Yorkshire’s Oldest Brewery – Est. 1758

Samuel Smith brews a wide range of high quality beers, solely from authentic natural ingredients.

Stone Yorkshire Squares

The brewery still uses stone Yorkshire squares to ferment all its ales and stouts (except Sovereign and Extra Stout) and the same yeast strain has been used since the 1800s.

Whole Dried Hops

Whole dried English hop varieties such as Fuggles and Goldings are used to add bitterness and aroma to Samuel Smith’s traditional ales in the antique boiling coppers.

Oak Casks

Samuel Smith’s uses oak casks for all its naturally conditioned ale. The casks are made and repaired at the Old Brewery by the brewery’s full time coopers.

Cooperage

The Old Brewery has two full-time coopers who make and repair all Samuel Smith’s oak casks. The oak casks are used for handpulled Old Brewery Bitter and for maturing Yorkshire Stingo.

Samuel Smith’s Shire horses are stabled behind the Angel & White Horse, the pub next to the brewery. The horses are used to make local deliveries in and around Tadcaster five days a week.

There is a whole new world of mystique behind the gates of the brewery stable-yard. To the uninitiated, it’s a world full of strange sights and sounds and smells. To the horseman and his Shires, it’s home.

Members of this world have different lives from the rest of us. Winter and summer alike, they rise from bed while most of us are deep asleep. Most noteworthy, through the day, there’s just one thing that really matters – the comfort and well-being of the horses in the brewery yard.

Everything is done quietly because that’s the way horses like it. Horses are, after all, creatures of quiet. When they were kings of the streets, those streets echoed to the sounds of other horses and that was all. The fact that they can work at all in modern towns is a tribute to the men who handle them. Everything is done to routine, because that’s the way the horses like it.

“I have always considered that the substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy passage in the progress of mankind.” Sir Winston Churchill

Out on the road, horse serves man. In the stable, it’s definitely the other way round. The lorry driver can bring his lorry back to the brewery, switch off and go home.

Not so the horseman. His horses rely on him for food and water, a clean bed for the night and clean harness for the morrow. When they are dirty and sweat-stained, the horseman must clean them. If their feet are sore, the horseman must see that their steel shoes are replaced by the farrier. When they are ill, the horseman must tend them. Finally, when they are old and tired, the horseman must give them their retirement in some quiet field in the country.

Think of a good horseman, and dedication is the next word that springs to mind.