Fullers ESB 'Can you brew it'

[Jocky]

For me the key to ESB is getting flavour out of the yeast. WLP002 is just too plain.

I’ve grown up dregs from bottles of 1845 and done an ESB clone and it was bang on. Sadly the second time I tried doing the same I got quite a clovey phenolic result. It was closer to a dunkel weiss than ESB.

[lord.president]

I’ve had a phenolic/ metally aftertaste everytime l use WLP002, so much so, that l avoid it now.
I have read that it’s a very exothermic yeast,adds 3-4c on. I’ve always feremented at the top of the range, so that would be 25/26 in reality?

[Cobnut]

I’ve used WLP002 several times both “pure” from liquid yeast sachet and reused via IPA’s method to a few generations, but always in the 18-20C range. I think I’m pretty sensitive to phenolics, but have not had this issue.

I’d suggest not fermenting too warm with this yeast.

[SMASH3R]

Mine is tucked up in the fermenter at a carefully controlled 19.5 to 19.8 degrees C. I'll nudge it up to 22 degrees for the last week in the fermenter.

I'll update the thread with the outcome in a few weeks.

[Northern Brewer]

I basically glanced at this thread and my brewing book and matched up via pure guess-work as best I could picking ingredients I had in stock that I thought were reasonably close.

There's no need to guess these days, as Fuller's have published pics of their brewbooks - see the start of this thread on HBT and this recipe based on the brewbooks :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/fu ... st-8281609

This gives a final 22 EBC with my collected 24L post boil. Obviously a touch down on my target 32 EBC. Pah, it's only colour!
I have brewer's caramel, but I think I will just leave it as-is.

The real thing uses a whisper of chocolate malt for colour.

recover the Fuller's yeast (WPL002)

Anyone familiar with the real Fuller's yeast knows that it has a very distinctive marmalade note that just isn't present in WLP002 or 1968. I'm not sure why USians think that they are Fuller's yeasts - the kindest explanation is that they may have originated in Fuller's beer but have either mutated into blandness or at some point labels got switched. Imperial A09 Pub is much more orangey and could plausibly have come from Fuller's, but as has been mentioned it's easy enough (and cheaper!) to harvest it from 1845 or Lancer.

[SMASH3R]

There's no need to guess these days, as Fuller's have published pics of their brewbooks - see the start of this thread on HBT and this recipe based on the brewbooks :
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/fu ... st-8281609

Thanks, that's a useful link. I'll save the picture down for future reference.

The statement about having to guess was simply that due to (family) life getting in the way, I hadn't had time to plan the brew and make sure I had purchased all the required ingredients; I had tried, but failed. Rather, I knew what ingredients I needed, but come the compressed timescale opportunity for a snatched brew day (evening), I had to guess from the ingredients I did have in stock what was closest to the ingredients I should have had in stock. C'est la vie!

[PeeBee]

Cracking! I've got a Fuller's ESB clone on hand-pump at the moment, derived from "The Jamil Show" but I used black malt to get the right colour; next time I'll use Chocolate as it's been hi-lighted as the actual means of colour adjustment.

It doesn't surprise me that the recipe has changed to include flaked maize. Maize went through a phase of not being in "fashion", but was used a lot in the first half of the 20th Century. The Fuller's OBE 1950's recipes I've got (Ron Pattinson's "Strong" Volume 2 book) had 9-10% flaked maize (OBE, or "Old Burton Extra", apparently morphed into ESB, in perhaps the 1970s, as the name "Burton" seemed to get unfashionable?).

The yeast though, WLP002 is as Jocky says ... "plain". But very good when it comes to clearing. I've not attempted to culture out of an 1845 bottle for many years, when choice of yeast was down to "whatever you could get". For a time I began to believe the "orange marmalade" flavour described "supermarket" marmalade (i.e. naff) not "hit-me-over-'ead-with-a-wet-fish" homemade marmalade, but it seems no-one got "marmalade" out of WLP002. I never go to London to sample the real thing any longer (to check for the "mythical" "orange marmalade"; the bottled stuff is no comparison).

Those hop schedules in the above link look ludicrously complicated. I'll skip past ever giving them a go.

To avoid the yeast dilemma next time, I'm going to try Ron Pattinson's researched recipe for Barclay Perkins 1924 KK; a very similar brew to Fuller's OBE (ESB to be?) but absolutely no "marmalade"! It'll use Wyeast #1099 ("Whitbread Ale"). And then there's the "Imperial A09 Pub" to try ...

[Cobnut]

Yes WLP002 is quite plain, but as you say, drops beautifully bright. It’s not a bad yeast - I am using it again today for a Young’s Bitter clone and the resulting yeast cake is also going to get used for another go at the Durden Park Beer Circle’s 1850 London Porter which I’m brewing for a HB festival next summer. I’ve re-used this through a couple of generations so far and by the time I get to the Porter it will be probably 4th generation from the liquid yeast pack I bought.

[Jocky]

The true Fullers yeast I grew from 1845 dregs performed in the same way as WLP002 - ferments quickly and drops bright immediately.

What it also brings though is plenty of esters, and I remember that experience the first time I drank my ESB using it - it was in the middle of lockdown and transported me to standing at the bar at my local having that first sip of ESB on cask.

Now having a failed attempt at regrowing then yeast I’m worried I’ll never be able to get a clean pitch of it again!

I’m not sure about how well the grist of my version matches, but without doing a side by side in the pub I reckon it’s pretty close in character - 91% MO and 9% medium crystal. I also tend to just use a mix of Challenger and Goldings for hops.

[Cobnut]

I’ve got a bottle of 1845 in my beer fridge and some Fullers beers due for delivery soon. So I’ll have to have a go at growing the true Fullers yeast and trying it out in a few beers!

[Jocky]

I’ve got a bottle of 1845 in my beer fridge and some Fullers beers due for delivery soon. So I’ll have to have a go at growing the true Fullers yeast and trying it out in a few beers!

Only 1845 and Bengal Lancer is bottle conditioned.

After my experience I’d really recommend growing up a litre starter and then check how that smells. If it smells like a box of plasters or packet of cloves then ditch it and try again from a fresh bottle until you get a clean one.

If I can’t make it work again in future I’ll have to try plating on malt agar and isolate the responsible strain.

[WalesAles]

If I can’t make it work again in future I’ll have to try plating on malt agar and isolate the responsible strain.

Awesome stuff!
Something us Kit Brewers must look into.

WA

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm pretty sure in the interview John Keeling says they use 150 EBC crystal...not Lovibond.

That would equate to ~56 Lovibond.

Or to about ~76 SRM. (but malts are rarely color scaled in terms of SRM units)

[Silver_Is_Money]

Interestingly enough, Briess relatively recently took all of its formerly Lovibond scaled malt colors and arbitrarily declared them to be SRM scaled instead. But significantly, they retained the Lovibond valuations while merely (and rather arbitrarily) beginning to refer to them as SRM valuations, which beyond about 10 Lovibond leads to gross error in color reporting. The two scales equate as follows:

Lovibond, SRM
---------------------
1.8, 1.7
3.0, 3.4
6.0, 7.4
10.0, 12.8
20.0, 26.4
40.0, 53.5
60.0, 80.6
80, 107.7
120, 161.8
240, 324.4
350, 473.4
500, 676.5
550, 744.2

[Silver_Is_Money]

Example: In the past Briess told us it's 'Midnight Wheat' malt was 550 Lovibond, but now they say it is 550 SRM, when in fact it is 744 SRM.