Felinfoel Brewery: BHS Visit 2024 - Report
BHS visit to the Felinfoel Brewery at Llanelli: 18th September 2024 - Report by Jamie Hooper
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1980 Briggs Copper -
Mash Tun -
Fermentation Room -
Beer Tanks -
Kegging Plant -
Can Filling
Felinfoel Brewery is the oldest remaining brewery in Wales and is still brewing on its original site. It is rarely in the news, with its ales only occasionally being found out of its West Wales hinterland. The BHS visit was the first organised group to tour in recent times. We found this traditional tower brewery from the 1870s had an interesting story to tell.
We were met in the brewery yard by Jeremy Lewis, who took over two years ago from his father as head of the company, after 10 years in the Welsh Guards. He is the sixth generation of his family to work for the company. He was accompanied by Gary Shingler, the Brewer, who has worked for the brewery for 39 years. Gary's father worked there before him, and his son has followed him, thus demonstrating a close bond between the brewery and the local community, increasingly rarely found.
Felinfoel's origins date back to the mid-1830s when David John, an owner of an iron and tinplate works, bought the King's Head in the village, later renamed the Union Inn and started brewing its own beer. As demand increased, it led to the building of the present day tower brewery in 1878. When David retired, his sons David and Martin took over and in time registered the brewery as a private company in 1906. The family also had mining interests and in 1908 a two-foot seam of coal was found just 12m under the brewery while sinking a well. Luckily for the integrity of the brewery, the family decided not to work the seam.
One of David John's daughters, Mary Anne, married John Lewis, the manager of a local ironworks. Unfortunately, Mr Lewis was a compulsive gambler and through the strain this brought on, in the 1920s he sadly shot himself whilst alone in the brewery. However, Mary Anne was a formidable woman and she carried on with the business. She carried a big stick, still on show in the Board Room and if she was unhappy with the performance of any of the staff, she hit them with it!
These were troubled times for the brewery but salvation came from the family's close connections with the tinplate industry. Beer had been bottled for around 200 years, but food had started to be canned from 1812. Many breweries had no interest in canning beer because of their investment in bottling and there were also issues to be resolved regarding flavour contamination and the increased pressure required for canning beer as compared with food. The enthusiasm for change came from the hard pressed tinplate manufacturers of Llanelli.
Buckley's, the larger and older brewery in Llanelli, were reported in the Western Mail in October 1935 to be investigating canning beer. However, Felinfoel beat them to the punch in producing the first cans of beer that December. Brewer Sidney John produced 10 oz cans of pale ale. The conical cans were filled on adapted bottling machinery and sealed with a standard (crown) bottle top.
Although American brewers had started canning beer earlier, Sidney John was convinced that the Felinfoel beer was superior because, unlike the American beer, his canned beer wasn't pasteurised. Buckley's didn't in fact can beer for many years whilst Felinfoel started exporting its canned beer abroad.
Jeremy explained that one of his predecessors who was in charge of the company had, during WW2 and after, moved to London and had managed the company from there, coming back to Felinfoel only occasionally.
This comes from the brewery's website:
‘In 1965 a bitter disagreement between the John's and Lewis's came to a head when larger neighbours Buckley's bid for the brewery. The Lewis's had been in charge for a number of years, with most of the members on the board, but it was a distant control given that they had other interests and the head office had moved to Knightsbridge. Buckley's had privately approached members of the John family before making its £500,000 bid public. When news of the takeover broke in April 1965 they could claim to have secured acceptance from 48.7% of shareholders. By May, this figure had edged up to 49.5%. Buckley's was almost there. The Felinfoel director's recommended rejection. A crucial role was played by a Lady Davies, who owned 11 shares. Buckley's offered her £2,750. Had she sold the takeover would have succeeded. Instead she rejected the money and gave the shares to the Lewis's. Despite its paper-thin majority, the Lewis family kept control, even though Buckley's had gained a seat on the board'.
Interestingly, Jeremy informed us that the revived Brakspear's brewery and the eponymous Croydon based pub company, which owns it, are owned by descendants of the same Davies family.
A holding company was established to prevent further family disputes. Buckley's made regular offers for the remaining shares, which the directors ignored. John Lewis, Jeremy‘s father, was head of the business at this time and to make the Buckley's shares unattractive to outsiders he declared minimal annual dividends.
Buckley's were therefore thwarted and in time their shareholding in Felinfoel was sold to United Distillers, in time renamed Diageo after their merger with Guinness. Buckley's were swallowed up first by a property company in 1987, then with the backing of Harp Lager, (owned by Guinness) merged with the Crown Brewery of Pontyclun. Felinfoel were naturally anxious to get this shareholding back in their hands, so a deal was done that Diageo would sell them the ex-Buckley's shares on the proviso that Felinfoel would supply their pubs and free trade with Harp Lager for 20 years.
In 1997, Buckley's closed after a further merger with S A Brain. Karma you might say!
The cost of ensuring their independence by buying in these shares meant there was minimal investment both in the brewery and the pubs at this time. The result of this is that Jeremy believes he needs to invest in the existing pub estate of 53, down from 78 in his grandfather's days after WW2, rather than expand. He has also put some investment into the brewery such as modernising the way to haul the malt to the top of the tower and milling it. He explained that during the pandemic, when other staff could not work on site, his father and he were hauling the bags manually, which was back-breaking. A mechanised method involving a new attached building has since been built. Similarly, moving the bags of malt manually from the store and feeding into the mill, has been replaced by an auger.
The BHS visitors split into two groups, with some of us being shown around by Jeremy which concentrated on the history and operation of the brewery, and others following Gary which concentrated more on the brewing side. Jeremy took us into the offices where there is a collection of brewery memorabilia including beer trays featuring one of his ancestors in a top hat. The most unusual items were the very first beer cans produced in the UK in 1935, looking somewhat different to the modern ones. The brewery has three different examples of these, including two that were purchased at some expense off Ebay. A previous can kept by Felinfoel was thrown out by a cleaner thinking it was rubbish!
Jeremy then took us into the brewery. It has a 200 foot deep well. It is not allowed to use the small river that runs through the site, either for producing beer or for power, which Jeremy would like to do to save energy costs. The water is still sourced at the bottom of the well to avoid contamination from old mining deposits closer to the surface.
We climbed to the very top of the tower. There we saw the 1905 Boby malt mill. An example of one of these is in the Guinness museum. Incredibly, a few years ago, this supplanted an even older example sold on to Harveys.
Gary is generally only brewing for a couple of days early in the week. They have a 150brl brew length, with a minimum of 55brl, which is rather large for trial brews. So Gary has recently purchased a former microbrewery's kit off Ebay to use as a pilot plant. This is hoped to be in operation later this year. They have also hired another brewer to start working with Gary.
At present 70% of production of the eight regular beers are sold in kegs, 30% in cask. Jeremy is seeing a small trend back to cask and believes in a year or so, it could return to 40% as before Covid. Unfortunately, there are probably many low barrelage pubs in West Wales, both owned and free trade, that inhibit cask sales. Felinfoel is not equipped to brew lager and now that they don't have to buy in Harp, will buy lager from any of the large overseas companies that have taken over the former Big Six breweries.
Whilst Jeremy toured the brewery offices with Gary's original group, Gary took us to the kegging and canning areas. Felinfoel do sell their beer in bottles but it is sent brewery conditioned in small tanks to a soft drinks manufacturer in Monmouthshire for them to bottle. We saw workers completing that day's kegging. They also have, unlike many similar sized brewers, a small canning line, continuing in the style they originally initiated almost 90 years ago.
Some beer is sold by the pallet out of Wales. We saw one such pallet of cask ale, which had additional conditioning being filled in the kegging area because of the need to keep fresh for longer. This pallet was being delivered to Black Country Ales, a West Midlands brewery.
The tour concluded at the store adjacent to the brewery entrance where we were invited to sample the new IPA (ABV 4.0%) and the brewery's best seller, Double Dragon. The IPA is currently unnamed, and is a little hoppier then the distinctively malty brews that Jeremy said local customers had traditionally preferred. He said customers are turning towards these hoppier styles. Gary told us that they use four different varieties of hops, including Challenger, WGV and Citra.
It was a fascinating tour around one of the last traditional tower breweries and we thanked Jeremy and Gary for their time.
Jamie Hooper