Sunday 30 September 2018

Fullers AK 1887 - 1920

Following on with my Light Bitter theme, I thought I'd take a closer look at Fullers AK.

Or, to be more accurate, its decline and fall.

Fullers AK started off with a classic gravity for the type or 1050º. Well, at the top end of a typical gravity.  This was chipped away a little in the years 1887 to 1914, but it was still a respecatable 1045º when WW I kicked off. What would count as a respectable Best Bitter nowadays. But at the time, the weakest of Fuller's Pale Ales.

The first couple of years of the war didn't have a huge amount of impact. The OG dropped less than one point bewteen 1914 and 1916. The years after that were far more cruel. By 1918, AK's gravity wasn't much more than half of what it had been at the start of hostilities.

Things pickled up again in 1919, but still left AK only a few decimal points above 1030º. Just two-thirds of its pre-war gravity. However, the hopping rate did increase during the war. Presumably to try and compensate for the fall in gravity.

Next we'll see what happened to AK between the wars.

Fullers AK 1887 - 1920
Date Year OG FG ABV App. Atten-uation lbs hops/ qtr hops lb/brl
21st Apr 1887 1049.6 1014.1 4.69 71.51% 7.61 1.66
3rd Aug 1897 1049.9 1012.5 4.95 75.00% 9.47 2.85
20th Oct 1902 1046.3 1010.5 4.73 77.25% 8.43 1.68
14th Mar 1910 1045.0 1008.9 4.78 80.31% 6.90 1.43
18th Mar 1910 1044.9 1008.3 4.84 81.48% 7.29 1.43
20th Nov 1914 1044.3 1009.1 4.65 79.38% 7.33 1.34
2nd Jul 1915 1044.5 1009.7 4.61 78.22% 7.84 1.42
1st Jun 1916 1043.9 1009.7 4.53 77.93% 8.20 1.54
12th Jan 1917 1041.8 1007.8 4.50 81.44% 8.17 1.40
1st Nov 1917 1035.9 1007.8 3.73 78.41% 9.64 1.47
11th Apr 1918 1026.1 1005.5 2.73 78.81% 9.99 1.10
15th Apr 1919 1026.0 1004.4 2.86 82.98% 9.04 1.08
19th Jun 1919 1028.2 1004.7 3.10 83.28% 9.72 1.14
27th Aug 1919 1030.5 1006.9 3.12 77.31% 9.96 1.28
11th Feb 1920 1030.6 1007.5 3.06 75.59% 9.80 1.21
Source:
Fullers brewing records held at the brewery



5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi, you've probably mentioned this somewhere before but what's the difference between lbs/qtr and lbs/barrel?

Ron Pattinson said...

Che Soffe,

lbs/barrel is the quantity of hops per 36 imperial gallons of beer. lbs/qtr is the quantity of hops per quarter of malt (336 lbs of grain).

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Morgan said...

Interesting to see that the lowest OG (April. 15 1919) has one of the highest attenuations. Lots of sugar I'm guessing?

Ron Pattinson said...

oldAbobscoo,

at 15%, almost exactly average. That reminds me: I haven't published the grists.