The London Pride / ESB partigyle rabbit hole

[Northern_Brewer]

I had a bottle of Golden Pride the other day actually, very nice. From memory I thought it had an ESB / 1845 kind of vibe, which would make sense if they're all using the same yeast if not the same grist (and possibly hops too).

It crossed my mind to wonder whether it was also made via partigyle, same goes for their London Porter too

These days they only do one partigyle, which is Golden Pride/ESB/London Pride and what used to be Chiswick Bitter but which is now sold as a variety of seasonals. Others are single gyle. This post from Ron gives the splits in 1968 :
https://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2010/05/fullers-party-gyle-from-1968.html

And this one in 2010 has a comment from John Keeling :

We do parti-gyle Golden Pride,London Pride,ESB and Chiswick. We used to parti-gyle Hock and Strong Ale(stopped early 80's)In fact looking through our records I can't find a year without a parti-gyle.

1845 etc are single gyle brews.

The advantages for us are time. I think it would take at least 25% longer to make the beer. That is simply in lost time through under use of capacity. It takes two mashes to make 160 brls of ESB,320 Pride and 160 Chiswick. It would take 3 mashes to make them as single gyles.

It also uses raw materials more effectively.Smaller loss of last runnings,no storage vessel needed to take last runnings from one brew to transfer to the next. Weaker coppers have better hop utilisation etc

 

[matt76]

They're both kegged now, here's where we ended up:

ESB:
Packaged 6.0L
OG 1.056
FG 1.010
6.0% ABV ; 81% AA

London Pride:
Packaged 9.0L
OG 1.046
FG 1.010
4.7% ABV ; 78% AA

For comparison Wyeast say 67-71% AA for Wyeast 1968! The more I use it the more I'll get a feel for how it behaves in my brewery.

Aside from attenuation, one remark I can make about this strain is that it goes like a freight train, with fermentation being all but done in 48hrs.

I thought I'd gone under with the ESB OG, and over with the LP, but in the end both have attenuated considerably more than expected and I've overshot the ABV of the cask versions I was going for (4.1% & 5.5%), and pretty much the bottled versions come to that (4.7% & 5.9%).

It could be down to trub, and in the case of the ESB I suspect a little bit of hop creep from the Target dry hop.

Both are now kegged and on the gas at about 8psi (and the kegerator set to a moderate 8.0°C) to give a low carbonation, closer to what I'd expect from cask rather than keg or bottle.

Initial impressions:
The London Pride has been on the gas a few days longer so I had a couple over the weekend. The ESB I've only had a small sample from kegging.

Both are certainly not bad and I think the yeast character comes through in the LP.

I haven't done a back to back with the real thing yet but I think I've under-bittered / under-hopped - I don't think it's miles off but when I get round to comparing back to back I think the real thing with have a bit more bitterness and/or hop flavour.

In that sense I think the test-batch I brewed before the partigyle will be closer to real London Pride (I also still have a few of those left for even more comparison).

Next steps:
I brewed an English Porter yesterday and pitched a starter made using slurry from the London Pride clone. As expected it took off like the clappers and is probably half way to FG already. Just for fun I'm fermenting this open, for the first 24hrs at least. Once it's done I might use the yeast cake for an American Amber Ale.

English Porter Open Ferment

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Is that open with a lid on or off?
Why 24 hours? That barm will protect your brew in your ferment chamber.

 

[matt76]

Is that open with a lid on or off?
Why 24 hours? That barm will protect your brew in your ferment chamber.

It's as in the picture above, with the lid ajar but the fridge door is shut.

Several reasons why only 24hrs:

- I calculate there are only about 30 fermentable gravity points in that brew - 24hrs since pitching and it's already munched through 24 of them! Like I said, this strain seems fast, and this particular brew has got going even faster than previous ones with this strain.

- I've been caught out before - last time I open fermented I made a Hefeweizen and left it open too long and the krausen has already dropped (Wyeast 3068 is also pretty rapid). I ended up dumping pretty much a whole batch of beer that had oxidised and lost its delicate flavours.

- I prefer to play it safe - from what I've seen so far Wyeast 1968 goes hard and fast then stops abruptly. If it does continue fermenting hard for another 48-72hrs then I know for next time, but I would not be surprised if it isn't all but done in the next 24hrs.

 

[matt76]

ESB Comparison

Mine is on the left; the real thing on the right.

Colour - I should have used identical glasses, but very close to my eye. Fuller's is maybe fractionally redder and brighter.

Carbonation & Mouthfeel - Surprisingly not much difference in carbonation. Fuller's has a bit more but it's not over the top as many bottled ales seem to be these days. The real deal is also a tad more crisp, which may be carbonation again or possibly water profile - I went more chloride as this seems to work better for me in general, whereas I know Fuller's go more sulphate.

Aroma & Flavour - It's all there in mine but more muted. In the real Fuller's everything is simply turned up louder! (I'm not sure water profile alone is enough to explain all of the difference).

I would struggle to say for absolute certain how much of the flavour is driven by the hops versus the yeast, though my gut feeling is a good deal of it is down to the yeast.

Mine is slightly less bitter so I wonder if part of the difference is less hop flavour overall. I think the proportions of the hops are right, perhaps just not enough of them.

Similarly my version also has that Fuller's-ey marmalade-ey toffee-ey vibe you get from 1845 and Golden Pride (and ESB!), just not loud enough (I think this aspect might be more yeast-driven).

Overall - I'm pleased, I've made a decent beer I can be proud of. But there's no question, Fuller's do it better!

Other thoughts:
- I fermented mine closed but I wonder about open fermentation. In a 2008 blog post about the Griffin Brewery Ron Pattinson notes,
"Initially, the conicals were used for keg and bottled beer and the open fermenters for cask. But when they experimented with cask beer in the conicals, they immediately won Champion Beer of Britain at the GBBF. So they swapped the cask to the conicals and the keg to the open fermenters."
I don't know what the story is today, whether Fuller's still use open fermentation at all. It would be interesting to pop down to the local Fuller's pub and see how their cask ESB tastes.

- Another thought is fermentation temperature profile - I followed the Fuller's profile described by the brewer in the original "Can You Brew It" podcast (I can't remember not if it was Keeling or Prentice) but perhaps something different is needed at the homebrew scale.

- It could also be that Wyeast 1968 isn't exactly equal to the Fuller's strain, though I'd say it's certainly very close (in any case I really like it, it has so much character). Perhaps I'd see a difference from repitching, or by culturing up the yeast from a bottle of 1845.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Similarly my version also has that Fuller's-ey marmalade-ey toffee-ey vibe you get from 1845 and Golden Pride (and ESB!), just not loud enough (I think this aspect might be more yeast-driven).

Yep, that's the yeast - and the White Labs and Wyeast strains just don't have much of it, they're rather dull in comparison to the real thing. Either use Imperial Pub which has a lot more of the marmalade thing, or just harvest from 1845.

I hadn't realised they'd kept the open fermenters going in parallel to be honest, I would assume it's all conicals now.

Compare with this which was influenced by me posting the original brew book logs, and claims to be pretty close to ESB :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...m-the-horses-mouth.642756/page-2#post-8281609

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole on temperature profiles, see this epic thread :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...emps-and-profiles-cybi-other-thoughts.221817/

 

[YeastFace]

Great write-up.

how fresh is the bottled ESB out of interest? I ordered some direct from Fullers and the bottles that arrived were 2 weeks' old. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was much more intense than the bottles I usually get from the supermarket.

 

[matt76]

Great write-up.

how fresh is the bottled ESB out of interest? I ordered some direct from Fullers and the bottles that arrived were 2 weeks' old. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was much more intense than the bottles I usually get from the supermarket.

BB 01/03/2025 - I probably bought it around the start of March this year, brought it home and put it in the fridge, so I'd assume that BB date is 1 year from manufacture. So pretty fresh I should think.

 

[matt76]

Yep, that's the yeast - and the White Labs and Wyeast strains just don't have much of it, they're rather dull in comparison to the real thing. Either use Imperial Pub which has a lot more of the marmalade thing, or just harvest from 1845.

I hadn't realised they'd kept the open fermenters going in parallel to be honest, I would assume it's all conicals now.

Compare with this which was influenced by me posting the original brew book logs, and claims to be pretty close to ESB :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...m-the-horses-mouth.642756/page-2#post-8281609

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole on temperature profiles, see this epic thread :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...emps-and-profiles-cybi-other-thoughts.221817/

I tried Imperial Pub once before in a Porter but despite making a starter it didn't go too well. Might be persuaded to try again sometime but my LHBS doesn't stock it (only wyeast liquid yeasts now they've stopped stocking White Labs) so it would mean a special order from The Malt Miller

Foxbat doesn't post anymore but he cultured up some yeast from a couple of bottles of 1845, though he said the batch developed a bit of a sour note towards the end but it might not have been the best starter he ever made.

Interesting to note that the guy in that first thread you linked reckoned he got very close using WY1968.

The second, epic, thread - well, it's gonna take me a while to get through 18 pages!

 

[Colindo]

Hi Matt,

only just stumbled over your thread. Amazing work and very interesting to see the challenges you had with your setup. I've done Fuller's parti-gyle before and used a "normal" setup where one vessel is for mashing and sparging and then two different kettles are used for the boil. That makes it a lot easier to get closer to how Fuller's does it. What struck me most was how different the three beers were given the same grist and mash. I can only recommend you try another one with all three.

In my tests I did a few beers that would have come out at 1.048 and checked what gravities I got when splitting up the wort equally and it was always 1.064 and 1.032, so a ratio of 2:1. When I did my Fuller's clone I used exactly the same way of mashing and sparging as they did, 2.5l/kg mash and 4.9l/kg sparge and got 1.064 and 1.022 (aiming for a lower average than before), so a ratio of 3:1. The better your mashing and sparging efficiencies, the higher this ratio. Fuller's gets 1.077 in the first gyle and 1.016 in the second (this is from direct conversation with the staff), so a ratio of 5:1 showing amazing efficiencies. If they want to brew their Golden Pride, they fill the first copper only to 2/3 and get 1.085.

Since their yeast always gives 75% attenuation, they get the gravity points in %ABV in the final beer (1.085 gives 8.5% ABV etc). If your yeast fermented more, I would say there was something awry, maybe even a carryover from a previous brew? I recently brewed with a maltotriose-weak yeast recently and all my bottles were heavily overcarbonated because apparently my cleaning routine is lacking and all had yeast from a previous brew in it. Just a thought.

Regarding yeast choice I did some comparison between Imperial Pub and Fuller's yeast propagated from bottles of Bengal Lancer (the best beer for yeast stripping). I tasted the starters of each and while the flavours were different, this was mostly due to the bottle sediment having a much lower pitching rate. What is systematically different though is the flocculation, the original strain floccs even more strongly than the commercial versions. Regarding the Wyeast version, I got sent two bottles from someone with proper fermentation control and yeast management equipment who did a split batch with Imperial Pub and Wyeast 1968 under exactly the same conditions. I could not taste any flavour difference whatsoever! So if you want more authenticity, I would go for one or two bottles of Bengal Lancer, otherwise stay with Wyeast 1968.

I've done several parti-gyles since then trying to find my own recipe and generally trying out different things. I'm currently working on cloning Young's parti-gyle from 2006.

 

[matt76]

Thanks for the info @Colindo Honestly at this point I'd be more likely to do another double decoction then partigyle!

I'm being a bit harsh, both techniques would likely get a lot smoother with a little more practice.

I preferred the normally brewed bitter I made just before my Fuller's partigyle, I got the hopping more right - I think I'm going to try rebrewing this soonish but using Fuller's yeast from bottle dregs.

Also of interest at the moment is open fermentation - thread here if you haven't seen it, it might be up your street

 

[Colindo]

@matt76 Thanks for the link, I'll have a look. I haven't dared any open fermentation yet, since I first have to look at proper fermentation control in a fridge etc. I currently brew according to achievable room temperatures, which isn't ideal and certainly would cause further problems with open fermentation.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Just need the right yeast...

 

[matt76]

I mentioned recently in the Open Fermentation thread that I was thinking of trying to culture up some Fuller's yeast for a London Pride-ish bitter that I plan to ferment open (though no partigyle this time!).

About a week ago I forced down a couple of bottles of Fuller's 1845 (it's a hard life!) having crashed out the sediment in the fridge for a few days. The dregs from each bottle were swirled around and pitched into about 500ml of 1.020 starter wort to wake it up.

I gave that a few days before crashing out a thin layer of yeast - a check of the gravity and pH suggested something useful had definitely happened, and the sample, while very weak and thin, definitely had that Fuller's taste.

Having poured off the spent liquor I topped up with 1.25L of 1.036 starter wort to step up to something I can pitch into one of my 12L-ish batches. This is now crashing out in the fridge and again a small sample has that signature Fuller's taste. According to even a conservative estimate I should now have plenty of healthy yeast to pitch.

When I've used Imperial A-09 Pub and Wyeast 1968 in the past the yeast tended to clump together in big blobs like cottage cheese. It could just be that I'm working with smaller amounts but interesting to note that this strain didn't behave like this but just from the taste alone I'm confident it's the real deal.

 

[Colindo]

I have done the same previously and for me the original Fuller's floccs a bit stronger than the commercially available variants. A friend who bought the Fuller's strain from Brewlabs (rumoured to have a more recent culture) also said it floccs more than Wyeast and Imperial.

One reason for bad flocculation could be that the yeast was still actively fermenting. Fuller's yeast precipitates readily when you cold crash, but the big blobs only happen when all edible sugar is gone.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

I hope that cork bung is wrapped in some cling film, all kinds of things could be growing in that cork.

 

[matt76]

I hope that cork bung is wrapped in some cling film, all kinds of things could be growing in that cork.

What are you worried about, it all adds to the flavour

(yes it is )

 

[matt76]

I mentioned recently in the Open Fermentation thread that I was thinking of trying to culture up some Fuller's yeast for a London Pride-ish bitter that I plan to ferment open (though no partigyle this time!).

About a week ago I forced down a couple of bottles of Fuller's 1845 (it's a hard life!) having crashed out the sediment in the fridge for a few days. The dregs from each bottle were swirled around and pitched into about 500ml of 1.020 starter wort to wake it up.

I gave that a few days before crashing out a thin layer of yeast - a check of the gravity and pH suggested something useful had definitely happened, and the sample, while very weak and thin, definitely had that Fuller's taste.

Having poured off the spent liquor I topped up with 1.25L of 1.036 starter wort to step up to something I can pitch into one of my 12L-ish batches. This is now crashing out in the fridge and again a small sample has that signature Fuller's taste. According to even a conservative estimate I should now have plenty of healthy yeast to pitch.

When I've used Imperial A-09 Pub and Wyeast 1968 in the past the yeast tended to clump together in big blobs like cottage cheese. It could just be that I'm working with smaller amounts but interesting to note that this strain didn't behave like this but just from the taste alone I'm confident it's the real deal.

View attachment 106655

Brewday notes here - despite not making the expected clumps I noted the yeast had formed a nice rubbery mat at the bottom of the starter jar which took a bit of persuading out! Spent liquor again had that Fuller's twang and had fermented down from 1.036 (estimated) to 1.008 and pH 4.5.

 

[matt76]

Just kegged my London Bitter fermented with Fuller's yeast. It went from 1.044 to 1.011 for 4.3% ABV, plus I collected a good few hundred ml yeast I can reuse. Need to do a side by side but it's looking clear and bright and doesn't seem too far away at all from London Pride