Despite this shift in working practices, brewing remains a craft with age-old techniques

Beer in all its forms remains the national drink of Britain, predating by centuries the arrival of that upstart tea. The British have made and drunk beer since before the Romans. It truly remains the United Kingdom of Beer.

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One of the most striking landmarks on the busy main road into central London from Heathrow airport is the early 19th-century Griffin brewery of Fuller, Smith and Turners, more commonly known as Fuller’s. Having brewed beer on this site for almost two centuries, Fuller’s has the distinction of being the last major working brewery in London.

It has another distinction in being one of around 30 family-controlled or family-owned brewers left in the UK, all of whom are proud to produce real ale. Over the second half of the last century, the British brewing industry faced tremendous commercial pressures as beer drinkers’ habits changed, and demand for cask, or real, ale fell away. In the 1970s, asset-strippers from the City flooded in to buy up brewers whose stocks were grossly undervalued and sell the breweries for shopping malls and housing. Mergers and acquisitions between rival brewers meant many established and favorite names disappeared. As drinkers’ tastes changed, foreign lagers flooded in as the younger generations turned their backs on traditional brews such as bitter, ale and porter.

While microbreweries capture the trendy beer drinker, and the international brewing giants capture the nondiscriminating, family-owned or controlled brewers continue to serve the enthusiastic and knowledgeable customer base of real ale fans or those who just like beer as it used to taste.

Many breweries, including Fuller’s of London, offer the public an opportunity to see how their beers are made. Just for British Heritage readers, I joined a tour in Chiswick to see what went into some of Britain’s favorite real ales.

When you take a tour of the Griffin brewery, the tour is joined at The Mawson’s Arms pub on the corner of the brewery site. The pub is in an early 18th-century townhouse once the home of the poet Alexander Pope. Enjoy its beautifully symmetrical exterior before entering to find a pub that embraces you like a pub should.

The age of the pub is reflected in the deep patina of the oak bar. Generations of visitors and brewery workers have dined on superior pub fare while downing Fuller ales and putting the world to right. The eye travels to the fireplace over which an oil painting of James Fuller (1765 – 1839), who became the first Fuller involved in the firm, keeps watch on his heritage. In fact, though the Smith side has died out, there are still Fullers and Turners involved in the family business.

A tour of the Griffin brewery is not an amble around an ancient workplace where ruddy-cheeked yeomen of yore happily down tools to demonstrate age-old brewing techniques for the curious and thirsty. It is in fact a highly organized hive of activity where freelance brewery guides take around 90 minutes to show the visitor the 21st century techniques of brewing. Ruddy-cheeked yeomen of yore? Not exactly. As our guide Jane put it succinctly: “Brewing is no longer a blue-collar job. Brewers now have IT skills and wear white jackets to work.”

Despite this shift in working practices, brewing remains a craft with age-old techniques. Today these utilize gleaming metal cauldrons and vessels the height of small blocks of flats. The curious and thirsty visitors are not wandering around in pairs or small groups either. Fuller’s typically runs six tours a day, five days a week. The group I joined had around 25 people, so large in fact it was broken into two groups, and a second guide was summoned.

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