Young’s beer is moving and things will never be the same again
Award winning beer writer and author Roger Protz reveals why he had time for Young's beer and why this will no longer be the case. The post Young’s beer is moving and things will never be the same again appeared first on The Drinks Business.
Award winning beer writer and author Roger Protz reveals why he had time for Young's beer and why this will no longer be the case.
My long love affair with Young’s beer has ended on a sad note with the news that Ken Don, the former head brewer, has died aged 80 while the cask ales he fashioned are heading to a town with quite different traditions and heritage.
I met Ken many times on visits to the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth, South London, but I had been a regular drinker of Young’s before he arrived at the Ram in 1980.
In the 1970s I was working on a newspaper in East London and one evening a reporter suggested having an
after-work pint.
“There’s a pub just round the corner,” he said. “It sells Young’s – it’s proper beer.”
I was sceptical. This was the time of the keg revolution when national breweries were burying traditional beer and filling pubs with filtered and pasteurised apologies for decent ale.
I wasn’t a beer expert but I knew what I liked – and it wasn’t Watneys Red, Double Diamond or Worthington
E. I described the Watney’s beer, massively advertised throughout London, as tasting like liquid Mars Bars. And I confused Young’s with Younger’s, the Scottish brewer that had a pub close to Fleet Street, where I’d previously worked.
But I went to the Rose & Crown in Hackney and, joy of joys, it was a fine old Cockney boozer with two bars, a lot of polished mahogany and, most importantly, handpumps dispensing what my colleague rightly called “proper beer”.
I was overwhelmed by the superb balance of biscuit malt and peppery hops offered by Young’s Bitter, always known for some odd reason as “Ordinary”: it was far from that. The pub became a regular outlet for an after-work pint and on press days, when the paper had “gone away” as we say in journo speak, I would celebrate by moving up a gear to Young’s Special. And then, a few years later and a major career move, I went to work for CAMRA and became immersed in the world of the brave brewers determined to save and promote cask ale in site of the awesome marketing power of the keg barons.
In London, Young’s rival Fuller’s, over the Thames in Chiswick, had toyed with the idea of switching to
pressurised beer. It stopped at the last moment when it saw the success of CAMRA and its popular beer festivals. It was also aware of how well Young’s was doing by sticking to the path of righteousness. But the Wandsworth brewery was treated with scorn and even contempt by the keg merchants. At a meeting of the Brewers Society on London, during a coffee break, the attendees noticed a hearse going by outside.
“There goes another of your customers, John,” one brewer quipped to gales of laughter. He was speaking to John Young, chairman of the brewery, who was unabashed. He also had the last laugh. His 200 pubs were packed, with his beers in increasing demand as the impact of CAMRA saw Watneys Red killed off while Double Diamond and Worthington E went into steep decline and eventual eclipse.
Visits to the Ram Brewery were always a pleasure. It was achingly traditional with stables housing giant shire horses who pulled drays loaded with oak casks to local pubs. A ram mascot hissed menacingly from inside a pen while ducks and geese were free to roam around the yards.
Ken Don and his colleagues enthusiastically mashed, boiled and fermented their delicious beers in conventional mash tuns, coppers and fermenters. The high spot of any visit was a trip to the sanctuary of the Sample Room where small pins of fresh ale could be tasted and passed fit for consumption.
Ken inherited a belief in quality from the Young’s family, who had run the Ram since 1831. No expense was spared in using the best raw materials: Maris Otter, considered England’s finest malting barley, and Fuggles and Goldings hops.
It’s possible to make something called beer by using small amounts of malt with cheaper maize and rice, industrial enzymes and hop extract but that was not the Young’s way. Maris Otter was grown in East Anglia, and malted by hand, while families, many of them Young’s customers, would spend a few happy weeks every autumn picking and collecting hops from the Kent fields.
Ken was distraught in 1989 when seed merchants, farmers and major malting companies announced they were delisting Maris Otter and replacing it with new “higher yielding” barleys that grew more to the acre and were more profitable.
Along with several other brewers, including Adnams and Marston’s, Ken gave contracts to farmers to specially grow Maris Otter. When I asked him how much the cost would add to a pint, he said “a farthing” – a quarter of a penny in pre-decimal currency. Maris Otter was saved and is now widely used not only in Britain but is exported to 20 countries.
A shattering blow came in 2006 when Young’s announced it was closing the brewery. It had been told by the local council to find a new site as it sat in the middle of a permanent traffic jam on the South Circular and other major roads. The family said they couldn’t find a suitable alternative site. John Young died in September that year and the last batch of beer brewed at the Ram was made available at his funeral.
The Young’s board created a new company called Wells & Young’s with the Bedford brewer Charles Wells. Young’s became a pub company with its beers supplied by the Bedford plant. Ken Don spent a month or more painstakingly recreating his beers there. He had to train his yeast culture to work in Wells’ enclosed conical vessels that were distinctly different to the open square fermenters at the Ram. The versions of Young’s beers that emerged from Bedford met with plaudits from the famously picky pundits in the London pubs.
The Wells & Young’s partnership ended amicably in 2011 with the beers remaining in Bedford. In 2017, Wells sold the brewery to Marston’s who continued to make the Young’s beers until, in an endless game of Pass-the-Parcel, it sold the plant to Estrella Damm and the Spanish company now makes only lager in Bedford.
Young’s drinkers were not impressed with the versions then made at Banks’s Brewery in Wolverhampton. It’s a region famous for sweet and malty milds and bitters, and drinkers felt the Young’s versions made there lacked the bitter hop bite they were used to.
The beers will soon be on the move again. The Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company – now Carlsberg Britvic – plans to close Banks’s in the autumn and the beers currently brewed there will transfer to the group’s only remaining ale brewery, Marston’s in Burton-on-Trent.
Burton is a rightly revered brewing town but, with its famously sulphurous water, it produces beers distinctly different to those made elsewhere. Young’s beers that helped save and boost cask ale will now be made a long way from the home where Ken Don honed them to perfection.
My long love affair with Young’s beer has ended on a sad note with the news that Ken Don, the former head brewer, has died aged 80 while the cask ales he fashioned are heading to a town with quite different traditions and heritage.
I met Ken many times on visits to the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth, South London, but I had been a regular drinker of Young’s before he arrived at the Ram in 1980.
In the 1970s I was working on a newspaper in East London and one evening a reporter suggested having an
after-work pint.
“There’s a pub just round the corner,” he said. “It sells Young’s – it’s proper beer.”
I was sceptical. This was the time of the keg revolution when national breweries were burying traditional beer and filling pubs with filtered and pasteurised apologies for decent ale.
I wasn’t a beer expert but I knew what I liked – and it wasn’t Watneys Red, Double Diamond or Worthington
E. I described the Watney’s beer, massively advertised throughout London, as tasting like liquid Mars Bars. And I confused Young’s with Younger’s, the Scottish brewer that had a pub close to Fleet Street, where I’d previously worked.
But I went to the Rose & Crown in Hackney and, joy of joys, it was a fine old Cockney boozer with two bars, a lot of polished mahogany and, most importantly, handpumps dispensing what my colleague rightly called “proper beer”.
I was overwhelmed by the superb balance of biscuit malt and peppery hops offered by Young’s Bitter, always known for some odd reason as “Ordinary”: it was far from that. The pub became a regular outlet for an after-work pint and on press days, when the paper had “gone away” as we say in journo speak, I would celebrate by moving up a gear to Young’s Special. And then, a few years later and a major career move, I went to work for CAMRA and became immersed in the world of the brave brewers determined to save and promote cask ale in site of the awesome marketing power of the keg barons.
In London, Young’s rival Fuller’s, over the Thames in Chiswick, had toyed with the idea of switching to
pressurised beer. It stopped at the last moment when it saw the success of CAMRA and its popular beer festivals. It was also aware of how well Young’s was doing by sticking to the path of righteousness. But the Wandsworth brewery was treated with scorn and even contempt by the keg merchants. At a meeting of the Brewers Society on London, during a coffee break, the attendees noticed a hearse going by outside.
“There goes another of your customers, John,” one brewer quipped to gales of laughter. He was speaking to John Young, chairman of the brewery, who was unabashed. He also had the last laugh. His 200 pubs were packed, with his beers in increasing demand as the impact of CAMRA saw Watneys Red killed off while Double Diamond and Worthington E went into steep decline and eventual eclipse.
Visits to the Ram Brewery were always a pleasure. It was achingly traditional with stables housing giant shire horses who pulled drays loaded with oak casks to local pubs. A ram mascot hissed menacingly from inside a pen while ducks and geese were free to roam around the yards.
Ken Don and his colleagues enthusiastically mashed, boiled and fermented their delicious beers in conventional mash tuns, coppers and fermenters. The high spot of any visit was a trip to the sanctuary of the Sample Room where small pins of fresh ale could be tasted and passed fit for consumption.
Ken inherited a belief in quality from the Young’s family, who had run the Ram since 1831. No expense was spared in using the best raw materials: Maris Otter, considered England’s finest malting barley, and Fuggles and Goldings hops.
It’s possible to make something called beer by using small amounts of malt with cheaper maize and rice, industrial enzymes and hop extract but that was not the Young’s way. Maris Otter was grown in East Anglia, and malted by hand, while families, many of them Young’s customers, would spend a few happy weeks every autumn picking and collecting hops from the Kent fields.
Ken was distraught in 1989 when seed merchants, farmers and major malting companies announced they were delisting Maris Otter and replacing it with new “higher yielding” barleys that grew more to the acre and were more profitable.
Along with several other brewers, including Adnams and Marston’s, Ken gave contracts to farmers to specially grow Maris Otter. When I asked him how much the cost would add to a pint, he said “a farthing” – a quarter of a penny in pre-decimal currency. Maris Otter was saved and is now widely used not only in Britain but is exported to 20 countries.
A shattering blow came in 2006 when Young’s announced it was closing the brewery. It had been told by the local council to find a new site as it sat in the middle of a permanent traffic jam on the South Circular and other major roads. The family said they couldn’t find a suitable alternative site. John Young died in September that year and the last batch of beer brewed at the Ram was made available at his funeral.
The Young’s board created a new company called Wells & Young’s with the Bedford brewer Charles Wells. Young’s became a pub company with its beers supplied by the Bedford plant. Ken Don spent a month or more painstakingly recreating his beers there. He had to train his yeast culture to work in Wells’ enclosed conical vessels that were distinctly different to the open square fermenters at the Ram. The versions of Young’s beers that emerged from Bedford met with plaudits from the famously picky pundits in the London pubs.
The Wells & Young’s partnership ended amicably in 2011 with the beers remaining in Bedford. In 2017, Wells sold the brewery to Marston’s who continued to make the Young’s beers until, in an endless game of Pass-the-Parcel, it sold the plant to Estrella Damm and the Spanish company now makes only lager in Bedford.
Young’s drinkers were not impressed with the versions then made at Banks’s Brewery in Wolverhampton. It’s a region famous for sweet and malty milds and bitters, and drinkers felt the Young’s versions made there lacked the bitter hop bite they were used to.
The beers will soon be on the move again. The Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company – now Carlsberg Britvic – plans to close Banks’s in the autumn and the beers currently brewed there will transfer to the group’s only remaining ale brewery, Marston’s in Burton-on-Trent.
Burton is a rightly revered brewing town but, with its famously sulphurous water, it produces beers distinctly different to those made elsewhere. Young’s beers that helped save and boost cask ale will now be made a long way from the home where Ken Don honed them to perfection. 
