I don't read all the threads that get on this forum, but felt it was important to recognise the closure of Tetleys Brewery in Leeds today. Personally i think the closure of this site is a travesty..and agree with my local MP ( not something i would normally do ), and will be boycotting all Tetley products from here on in.
As an Otley lad i was weened on Tetley Bitter and the boycot is gonna be hard..more like cold turkey..but this is a sad day

Sad day



As a Leeds lad who has spent most of the last 10 years living away the smell of the Brewery wafting over the river was always what reminded me of the city.

Carlsberg is all about making money, primarily with Carlsberg lager. Their current marketing policy is to try sell as much stuff as possible at little margins.
Tetleys is on prime land, and was always going to be sold once the area around it developed and land prices increased.
Economics meant sense to sell up and move production elsewhere

Heineken did it closing Tyne Brewery, and then Dunston, so now ALL Newcastle Brown Ale sold worldwide is brewed at Tadcaster. It was cheaper to make it at Tadcaster, and tastes were the same, so it happened.
Kronenbourg, that traditional French premium lager is brewed at Tadcaster and Hartlepool!!!
Murphys, an alternative stout to Guinness is brewed at Tadcaster, as is Fosters and (ALL) John Smiths.

The big breweries are always looking to make money and cut costs. It's what happens in the big world. No loyalty to tradition. It's all about the 'brand' and marketing, and making as much beer as possible at minimum costs, and making a profit

For what it's worth, I hope you all boycott Tetleys and drink John Smiths



Personally I drink Bulmers, cos it's feckin cheap in the staff shop



Cheers

Had a pint of Leeds Pale last week, very acceptable.

A very close friend of mine is forced into early retirement today with the closure of Tetleys and Greg Mulholland is right to push the campaign to [url=http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23boycottcarlsbergBoycott Carlsberg[/url

everybody should bombard carslberg and call them the brewers of

Leeds brewery beer is a good replacement



Never liked anything Carlsberg make anyway because it all tastes like pis[is[/i

but really how were they allowed into our city to vandalise then destroy our prime industrial institution?When nyone thought of Leeds they thought of Tetley's,and those Danish scum still value the brand other wise they would have left it in the city to be brewed by Leeds brewery

I have thoroughly enjoyed Leeds Brewery products whenever i have tried them. In this neck of the woods we have excellent beers from Ilkley Brewery and the fantastic Wharfebank Brewery in Pool, who's head brewer is the retired head brewer from Tetleys.

Can't beat copper dragon







( Hope my boss doesn't read this)

Leeds Brewery is a cracking set up, the Leeds Pale is lovely, Rhinoms should be able to vouch for this the amount of the stuff he used to win in the days of touchline, good to see some local breweries seemingly doing well.

I'd be interested to know what percentage of my income i 'invested' in tetleys when i first started work, but the beginning of the end was when the sold out to the Carlsberg guys way back when.

Leeds has an image... or more accurately, a cultural void... to protect as a 24-hour Milan or Barcelona of the north with its pavement bars, cafes, posh shops and residential waterfront properties. There is no place for maintaining any local history or nostalgia, not that Leeds ever had much to begin with.

Spot On Flipper!!
Leeds pale is bang on and it always brings back happy memories of Touchline!

Yuppie flats and a working brewery was never going to be a good match, and when you add in Leeds Council's desire to change the city's image, then Carlsberg were laughing all the way to the developers bank.

A sad day for those of us who remember the horse drawn drays in the city centre, so, Leeds Pale it is then!

Sam Smiths still do weekly deliveries to Tadcaster pubs using Horse and Dray

Tad Rhino works (occasionally) for Sam Smiths and can vouch for this. He can be found on delivery days walking behind the dray with a shovel and a bag.

Has he been promoted ?

A good pint of Tetleys is as rare as rocking horse doo doo anyway. Plastic pubs don't want actual beer anyway, they just want something fizzy with 5% alcohol in it.

Things have never been the same since the "Tetley Bar" at Leeds Uni was re-branded the "Old Bar" and they covered all the seats in green velour.

There's heaps of ales around nowadays and Tetley's hasn't been any good for years. I used to like a decent pint of it but haven't had one since the early 90s. Shame as a good pint of Tetley's was pretty good and was a decent session ale.

Leeds Brewery has taken over as the best brewery in the city now.

Tetley's has always been overrated, and that's before Carlsberg took over. During the 70's and 80's there was only ever the obvious handful of pubs where you would be served a decent pint of the stuff... at the rest it generally tasted absolutely disgusting, and there was never any other beer that was quite as disgusting as a bad pint of Tetley's.

Like Bullseye, I quit drinking Tetley's a long time ago.

My wife used to run Tetleys pubs,its how we met (her on one side of the bar and me on the other) and she kept an outstanding pint, she was taught properly by John Armitage the landlord of The Plummet Line in Halifax during the 1980's. All this reminiscing about Tetleys had us talking, and i think it is the 1980's when i last had a truly decent pint of Tetleys. After the closure, I wont ever touch the stuff again.

Norman the Landlord in The Fox at Horsforth always kept a good pint of Tetley's as did Graham Eccles when he took over the place.

Its still a good few years since Graham Eccles left Horsforth.

I thought that the Adelphi supplied an excellent pint of Tetley's Real Ale.
It must be 20 years since I last had a pint there so that will have been my last pint of Tetley's.
I'm a wee bit sad to see it go since it was the first bitter I ever drank in the Mucky Duck in Frizinghall.
However, I've since discovered infinitely superior pints so my sadness is very temporary & I'm not in the least sorry to see the brewery go.
The current site is no longer suitable, pull it down & redevelop the whole area including the ex chemical factory.
What a planning & development opportunity.
Any new brewery should be sited in the Aire Valley enterprise zone.

Its a hell of a lot more since Norman retired



Those were the good old days of pubs, the days when a pub WAS the hub of a community and if you walked in at 12 noon on a sunday lunch you knew who would be in there, where they would be sat and what they would be drinking, the landlord knew you and he knew what you were drinking and on any Sunday lunchtime in the 1970s after Sunday League football the tap room in The Fox would be ram packed, two football teams to serve in the two hour Sunday lunchtime opening slot then home for your mothers roast beef dinner



Some things have changed for the worse.

Still a difficult trade to operate in, the recent success of the micro brewery's is down to scale and servicing what is really a small market.

For instance there is currently a micro brewery for sale in West Yorkshire, we've half-joked in recent months that we should all chip in and buy it and get our ex-Tetleys brewer mate to run it for us, fact is that it currently brews German lager beer under licence and is obviously struggling in the market.

Those small and micro brewery's that are currently enjoying success will find all the same problems when they decide to re-finance and bring in outside investors who want to see a decent return on their money, while they are happy to brew for the love of it and for a wage every week, when you introduce investors and start talking about expansion then it fails to be a love of beer and becomes a love of money and your clientele will notice,

Leeds Brewery Midnight Bell in the Whitelocks is a good replacement for Tetleys. Fantastic pint.