Mark Woodhouse
Hall & Woodhouse
Hall & Woodhouse has just announced it wants to build a new brewery in Blandford St Mary, its Dorset home. Not so much because the old one is getting stretched, although business is growing at a double-digit rate, but because the old one is more than 100 years old and too expensive and inefficient to run compared to a modern plant.
Managing director Mark Woodhouse is the fifth generation of Woodhouses to run the brewery. After four years in the army he returned to the company aged 24, where, he says, like other young twigs on the family tree, he spent six months seconded to various departments while his father and uncle decided who might make boardroom material. Once accepted, he spent a traditional brewer's 'pupillage learning the trade at Boddingtons in Manchester and Charles Wells in Bedford before returning to Dorset and working as a junior brewer and then in the sales department in Blandford.
H&W is rare among regionals in still brewing its own lager, something that kept it out of the 'draught lager for cask ale swaps that went on between national and regional brewers at the height of the guest-beer scene in the early 1990s. As a result it now has very little trade with the pub companies, with 85% to 90% of production going to its own pubs or the direct free trade.
The company is also rare for a comparatively small brewer in having good sales of its bottled beers in supermarkets it's number three in the take-home ale market, something Woodhouse puts down to twice winning the Tesco Beer Challenge, and which he is sure helps boost sales among visitors to the West Country. Perhaps because of this he believes it 'is disingenuous to regard the cask and bottled-ale markets as unrelated. The buyers of one in the pub are the buyers of the other to take home, Woodhouse says, and the shift in volume from on to off, which he believes will settle at a 50:50 split, means cask-ale producers have to take this on board if they want to grow their brands. However, while bottled ales are similarly priced to bottled lagers in the off-trade, Woodhouse does not believe there is much chance of increasing the price of ale in the pub to match lager.
He believes that 'ale is for people who think a bit, and who have grown out of the bland taste of many lagers though not H&W's own lager, brewed under licence from Germany and 'a very fine beer, he says. As the population ages, the demographics will, therefore, work in cask ale's favour as people look for more flavoursome products once their taste buds get more sophisticated.
Producing bottled beers with unusual flavours, such as peach, has enabled H&W to see fresh ways to introduce people to ale, says Woodhouse, adding: 'We've got anecdotal evidence that girls try our Golden Glory and Golden Champion and love it. Like other regional cask-brewers, the company is pushing beer and food matching, and has produced a series of recipe cards showing dishes with recommended beers, such as Jamaica Ginger Pudding with Blandford Fly beer.
