Forever Young's

The death of John Young from cancer at the age of 85 has robbed the UK brewing industry of one of its greatest champions.

Young was the oldest and longest serving chairman in the country's brewing industry and his death last Sunday was described by those who knew him as having left "an enormous gap" in the business, with his contribution to the industry "almost impossible to measure".

The great-great-great grandson of Charles Allen Young, one of two businessmen who took over the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth, South London, in 1831, Young joined the family business in 1954, having served in the Second World War as a fighter pilot with the Fleet Air Arm and a period in the merchant navy.

He became chairman in 1962 following the retirement of his father, William Allen Young, and had what many would describe as a 'unique' but effective management style.

He put into practice one of his father's ideas, that of establishing a profit-sharing trust for the company's employees, a radical idea at the time. Also, recognising that times were changing and that families would become a big part of a pub's custom, he opened up children's rooms at a time when the patter of smaller feet was distinctly unwelcome in most of the nation's pubs.

Speaking to a number of industry figures what comes across is Young's devotion to the cause of brewing real ale. This was fired up four decades ago when, against all the trends of the time, he decided to promote traditional draught beer while his company's competitors - including some current champions of cask ale - were turning their attentions to producing keg bitters and lager.

"When I started drinking decent beer in London in the 70s there was no-one else producing proper beer," says Roger Protz, author of the Good Beer Guide. "John raised the flag for real beer in Wandsworth. He refused to go down the keg route when so many others were doing so."

Brewing a particular type of beer was not his only passion. Protz says Young firmly believed in sourcing local ingredients years before it became fashionable. "We live in an age when everyone is focusing on quality of ingredients and provenance. He put down a marker for this decades ago, buying hops from Kent and the best quality malt and barley, when no-one else was bothering."

Young's belief in maintaining the traditional and qualitative aspects of brewing were key to his chairmanship, and this will form much of his legacy, believes Bobby Neame, president of Kent brewer Shepherd Neame.

"He should be respected for his regard for the importance for things like heritage and all it stood for in terms of the traditional brewer."

Neame points out that his rival didn't follow what the financiers wanted him to do. "He never kow-towed to what the City wanted - lager, keg, fashions and valuations. He tried to make people see the value of an integrated brewery, with all its activities. His philosophy was to get a little out of everything, rather than a lot out of not very much," says Neame.

Acknowledgment of tradition did not mean business rationale could be allowed to drift, however. The constraints of the brewery site in Wandsworth - a cramped 5.5 acre site hemmed in by busy roads - led to a feasibility study which recommended a sale, and that was completed in May of this year. Brewing at the Wandsworth site came to an end last week, and his death only adds to the sense of a passing heritage.

The sale would have been a tough decision and "would have hurt John enormously", says Michael Turner, chief executive of London rivals Fuller's. But he believes Young was "nothing if not sensible when it came to business" and would have known "it was too good a sum to turn down".

Young's love of tradition didn't stop him having a sense of fun, however, and people speak of his kindness and high-spiritedness. "He was kind, charming, generous and enormous fun," says Turner.

He famously once entered a Young's pub and seeing it full of building workers quaffing pints of lager, offered to buy everyone in the room a drink, so long as it was a pint of Young's. By the end of the session he'd converted the pub's regulars to his company's beer.

Another anecdote tells of how, on being told by his doctor to do some moderate exercise, he had a set of bicycle pedals and cogs set up in the back of his limousine so he could 'ride' from pub to pub when touring his estate, as he did regularly.

"He would talk to anyone and was always jovial," says Turner. "His death leaves an enormous gap in the business. His will be big boots to fill."

"He should be respected for his regard for the importance for things like heritage and all it stood for in terms of the traditional brewer"