How Madonna’s favourite’s pint became UK’s best beer - tragic beginning to closely-guarded ingredient

From miners to movie stars, monarchs to Madonna, Timothy Taylor's bitter is the pint that has taken the world by storm. From humble beginnings in a rented Keighley barn, it now sells more than 18 million pints a year, worth £81.8million, to stand as the best selling cask ale in Britain. The endorsement that no marketing budget could ever buy came in May 2003, when Madonna sat down on Jonathan Ross's sofa and named Landlord the best real ale going. She had been introduced to it by her then husband Guy Ritchie at the Dog and Duck in Soho, and cheerfully admitted that half a pint was enough to finish her off. The Queen of Pop was talking about Landlord, the bitter first brewed in 1952 to slake the thirst of Yorkshire miners and see off the mighty Barnsley Bitter. After her first intervention - she doubled down a couple of years later on Parkinson, calling Landlord "The Champagne of Ales" - the brewery's phone rang for months, and Landlord became the talk of every pub in the land. Hugh Grant joined in at a London gallery opening owned by the Duke and Duchess of Kent's son-in-law, another Timothy Taylor and no relation. Asked for his view on the art, he said: "Art, what art? I'm only here for this marvellous beer!" Royalty came calling too. The Prince of Wales toured Knowle Spring on 12th February 2001 and was photographed sampling a pint of Landlord. The brewery marked the day with a beer it named Royal Ale, and brought it back as Celebration Ale for the 150th anniversary in 2008. It returned a third time in May 2023, brewed to the original recipe, when the man who had sipped Landlord in Keighley was crowned King Charles III. Chief executive Andrew Carter said: "It is always flattering, although we're just as pleased whenever anyone chooses a pint of Landlord. Madonna's endorsement remains the most memorable because it was so unexpected, but every genuine recommendation means something to us." The man who started it all was a Keighley tailor called Timothy Taylor, and this week marked 200 years since he was born. He was born in Bingley on 6th August 1826, the eldest son of a family of tailors. He entered the business in 1841 after leaving school and went on to work as a travelling salesman for the firm. In 1857 he married Charlotte Aked at Keighley Parish Church - a union that shaped everything that followed. A year later, Charlotte's brother Charles died of typhoid, caught from drinking contaminated water. It was from that point, the brewery's own history records, that Timothy's interest in beer began. Andrew said the family cannot be certain what drove him, adding: "It is an important part of our history, but we cannot know exactly what was in Timothy's mind. Charles's death appears to have sparked his interest in brewing, possibly because beer offered a safer alternative to contaminated water, but we believe his primary passion was simply to create great beer." In 1858 he took a barn and stable in Cook Lane, Keighley, and turned the building into a brewery. Keighley was booming on the back of the Industrial Revolution, and beer was a commodity the town would always buy. His first pubs came in 1859, among them The Volunteers in Keighley, and that little bar still pours his beer today. Several of the premises he went on to own were called hotels, a ploy used by Taylor's and other brewers to sidestep the licensing laws of the day. By 1863, Timothy wanted out of the town centre, so he moved half a mile up the hill to Knowle Spring. The draw was a pure supply of the soft water that brewers call liquor, and the brewery has never left the site since. For its first 130 years its mainstay was mild, the low-strength ale that mill and foundry men drank to replace what heavy work sweated out of them. Timothy died in January 1898, aged 71, and left an estate worth £50,000, a considerable fortune for the time. His sons Robert and Percy took the firm on, and the family has held it ever since. Survival was never a certainty. In 1922 the brothers put the business up for sale, and Samuel Allsopp and Sons of Burton upon Trent tabled a bid of £112,000. The buyer then walked away, and Taylor's stayed in family hands almost by luck. The beer that made the name arrived almost by accident when, in 1952, Chairman Philip Taylor and his brewers created a strong pale ale. It was launched the next year as Competition Ale, the competition being a contest to name it. A steward from the Keighley Drill Hall Club won a £500 prize for the winning suggestion, Landlord. Philip's daughter Roberta, an art student, drew the jovial Landlord that still sits on the pump clip today. John Aked Taylor, later Lord Ingrow, took charge in 1954 and built the financial discipline that kept the brewery independent, while rivals were swallowed up around it. Known to his staff as "The Boss", John refused to scrimp on the ingredients, whatever the cost. He said of the brewer's craft: "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." When keg beer swept the trade in the 1960s, John held the line and carried on brewing cask ale the way his forebears had. The brewery still uses whole hops and Golden Promise barley, a variety far more commonly sent to whisky distillers than to brewers. That obsession filled a trophy cabinet. Landlord has won more awards than any other English ale. In 1999 and 2000 it became the first beer to hold the CAMRA Champion Beer of Britain and the Brewing Industry International titles at the same time. It had already taken Beer of the Year at the Great British Beer Festival in 1982 and again in 1983. In November 2024, it was named the top-selling cask ale in the country by value, and a year later it took the volume crown too, finally displacing Sharp's Doom Bar. Sales rose 3.6 per cent last year, at a time when real ale is falling sharply elsewhere. Through all of it, the beer has stayed stubbornly the same, and the man responsible knows exactly how unusual that is. Andy Leman became head brewer in 2015, after 28 years at Knowle Spring, learning the job from his predecessor Peter Eells. He is only the sixth head brewer the company has had since 1858. The single most closely guarded thing in the building is not a recipe ,but a living culture. Andy said: "The yeast is the same culture we've been using for 40 years which we harvest each week." Andrew said: "We look after it extremely carefully and, yes, we maintain protected backup cultures." The birthday itself was marked in the way the founder would have understood best. Andrew said: "We're marking the occasion by giving away 200 pints of Landlord across our Keighley pubs, Taylor's on the Green and the Boltmakers Arms." The Boltmakers Arms sits a short walk from the streets where Timothy once cut cloth for a living. Two hundred years after his birth, the tailor's descendants still sit on the board of the company he founded. Andrew said: "Timothy would still recognise the Knowle Spring, our spring water and the same uncompromising commitment to quality. He would also be proud that we remain independent and family-owned, with fifth-generation Taylor family members still on our Board. The investment in the brewery, scale and nationwide reach might take him aback slightly though."