The Caskaway

Classic Pints – Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. Do you know it is National Cask Ale Week. A celebration of living, breathing, beautiful cask beer. Can you tell I’m a fan? From my first pint, then running pubs to writing about beer it is woven into my life. Don’t get me wrong I like craft beers, or a crisp, chilled lager on a hot day but my real love is cask ale. And one of my all-time favourites is Landlord. But don’t just take my word for it. Landlord is now the second most bought real ale in the UK and the first by value.

Why? A mix of quality ingredients, the craftsmanship of the brewers, the pure drinking pleasure? I stole that from Timothy Taylors marketing agency. No as a primer, your first pint, or half, of cask ale if you have never tried it, then look no further. If you get nothing else from this post Landlord is a good an example you will find, of a great beer style. What’s more it is produced at scale with no compromise on quality. All of the hype aside it is a superbly slurpable drink any time of the year. Smooth, balanced, with a persistently nice flavour, it’s a cracking pint.

A lot of the consistency in the beer comes from Timothy Taylor’s ongoing investment in training so that staff in any pubs supplied with their brews are shown how to keep and serve a perfect pint. We can talk about the difference in beer service styles between the north and south of the UK another time and how it changes a beer. The brewery has identified that the point of distribution to the customer is just as important as brewing a cracking pint.

Cask ale has a lot going for it. The flavours run from light golden ales through to porters and stouts. It is the backbone of the British pub, and a hand pull on the bar is a welcoming sight. However, a poorly kept pint can put you off drinking real ale for life. As a living organism it needs treating with respect even love. There is also a certain amount of snobbery and there shouldn’t be, and I want as many people to love real ale as much as me.

A little Timothy Taylor’s Landlord History

Landlord began life in 1953 and was a highly successful bottled beer, but it really came into its own in the 1970s when brewer Timothy Taylors resisted the onslaught of keg products and emphasised the quality of their draught beers. It is brewed today at the Knowle Spring Brewery in Keighley, Yorkshire, using spring water filtered through the shale, gritstone, and carboniferous limestone of the surrounding Pennine mountains. The water is not Timothy Taylor’s only unique ingredient they use their own yeast strain to ferment the beer in traditional open-topped ‘Yorkshire Squares’.

Landlord has won more brewing industry awards than any other English beer including both the Brewing Industry Challenge Cup and CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain four times. Landlord is a traditional Bitter, more precisely an English Pale Ale with a 4.3 % ABV. Timothy Taylor’s brewing perfectly encapsulates the balance between malt, hop, and yeast. No single flavour is predominant and the end result adds up to a sum of more than its constituent parts.

It is refreshingly on the palate with a gentle carbonisation ( it’s not too gassy ) and a smooth, pleasing finish. Landlord exhibits the characteristics of a lot of popular ales but just seems to do it a good deal better than most and very consistently. Your pint of Landlord is a versatile drink that can pair with lots of dishes; However, it is really wonderful with a piece of fruitcake and a slice of Wensleydale cheese and perhaps the perfect pint to drink with traditional fish and chips.

Draft Timothy Taylor’s Landlord Summary