STICKING TO ITS GUNS

The refreshing thing about Yorkshire brewer Timothy Taylor - apart from the excellent beer - is its determination to focus its energy solely on producing quality cask ale. MATTHEW MOGGRIDGE meets managing director Charles Dent

Here’s a good question for your next club quiz night: what does actor Hugh Grant and pop megastar Madonna have in common? The answer is Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. Both have endorsed the Yorkshire cask ale without having been asked – credit, if any was needed, to the excellence of the product and the hard work of head brewer Peter Eells, who joined the company in 1984 and is now on the board of directors.

Grant revealed his love of the beer at the opening of an art gallery, while Madonna’s more public ‘outing’ was on the Jonathan Ross Show where, to prove her credentials as a true anglophile, she explained how she enjoyed the premium Yorkshire ale in the Dog & Duck in London’s Soho, while wearing a flat cap pulled down over her face to disguise her identity.

The fact that Madonna was able to enjoy a pint of Landlord in London dates back to the real ale revolution of the 1970s and 1980s when CAMRA’s campaign to get people drinking real ale - England’s national drink - had already gathered considerable momentum, but also to the efforts of Tony Howlett, Timothy Taylor’s sales manager since 1974 (who retires next year).

Back in 1975 when a young Tony Howlett had only been in the job for a year, Timothy Taylor was producing around 20,000 barrels of beer per annum. Two thirds of output went direct to the club trade and a third to the brewer’s small tied and managed estate of 30 pubs. Today the brewer is churning out 63,000 barrels and 95 per cent of its output is to the free trade in all four corners of the UK, with five per cent attributed to its own pubs.

Being predominantly a free trade supplier, Timothy Taylor has to offer a good pint of beer, but Dent is bullish about the current state of the cask ale market and Timothy Taylor’s place within it. He believes that good cask ale is at the heart of what consumers want along with good service and a decent food offer.

Managing director and former land agent Dent attributes the success of Landlord to Timothy Taylor’s unrelenting and uncompromising approach to product quality and consistency, which has fuelled demand. Since the birth of CAMRA and the resurgence of real ale, Landlord has won many national and international awards, evidence of which can be found on the walls in the brand new offices of this thriving regional brewer where many a framed certificate adorns the creamy-coloured walls.

The success of Landlord, however, is also down to the wholesalers who took the brand national. Only 10 years ago, Timothy Taylor classed itself as a local brewer, well known in Yorkshire but relatively unknown anywhere else. The CAMRA accolades and the producer awards followed (and continue) and then the brewers themselves started distributing it ahead of the Beer Orders, which saw the birth of the PubCo, and soon Landlord was ubiquitous as the brand’s reach expanded through free trade sales.

There are currently between 3,500 and 4,000 active Timothy Taylor free trade accounts, 400 of which receive direct deliveries from Keighley. The most common route to market, however, is via wholesalers, PubCos and the big brewers. Despite national distribution and recognition, Dent still regards Timothy Taylor as a small company.

Landlord’s early success in the clubs was down to an earlier sales manager, John ‘Jack’ Tillotson, who had been awarded the Military Cross and DSO ‘for the very highest degree of courage and bravery during the First World War. Major John Tillotson was sales manager between 1919 and 1956 and was followed by Frank Harrison and then Tony Howlett. As Howlett commented, there have only been four sales managers in Timothy Taylor’s entire 150-year history – testimony, perhaps, to the company’s record as a good employer.

Today, Timothy Taylor’s club business has declined somewhat with only 32 social clubs and 42 sports clubs on the books, according to Howlett. Dent said that today’s declining club trade is all about discounting, a route Timothy Taylor’s is reluctant to tread.

Eighty per cent of Timothy Taylor’s production is shipped out of the region by the brewer’s small fleet of three articulated lorries and one double trailer unit. The 28-tonne ‘artics’ are described by Dent as mobile cellars as they have integral cooling units that enable the brewer to deliver its beer in pristine condition.

Historically, of course, 80 per cent of Timothy Taylor’s output used to be dark or light mild. It wasn’t until the early 1950s when Landlord first appeared and went on to make its name through the aforementioned awards in the seventies, thanks to its distinctive taste. Since 1998, sales of Landlord have doubled (from 30,000 to 60,000 barrels).

In addition to Landlord, there is Golden Best and Best Bitter, both of which are brewed weekly using the same malt and hops as Landlord. Caramel is used to get the darkness in the beer, claimed Dent. “If there was regular demand for dark beers, we’d do it properly,” he said. Up until the 1970s, when Landlord’s popularity soared nationally, Golden Best and Best Bitter were Timothy Taylor’s main sales.

There is not a regular seasonal ale portfolio as Timothy Taylor wants to concentrate fully on its core range and wants, above all else, to offer consistent quality across its three brands. Dent believes that ‘to do cask well’ a brewer needs to be focused and that is why there is not a huge choice of brands.

Landlord is the only product that Timothy Taylor puts in bottles and sells in the supermarkets. Waitrose, Morrison’s Sainsbury’s and local retailer Booths all stock it and sales are growing – bottled beer sales accounting for five per cent of business (the other 95 per cent being five per cent to the tied estate and 90 per cent free trade sales). Stockport brewer Frederic Robinson handles bottling of Timothy Taylor’s beers.

Dent explained how, with business ticking over nicely, he wanted to concentrate on the brewery’s infrastructure. Towards the end of the nineties, fermentation capacity doubled and was followed in 2003 by four additional fermenters (along with new cask filling and washing systems). Next year (2011) a further six fermenters and a new cask washer will be added on the site of the former brewery offices. Administrative staff moved (in September 2008) into an impressive new building on the site of Knowle Spring House, the former home of the Taylor family. The steps leading up to the original house remain.

Additional land adjacent to the brewery and formerly belonging to an engineering company, has been purchased to accommodate the brewery’s fleet of articulated lorries, a hop store, bottled ales and beer barrels. In total, recent infrastructure investment has fallen just shy of £10 million.

A brewery tour followed, courtesy of head brewer Peter Eells who explained the brewing process and even provided a diagram outlining every step from raw ingredients coming in to finished product being shipped out to Timothy Taylor’s pubs and the brewer’s rapidly expanding free trade market.

Hops, said Eells, are the ‘herbs in the stew’ and a different mix is used for different brews. As we made our way around the brewery, peering into the frothy, bubbling fermenters, my thoughts turned to a nice pint of bitter.

Fortunately, our next stop was the Grouse Inn at Oakworth, a notable food-led operation and one of Timothy Taylor’s thriving tenancies. After a pint of Golden Best and a pleasant lunch, however, I soon found myself on Keighley railway station boarding a Leeds-bound train en route to King’s Cross.