Shepherd Neame Brewery


Shepherd Neame is an English independent brewery founded in 1698 in Faversham, Kent, and family-owned since 1864. The brewery produces a range of cask ales and filtered beers. Production is around 210,000 brewers' barrels a year. It owns 328 pubs and hotels, predominantly in Kent, London and South East England. The company exports to more than 35 countries including India, Sweden, Italy, Brazil and Canada.

History

The Neame family were relative latecomers in the overall development of the Shepherd Neame Brewery but, as substantial property owners in the district, Charles Neame of Harefield Court and John Neame of Selling Court were acknowledged to be among the most valuable hop growers in East Kent. Theo Barker explains in the official account of the Brewery, that it all began with a Captain Richard Marsh who in 1678 is recorded in the Faversham Wardmote Books as contributing by far the largest of the ‘Brewers Fines’ made at that date.
Shepherd Neame as such is reported as having been established in 1698, in an advertisement of the Kentish Gazette for 11 April 1865. Richard Marsh lived until 1727 when his Brewery was bequeathed to his widow, and then to his daughter, who sold the property on to Samuel Shepherd around 1741. Samuel Shepherd was from Deal, Kent. He had an interest in malting when he moved to Faversham around 1730 and had established himself as a Brewer of Malt by 1734. Shepherd expanded on his interest, through acquiring a number of public houses, but it was his son, Julius Shepherd, who extended this trend still further upon his inheritance of the Brewery in 1770, when the company held four such outlets. In 1789, he set about modernising the process of malt grinding and pumping, which had been previously worked with the employment of horses, by introducing what was reputed to be the first steam engine to be used for this purpose outside London, and was then able to describe his business as the Faversham Steam Brewery.
Henry, his second son, born in 1780, continued the family tradition, and raised his son of the same name into the business. It was this Henry Shepherd who was to be the last of the Shepherds actively involved in the Company. The death of Henry senior at the age of eighty-two occurred in 1862 and although his own son was not a businessman of the same determination, the firm's expansion continued adequately with John Mares, who had come to the financial assistance of the Shepherd Brewery during the recession of the mid-1840s and continued as the impetus behind Shepherd and Mares until Percy Beale Neame joined the Brewery in 1864. Mares had seen the potential of the Brewery's growth with the arrival of the long delayed railway service in 1858. He pressed the firm to actively prepare for such growth. Horse-drawn drays were used to carry the Brewery's ales throughout Kent, and malts were imported by barge at Faversham Creek at its own wharf which was also used as the means to deliver its product to London, until the 1850s when steamboats were beginning to prove more expeditious to the task. The railways soon even outpaced and replaced the steamboats.
Mares' unexpected death at the age of 45 in 1864 placed Percy Neame, at the age of 28, as the stronger partner with Henry Shepherd, and with the challenge left to him in Mares' successful expansion programme he brought the Faversham Brewery well into the Neame family's dominion.
Shepherd Neame have embraced 21st-century brewing techniques, for instance using PDX Reactor Technology for the heat treatment of wort, rather than the traditional method, using a calandria. This has led to a reduction in energy consumption of 50%.
Along with the Three Tuns Brewery in Shropshire, Shepherd Neame claims to the oldest brewery in Great Britain. Three Tuns was licensed in 1642, 56 years earlier than Shepherd Neame. However, there is evidence that brewing has taken place on the Shepherd Neame site since at least 1573, over a century before the establishment of the current brewery.

Beers

Shepherd Neame has been making beer in Faversham, Kent, for more than 300 years. It claims to use traditional methods and 100% natural ingredients. The brewery uses chalk-filtered mineral water from the brewery's own artesian well, deep below the brewery, and 93% of the hops used in its beers are grown in Kent. Centuries of brewing experience have been passed down to the current team of brewers, who still use many traditional methods, including handcrafting beer in the UK's last remaining unlined solid oak mash tuns.
Shepherd Neame has created a range of innovative limited edition beers under its No.18 Yard Brewhouse brand, using experimental brewing ingredients:
Shepherd Neame originally adopted the Faversham Steam Brewery moniker in the late 18th century when it became one of the first steam-powered breweries outside London. The brewery bought a five horse power engine from steam pioneers Boulton and Watt which powered all processes on site, pairing the revolutionary machinery with the finest local ingredients to create exceptional beers. It has now revived the title to reflect the traditional provenance of the Whitstable Bay collection.
See also Whitstable Bay Black Oyster Stout and Whitstable Bay Blonde Lager under Keg.

Keg beers

Shepherd Neame produces brewery-conditioned draught beers which are brewed in exactly the same way as traditional, cask beers but filtered before being packaged into pressurised kegs. This ensures consistency of taste, and is the preferred option in bars where there is limited, or no, cellar space.
In addition to the bottled versions of some of its most popular beers such as Spitfire and Bishops Finger, Shepherd Neame also produces some beers in bottle only.
1698 Bottle Conditioned Kentish Strong Ale. First brewed in 1998 to celebrate Shepherd Neame's tercentenary, 1698 is thrice hopped and bottle conditioned. A silver medal winner in the Taste of Britain Awards, 1698 has been included in the International Beer Challenge's World's Top 50 Beers and has won a Gold Award from the British Bottlers' Institute. It has Protected Geographical Indication, the same regional produce protection afforded to Champagne and Parma Ham.

Lager

The brewery also produces a range of lagers, mainly under licence, such as Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Holsten Export, Oranjeboom and Kingfisher, but also Hürlimann Sternbrau Lager: Export Bier . Shepherd Neame manufactures this beer in Britain and exports it to Europe. A bock style beer is also brewed. These are served on draught in the brewery's pubs and receive more frontage than non-brewery brands.

Pubs

The brewery owns around 330 pubs and establishments, mostly in Kent, but extending across the South East of England. These are predominantly tenanted public houses situated in towns and villages. The brewery also manages its own chain of hotels, including The Royal Albion in Broadstairs and The George Hotel in Cranbrook, Kent. The brewery's own brands are typically given prominence in terms of frontage with extensive branding. All fonts and pumps bear the distinctive logos and branding, glasses are branded and bar runners that advertise the house beers are commonplace.