THE GOOD LANDLORD

In the market town of Keighley, one resident has continued going about his business here for 160 years. Proudly Yorkshire and steeped in these traditional surroundings, Timothy Taylor has been serving up a taste of Keighley to locals and the wider world ever since setting up a brewery here. Having expanded and evolved through modern trends, Timothy Taylor remains true to his roots, and we visited the longstanding site to discover how it’s done.

“The brewery was founded in 1858 by Timothy Taylor on Cook Lane in Keighley. In 1863 a parcel of land in the town, known as Knowle Spring, was put up for sale and Timothy bought it and moved his brewery there. We’ve been here ever since”. Tim Dewey reveals the origins.

The reason Timothy began brewing isn’t definitively known - he had originally trained as a tailor - but it was a popular pastime at the time and Keighley was home to several beer houses. As well as building the brewery, Timothy also built a house for himself and his in-laws. It was clear from the start that this was the place that would remain home for Timothy Taylor.

“In the early years, Timothy’s main business was malting barley and selling it to the large numbers of breweries in the surrounding area” Tim continues. “Over time, the focus moved from malting to brewing.” Eventually, that approach produced Timothy Taylor’s most iconic brew; “In the middle of the 20th century Landlord was developed and became a key focus for the brewery into the 21st” Tim confirms.

Landlord is a Yorkshire classic, described as ‘the burgundy of ales’, rich, full and smooth. Tim explains why he thinks its popularity has endured; “We have very much kept to our original values of no compromise over the process and quality of ingredients - we still use Golden Promise barley, Knowle Spring water, whole leaf hops, a hop back, open square fermenters and our proprietary yeast. Whereas so many craft beers have a niche taste profile, Landlord is just eminently drinkable. This quality never goes out of fashion.”

It is perhaps the fact that Timothy Taylor are still family owned that they are able to take this long term perspective on the business and its development. Only descendants of Timothy Taylor or Sir Donald Horsfall, a friend of the family who invested in the brewery, are allowed to hold shares - which is not to say that the brewery has not evolved or innovated. But, Tim clarifies, the reason for change must only be to get better; “We are open to new ways of doing things if it will improve the beer.”

This includes embracing technology where it provides greater precision and efficiency in a brewing process that otherwise remains full of human craft. The business model too has expanded, with 19 Timothy Taylor pubs alongside the brewery. But, Tim states, “while many long-standing brewers have moved to a prime focus on pub retailing, we very much focus on brewing as our core activity.”

That means a skilled workforce - the brewers all have degrees in brewing from Heriot-Watt University and the sales team are Cask Marque trained - and a passion and pride for what they do. The beers Timothy Taylor produce have conversely grown in popularity in a declining cask market, increasing in the last decade from a 2% share of all cask ale sold to 5% currently. But, Tim accepts that “we can’t go on defying gravity forever. It is vital that we also enter the growing keg market.” And they’re doing just that with the release of the unsurprisingly quaffable Hopical Storm.

By looking back at their traditions and moving forward with the times, Timothy Taylor have kept both their heritage and their relevance - as a local icon with a richly preserved history and an exciting evolving future.