It was a message yesterday morning on one of our
West Kent CAMRA
WhatsApp groups, which alerted me that something involving
Fuller’s and
Japan had taken place, so after quick
Google search I saw the shock news that
Fuller’s are
selling their beer and brewing business to
Japanese brewer,
Asahi, for a
sum of
£250 million.
The sale includes the historic Griffin Brewery, close to the
River Thames at Chiswick, all the Fuller’s beer and cider brands, plus the
associated distribution business. Fuller’s will retain ownership of their 400
or so pubs and hotels, and will enter into a long-term supply contract with
Asahi.
This news came completely out of the blue, and caught
industry observers, as well as casual onlookers, completely by surprise. As a
lifelong fan of Fuller’s and their beers, I find this story particularly sad as
it brings to an end the involvement of both the Fuller and Turner families in a business which
was established in 1845. Now Fuller’s and its beers, will be just another
collection of brands.
Now given
Asahi's track record so far with their other recent acquisitions
(Meantime &
Pilsner Urquell), I'm sure they will prove a good
custodian of the
Griffin Brewery and the
Fuller’s brands; at least in the short term. But for the purposes of this post I’d prefer to leave the fallout from this takeover to other writers, such as
Pub Curmudgeon and
Zythophile, both of whom put a different spin on the story, and concentrate instead on describing my own involvement with what, until yesterday,
was the sole surviving, independent, family-owned brewery, left in
London. (I
am discounting of course, the
120 small to medium breweries which have set up
in the capital, over the past couple of decades).
For this, we need to return to my sixth form days, back in the early
1970’s, in
Ashford and a
certain school friend of mine. I shan't reveal his real name as we lost touch a few decades ago, and I’m unsure whether or not he is still alive, so for the sake of this narrative, we'll refer to him as
RG. Now
RG was a friend who went against the grain, because, at a time when
most of us were into Prog Rock, motorbikes and chasing after girls,
RG
preferred to spend his spare time drinking with his parents.
His parents were what I’d call proper
Londoners, who had
moved to
Ashford when it was designated as a London
"over-spill" town. Pub-going was a way of life with them and they spread their drinking around a number of rather
traditional (old-fashioned) pubs, in
Ashford.
I had developed quite a taste for beer; a trait which, much to my mother’s horror, I probably
inherited from my
maternal grandfather. As I
became increasingly interested in pubs as well as beer,
RG seemed the obvious person
to help me indulge my new found
“hobby”. I therefore became acquainted with
quite a few pubs, both in
Ashford town centre, and in the adjoining suburb of
Kennington, where my friend lived.
RG's parents still had family and friends living back in
“the smoke”,
and my friend spoke glowingly of two
London
brewers, both of which I had never heard of.
The two
breweries of course, were
Young’s of
Wandsworth and
Fuller, Smith & Turner
of
Chiswick. I will leave the story of my initial experiences of
Young’s
beers for another day, but I first enjoyed a few glasses of
Fuller’s beers when
I accompanied my friend on a trip up to
London, to visit his aunt.
RG's aunty
lived in
Chiswick, in a house which was just a stone’s throw away from the
Griffin Brewery, so this was the ideal opportunity for us to enjoy a few glasses of Fuller's.
I only have very vague recollections of
RG’s aunt but I
have much stronger memories of calling in at the
George & Devonshire, close
to the brewery and enjoying a few pints of bitter (known as
Chiswick today) and
London Pride. Both beers were dispensed by
“top pressure” as was the norm in
most
Fuller’s pubs, at a time when only a handful of the brewery’s pubs used
traditional, hand-pump dispense. We either stood or sat at the bar, but after
46 years it is difficult to remember which.
I don’t recall much else of what we did that day, apart from taking
the underground back to Waterloo, and then the train back to Ashford, but a
couple of years later, when both RG and I were home from our respective
universities for the summer vacation, we took another trip up to London. We had both recently signed up as
members of CAMRA, and were armed with a copy of the first ever CAMRA Guide to Real Ale Pubs in London.
I have
written previously about our little pub crawl, but
for those who may not have read that piece, our last port of call, prior to the
afternoon closed session (remember this was long before
“all day opening”), we
visited the
Star Tavern, in
Belgrave Mews West. This legendary
Fuller’s pub had
a slightly chequered past, as it was here, in an upstairs room, that the
Great
Train Robbery was said to have been hatched.
For the beer enthusiast, the Star was one of the few Fuller’s
pubs which offered beer dispensed as it should be – by hand pump, rather than
under gas pressure. As well as renewing my acquaintance with London Pride, the
Star afforded my first opportunity to try the equally legendary Extra Special
Bitter (ESB).
The four years I spent living as a student, in
Greater
Manchester obviously kept me well away from the capital, and
Fuller’s beers,
but I did make the occasional foray back south, and with a university friend who
hailed from
London, there was the odd opportunity to enjoy a glass or two of Chiswick-brewed
beer. It was my move to the capital in the spring of
1978, which once again allowed
me to drink
Fuller’s, and the
Star became quite a regular, after-work meeting place.
Fast forward to a move back to Kent,
initially to Maidstone and later to Tonbridge, which saw
a vastly improved local beer scene to the one I had left, back in 1973. Fuller’s
beers were quite widely available in local free-houses, but I was also
fortunate to visit the Griffin Brewery, on a number of occasions, with my local CAMRA branch.
The company’s beers are also now widely available in
supermarkets, with the bottle-conditioned
1845, being a personal favourite. My
other go-to
Fuller’s beer during the winter months, is
London Porter. I am enjoying
a bottle of it now, as I write, and its blend of dark roasted malts, and the
coffee and chocolate notes they impart, combined with just the right amount of
bitterness, makes this beer one of the finest available examples of this style.
So it is with much sadness that I continue to digest the
news about the sale to Asahi. Fuller’s claim that 87 per cent of their
operating profits came from the pubs and hotels side of the business, so from a
pure hard cash point of view I can understand the reason for the sale. But from
an emotional one, selling your brewery, and your highly regarded beer brands, is
akin to auctioning of the family silver – something the UK
seems pretty adept at doing.
We will have to see how this pans out, once the dust has
settled, although I imagine that, for a while at least, not a lot will change.
The longer term concern is that the
Griffin Brewery, which
sits on a prime area of land in
west London, could be sold off by the new owners and thereby net them a
fortune.
Somewhat ironically, I noticed a number of
Fuller's bottled beers on promotion at
Waitrose, this afternoon. So rather protectively, I picked up three bottles of
London Porter for the bargain price of just
£5.