Past Ale & Hearty Number 59
A VISIT TO TETLEY’S LEEDS BREWERY This time back to Winter 2010 Ale & Hearty no. 59, and my apologies for missing scribing an item in the last issue due to my problems after a traffic accident. This in 2010 is the only issue in which I appear in person on a photo on the front page stood outside the former vast Tetley’s Brewery in Leeds. The front page caption under this reads “Branch visits doomed historic brewery – visit to Tetley’s Brewery in Leeds”. On the 30th October in 2010 a coach party of 30 Southport members and friends visited the famous brewery as it was due for closure in 2011. Tetleys was not famous as a micro brewer, but its wellknown bitter travelled far and wide, and at one time before the dreaded “Beer Orders” were introduced in the early 1990s this brewer had a vast empire of around 1,100 pubs in the West Yorkshire area, plus others further afield. Its beers were available throughout the UK. The brewery was established in 1822, replacing a previous 18th century brewery on the same site, and at the time of our visit was virtually a brewery village, and a famous Leeds landmark next to the River Aire. The fabled huntsman logo was used at one time, but made no difference to the closure plan and the decision to move bitter production to Banks’s in Wolverhampton and smooth flow to the nearby brewery town of Tadcaster. The coach travelled by a lengthy outward route because of various pickups off the main direct motorway network, and when we arrived two of Tetley’s master brewers met us and a group from Leeds CAMRA branch, and we partook of a fine buffet lunch. There then followed a short history of the brewery and processes, ingredients and the
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impend-ing closure, which would result in some redundancies. The brewery was said to be closing because of brewing over capacity, but the large piece of land near Leeds city centre was quite valuable to any developer. Some of the site had already been sold off and owners of the new luxury flats there complained of brewery noise (after 188 years of brewing!). There had not been many recent trips to the brewery and our branch tended to visit micro brewers, but this site was an eye-opener as a large beer factory with a computerised control process and giant brewing vessels called coppers, with one dating back to 1966. We viewed the brew house with its famous Yorkshire squares, bottling and canning plant, and the large wooden panelled Victorian boardroom. The tour included an old entrance foyer with grandfa-ther clock and old fashioned furniture. Very few people were required to operate the site (around 150). We finished off with samples of the beers, bitter, dark mild and a seasonal beer and we wished our hosts a hopeful future brewing the famed bitter in the Midlands and that its quality would not fall (anyone who still drinks the now much rarer Tetleys please comment!). We were then treated to a free pint of their bitter in the nearby Palace pub, which had 9 real ales on offer and is a house of the former Melbourne Brewery (Closed 1960 – I did sample their beers) – the Palace was featured in the CAMRA 2016 Good Beer Guide. En route home we stopped westbound at Keighley to visit some local pubs and try the beers. We had a very long but interesting day and most who travelled seemed happy with our day out. Sadly the