Brewery: Fullers
Country: England
Size: 50cl
ABV: 7.5%
Price: 35kr
Systembolaget: 12733
Growing up in England, you can’t really escape the Fullers brand name in the pub scene. They are pretty much everywhere, especially in the south of England where they own hundreds of pubs. Their beers are highly regarded as generally excellent and this brand recognition is carried over in their export business. I was genuinely excited when I heard that Fullers was creating its own experimental brewery to produce small batch beers and I was even more happy when I learned that Sweden would be receiving the first beer from their range. On release day I was lined up outside Systemet and 5 minutes later a small bundle of Fullers Beer One was nestled sweetly in my basket. I had high hopes for this and I wasn’t disappointed.
One criticism I must raise first though is the design of the label of this beer. My god, it’s ugly. Whoever created this was either having a bad day or couldn’t be arsed. Either way, I hope the design for the next beer is better than this. Anyway, the beer itself was dark copper in colour with some carbonation visible. If formed a fluffy white head that held well which was unexpected. The body was thin to medium. The smell was quite complex, with aromas of dried stone fruit, sweet caramel malt emanating the glass along with minor notes of metal and honey. Upon supping, the beer had a good mouth feel that rolled around the mouth nicely. As I had predicted, the main emphasis was on the rich bodied malts. This produced some robust notes of dates and rye in the taste. The hops took a backseat to the fruity sweet nectar. The aftertaste was sweet honey and silky and left a small amount of heat in the throat but overall it hid the alcohol well.
I’m glad they chose to export this and not just keep it as a UK exclusive. It was a nice first try to the new part of their business. This was a big beer, both in alcohol and taste. It’s a shame that this is just a one-off batch they are doing because I would be more than happy to pick this up again. This beer recipe was based on the London pride recipe but I think this far surpasses it. Good job Fullers, and I will keep an eye out for Beer Two coming over the horizon soon.