people do say that to me.

So I did and it, and it succeeded. I dunno where I'm going there. I guess I was trying to say though, that. Allison, my wife and I, we, we have a different introduction to cask than people who've not been able to experience

Well,

and, and,

The Social Aspect of Beer

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you know, you know, beer is such a social thing and I think one of the [00:28:00] great sadnesses to me is the fact that now, uh, you know, over 50% of beer drunk in the uk, he's drunk at home. And I would much prefer if 20% of the beer was drunk at home and 80% was drunk in the pub. 'cause drinking with friends in the pub to me is the best way of experiencing beer.

Yes.

and, and to do that I, I, I think is a, a, a great thing be because

And sadly, that's gonna wrap up this episode of Respecting the Beer. The producer of the show is me, David Kalsow. with music by Sarah Lynn Huss.

Come back in two weeks to hear the rest of the conversation with John Keeling. As next week, we'll be celebrating October Fest with a special episode. If you want to hear the full conversation with John Keeling right now, you can head on over to Patreon and support at any level, get you access to fully uncut episodes.

We've also [00:29:00] got a video tour of the brewery coming very soon so if you'd like to see everything that happens behind the scenes, guided by Bobby and Allison themselves, support us over there. Otherwise, you can stay up to date between episodes over in our Facebook group.

And until next time, please remember to respect the beer.