With breweries and pubs falling like ninepins, the Dorset family brewer has chalked up rising profits, rebadged its famous Badger cask ales and launched a new range of keg beers.
In 2023, with an investment of £6m, it added a new managed pub, the Taplow, on the banks of the Thames in Buckinghamshire to its estate of 150 pubs. The pub has been packed since opening day, with an emphasis on good food as well as beer -- a style being developed throughout the tied estate.
The brewery was founded in 1777 and it will celebrate 250 years in 2027, with members of the eighth generation of the family joining the seventh in running the business.
The older generation is represented by Anthony Woodhouse, the current chairman, with Mark Woodhouse as a family director. The younger generation has Tatiana, the daughter of the late David Woodhouse, as a non-executive director while Matt Woodhouse is a qualified accountant and is working in the managed house division.
Their combined efforts are producing a rich dividend. Hall & Woodhouse profits rose by 50% between 2023 and 2024, from £4.2m to £6.5m. Mark Woodhouse says: “The family are the custodians of the business, holding the company to its purpose and values through the changing generations.”
Expansion leads to move
Charles Hall, the son of a farmer, built the first brewery in the village of Ansty near Dorchester in 1777. The Woodhouse family arrived in 1838 and became the sole owners when the successors to Charles Hall showed no interest in the business.
The Woodhouse dynasty was formed and it used the bucolic symbol of the badger on its ales, which has remained the company logo to this day.
Expansion saw the brewery move to a new site in 1882 in Blandford St Mary, a suburb of the handsome Georgian town of Blandford Forum.
Badgers ales reached a wider audience in the 1980s with the introduction of a popular strong bitter called Tanglefoot (4.7% ABV). The name was the result of head brewer John Woodhouse supping too deeply of his new beer and tripping over his feet.
Further impressive expansion has taken place in the 21st century. The chief executive David Woodhouse vigorously built sales in the off and on-trades, installed a canning and bottling line and a new racking cellar for draught beer.
The Ship & Shovell
A Hall & Woodhouse pub where the cask ale flows in abundance is the remarkable Ship & Shovell in central London. The brewery thinks it sells more cask beer than any other of its other outlets.
The pub – possibly uniquely – straddles two sides of a narrow road, Craven Passage. The passage lies behind Charing Cross Station and the pub was once two competing 17th century hostelries. They merged in 1998 and are joined by an underground cellar where beer is stored and food prepared.
The two bars have settles, open fires, stained glass windows and the full range of the brewery’s beers. In the bigger of the two bars there’s a portrait of Sir Cloudesley Shovell, a 17th century Admiral of the Fleet, along with a model of his ship.
Mark Woodhouse says the reason the brewery has several pubs in London, including St Stephen’s Tavern opposite Big Ben that’s popular with politicians and tourists, is because “we followed Dick Whittington to the land of milk and honey”.
In 2008, David Woodhouse, backed by his board, took the momentous decision to sell the free-trade business. This enabled them to invest £18m in a new brewery, though this important decision was overshadowed by the sudden death of David, aged just 48, of a heart attack.
The new brewery, which came on stream in 2013, was designed by head brewer Toby Heasman and marked a major departure from traditional brewing methods. Designed by Musk (no relation) in Derbyshire, the new kit replaces mash tuns and open fermenters with the Continental system of mash mixers and lauter (filtration) tuns.
The sweet liquid or wort is then boiled in a kettle with hop pellets and fermented in closed conical vessels. The system means that both ale and lager can be produced and eight brews a day can be handled. Toby Heasman also has a pilot brewery where he can devise new brews.
It’s an eco-friendly site. It has an energy recycling system to trap steam that’s used to heat following brews. Wastewater is treated prior to discharge and biogas is recovered to generate electricity that’s fed back into the grid. The packaging hall has PV panels (photovoltaics or solar) on the roof that also feed electricity into the grid.
80,000 barrels of beer a year are produced, an impressive amount for an independent family brewer – which is a finalist in four categories at this year’s Publican Awards – in a market dominated by a handful of global giants.
Meeting demands
In the years post-Covid, Hall & Woodhouse has retuned the business to meet the demands of today’s pubgoers. Giles Mountford, the head of brand marketing, says: “We have reduced the number of our pubs but the existing estate is made up of pubs for the future.
“They’re not just wet-led. The managed pubs have longer opening hours and food is vital to both partnership and managed outlets.” Partnership refers to 100 tenancies, with 50 managed outlets. In order to maximise sales from food, the Blandford brewery complex has a kitchen where new recipes are developed while a special planning team prepares pubs to have a good balance of food and drink.
“We’re recruiting chefs,” Mountford says, “and we run a chef apprentice scheme.” Menus reflect the work going on at Blandford and customers will find halloumi wraps, chicken skewers, falafel salad, cauliflower wings and venison terrine alongside more traditional pub dishes.
But the brewery never forgets its main task is making and selling beer. Since Covid and lockdown, Giles Mountford, Toby Heasman and their team have put a great effort into refreshing the beer offer. The staple cask ales – Best Bitter, Fursty Ferret and Tanglefoot – have bright new pump clips and, reflecting the changing world of beer, they have been joined by a new range called Outland, available in keg and can. The older family members must have winced at the thought of hazy IPAs with aromas of citrus fruit but the sales and success of the new range will have satisfied them.
“We have good traditional beers but the cask market is declining by 6% to 8% a year,” Giles Mountford says, “and we needed more modern brands. The Outland range is now selling as much as our cask range in the on-trade.”
Taking a share of Guinness sales
While the Badger cask ales derive their character from traditional English hops, the Outland beers look across the Pond and draw on such American varieties as Amarillo, Citra and Mosaic. The two beers that have created the most interest are West Coast IPA (5% ABV) and Hazy IPA (4.2% ABV) while Outland Stout (4.1% ABV), brewed with pale, chocolate and crystal malts with roasted barley, has become so popular that it’s taken a third of Guinness sales in the company’s pubs.
The Outland range includes a lager, a German-style Helles (4.2% ABV), that’s brewed with dedication to the beer’s heritage: Helles is a German term for a golden lager. Brewing water is softened and a lager yeast culture has been obtained from the Weihenstephan brewery and training academy near Munich. Hops come from the famous Hallertau region of Bavaria while the delicate malt and hops flavours of a true Helles are achieved by one month’s lagering or storage.
In spite of the brewery’s success, Mark Woodhouse points to the burdens his company and all brewers face. He says the Government’s autumn Budget will mean £1.2m additional costs this year.
As a result of the sugar tax, the company sold its Rio soft drinks range to AG Barr for £12.3m. This has enabled the company to continue its support for more than 800 local groups through its Community Chest Charity that has raised £717,000 since its inception in 2002.
The need for traditional breweries to meet the demands of modern consumers can be measured by the most recent Hall & Woodhouse sales figures. Since the launch of the Outland range, sales of its keg beers have increased by 36 while cask sales were flat in 2002-23 and are down by 28% since 2019.
It’s a long road to recovery for draught cask beer since Covid but one hopeful sign at Blandford is that seasonal cask ales, such as Winter’s Tale, are selling well. As many brewers are finding, drinkers – especially younger ones – are looking for variety and new and inviting flavours in beer.
A sign in the bar of the Crown Hotel in Blandford – the brewery’s flagship outlet – says “A Day Without Beer is a Day Without Cheer”.
Let that be the lodestar for the future.
