Fullers sugars in 1910

Quite a few different sugars. Five in all. Considerably more than malts. Most of the sugars were some sort of invert.

Let’s start with the numbered inverts. No. 2 appears in both the Pale Ales and the Strong Ale. No. 1 or No. 2 are the sugars you would expect to see in Pale Ales, as they are relatively light in colour. The darker No. 3 was the obvious choice for Mild Ale. Especially at a time when the style was becoming darker.

The Special dark invert that turns up in the two Black Beers sounds like it might be something like No. 4 invert. That is, a very dark type of invert sugar. The quantity used in Porter and Stout is very large, almost a quarter of all the fermentable material.

I’ve no idea what trivert is. Other than suspecting that it’s some sort of invert. And that it was pale in colour.

I assume that the caramel was being used mostly for colour correction, as it appears in all Fullers beers, including the pale ones.

Overall, the sugar content is quite high, averaging over 18%. With Burton Old (BO) the only beer with less than 10%. While in the Black Beers it’s over 25%.

Fullers sugars in 1910
Beer	Style	no. 2 sugar	no. 3 sugar	Special dark invert	Pale Trivert	caramel	total sugar
X	Mild		8.75%		10.00%	0.65%	19.39%
AK	Pale Ale	5.25%			7.88%	0.20%	13.33%
PA	Pale Ale	8.94%			5.96%	0.16%	15.06%
P	Porter			24.06%		2.92%	26.98%
BS	Stout			24.06%		2.92%	26.98%
BO	Strong Ale	8.13%				0.41%	8.54%
	Average						18.38%
Source:
Fullers brewing record held at the brewery.