An early start at the Willoughby Arms for those of us privileged enough to be shown around this fine old building. In fact, just to show how long these noble brewers have been at the process of providing beer for the residents of SouthWest London, here's an interesting bit of trivia for you. In 1995 the brewery produced a special bottled beer to commemorate its 150th anniversary. This was the dangerously tasty Fuller's 1845 Strong Ale, which is described in the Great Beer Guide (Dorling Kindersley) by the beer writer Michael Jackson as "perilously easy to drink".
We started our evening with a beer or two in the Mawson Arms, the pub
attached to the brewery. Apparently this is the starting
point for pretty much every trip.
Owing to the lateness of the hour, our tour around the brewery was quite a swift affair, but nonetheless thoroughly entertaining and interesting. Our host for the evening was Gary Fordge and our most knowledgeable guide was John Holloway. John showed us around the assorted mash tuns, brewing coppers, huge pre-filter 'cone' and the historic 'Old London Copper', which was last used for brewing in 1984. One could only imagine the amount of noise that the bottling plant would have created, had it been in full production. The sheer size of the equipment used in this fine old building is enough to give one some kind of inkling as to the amount of beer that is produced here.
In the
photograph displayed here of John lecturing the SPBW masses beside the mash
tuns, one has to realise that as
big as they may look in the picture, that's merely the tip of the iceberg. These huge
vessels extend for many feet below the floor upon which we stood. Imagine the countless
gallons that go through just one of them during a brewing!
John told us that many years ago some of the brewers were known to skim off the odd glass of beer early in the brewing process. These would have to be pretty hardy folk as what they were hurling down their necks was basically 'raw beer' which would easily make a mess of you or I should we be lunatic enough to try it. No one can deny that the art of brewing can be thirsty work, but you've got to draw the line somewhere! Fuller's in their wisdom knowing that their workers were proud of their product decided to instigate a token system where the brewers could get themselves a drink or two during their working day.
Take a look at the photograph of the front of
one of the 'Allowance Beer House'
machines from where the pints of the day's brew were dispensed. Now that's my kind of
vending machine, and this fine example has pride of place on the wall of the Hock Cellar,
where we finished off our tour with a few goodly drafts of ale (mostly the delectable
Honeydew) and a splendid buffet. Again, many thanks to our good friends Gary and John,
and a doff of the cap and a tug of the forelock to everyone at Fuller's brewery. We all
had a great evening.
Back on the minibus and away to Willoughby once more, where Rick gave all of us a free pint on re-entry to the pub. All in all, we did well for beer that night!