The Strangest Brewery in the World

Peter Alexander is one of the last, great OG bloggers: he’s still on blogspot and uses the nom de blog “Tandleman,” which to a generation of readers is far more familiar than his given name. He also does a great job documenting the strangest brewery I have ever encountered, Samuel Smith’s, in the tiny Yorkshire village of Tadcaster.

“But all is not well. I was told, recently, that no fewer than 120 Sam Smith's pubs are closed through lack of people to run them. (You can often find them listed in trade adverts for managers.) This is an astonishing number…”

Smith’s has long defied gravity. In a business climate driven by efficiency, the brewery has been stubbornly traditional. In an industry that feeds on novelty, Smith’s has been old-fashioned. And for a clientele that lives through their screens in the 21st-century, Smith’s has been “uncompromisingly Victorian” (the brewery’s words.) Despite all this—and with, I suspect, a big assist from its export business—Smith’s has managed to plug along. The laws of physics may have finally penetrated the dark, hushed, and prim reaches of the Smith empire, however. Some will experience the small, mean pleasures of Schadenfreude at these developments, but I am torn. For all his many objectionable qualities, Humphrey Smith has managed to preserve this weirdness far longer than I could have imagined, and the world is more interesting because of it.

How Strange Is It?

Humphrey Smith runs his empire like a gilded-age industrialist. He treats his employees badly and, not occasionally, illegally, famous for capriciously firing pub managers for infractions as petty as failing to serve his favorite dessert. He is constantly at war with municipalities who either impede his ability to run pubs his own way, or want to run their towns their way over his objections.

He wants to create a preserve of his pubs for Victorian values, which means no screens, no kids, and no profanity. Patrons scrolling through their phonesor dropping an F-bomb may be 86ed. If you want to avoid the crowds watching England play at the World Cup, his TV-free pubs are the place to be. I suspect he’s on the fence with regard to women, but he’s made it clear gay patrons are not welcome. In the North, Smith’s pubs require cash payment. Of course, he was against Covid restrictions.

People still go to one of Smith’s venues—or did, before Covid—because the beer was good and shockingly cheap, and the pubs were often extraordinary museum-like palaces.

Though it’s almost invisible, the brewery is no less weird. The company doesn’t allow local media to tour the facility, but let me in when I visited in 2011. (That export market again.) When I visited—no reason to doubt any of this has changed—it was a coal-fired brewery (!) that still employed a cooper to manage the wooden casks for its pub bitter; horses deliver them locally. The Victorian brewery still employs a baudelot-style chiller for the India Ale, and has the famous slate Yorkshire squares to manage fermentation.

Yet it is not solely a museum piece. The family saw the value of that export market early, way before other UK breweries, and Smith’s has always been available far more reliably in the US than any other UK brand. Indeed, the fascination with porters, oatmeal stouts, and brown ales in the first decades of craft brewing was largely a result of Smith’s export. Beyond that, they do surprisingly forward-looking products like an organic line, a choco/pastryish stout, fruit beers, and ciders.

If there’s a logic behind the company, it might be, “Give the people what they want, so long as Humphrey doesn’t object.”

Gravity Arrives

The delicate balance Smith’s struck between innovative products (for a Victorian-era brewery) and Jurassic pub ethos worked in that earlier, distant age of three years ago. But things have changed dramatically, starting with massive inflation—worse in the UK than here—finally causing pint prices to go up. Bottle sizes shrank, but the prices stayed the same. Meanwhile, workers are saying enough, flatly refusing to work under Smith’s draconian rules. All of that has upset the ale dray.

Sam Smith’s had been rationalising its estate as a result of the pandemic, with around 25% of its properties being boarded up, but adding to its woes is the inability to find managers for many viable pubs. They now sit closed with ‘staff wanted’ signs pinned up in the windows.

In the company’s home town of Tadcaster, five of its seven pubs are closed, awaiting new management. It is a similar story in other towns and even in major cities and busy areas, with enforced closures in York, Whitby, and Scarborough as well as London, where I’ve been informed the Red Lion, near Carnaby Street, has suffered from these management shortages. [Glynn Davis, Beer Insider]

Add to these factors the unfortunate situation with the US beer market, always Smith’s ace in the hole. No one drinks English ales anymore. Up through the 1990s, English ale was revered by beer geeks, who still saw it as the authentic craft beer. Those days are long gone, and neither millennials nor Gen Z developed a taste for what now seems like fusty grandpa beer. (That may be part of the problem in the UK, as well.) So everything, all at once, and none of it good.

I won’t even try to get numbers on Smith’s sales—I know they are regarded as a state secret by the brewery. (They got very uncomfortable when I asked any questions about the business and wouldn’t even divulge their annual barrelage.) So if the brewery goes kaput, or has to go through massive downsizing, we won’t know until it happens. And maybe it won’t. Tandlemen reports that Humphrey is “nearly as rich as the Windsors,” so maybe he’s prepared to ride out a bad decade. The best-case scenario would be a chastened owner prepared to treat his staff with respect, meanwhile sticking to his guns on the less problematic bits. And then there’s the other reality: Smith is 77 and he won’t be around forever. Big things often happens when breweries change hands.

In the spirit of the post-Twitter world which does still seem to be a’coming, I invite you to leave comments and reflections here, with my thanks.

The Business of BeerJeff AlworthNovember 30, 202212 Comments