John Smith's Brewery
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John Smith's is a brewery founded in 1847 by John Smith at Tadcaster in North Yorkshire, England when he bought an older brewery. The brewery is currently owned by Scottish & Newcastle.
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[edit] Beers
The company brews Courage Directors, Websters Yorkshire Bitter and John Smith's Bitter / Extra Smooth, among other brands.
It is best known for John Smith's Yorkshire Bitter, which is the leading brand of bitter in the United Kingdom. It owes this success partly due to its recent marketing campaign starring popular comedian Peter Kay and developed by the Scottish & Newcastle marketing team who are also responsible for Foster's lager advertising. John Smith's Bitter is so successful it is in the top 10 beers of Britain competing with usually far more popular lagers. The overwhelming majority of sales of John Smith's is of the Extra Smooth pasteurised and filtered version, served from pressurised kegs, rather than the more traditional version served by pubs from casks. Therefore most John Smith's Bitter produced is not in fact real ale, although a cask version is commonly consumed in Yorkshire pubs and across the UK.
[edit] Brewery
John Smith's was originally brewed at the Old Brewery Tadcaster. However in 1884 William Smith, the brother of John, built a new, bigger brewery nextdoor. Due to John's will the Old Brewery passed to Samuel, his nephew, who founded Samuel Smith's there.
Despite a take over by Courage in the 1970s and its subsequent take over by Scottish & Newcastle, the Tadcaster brewery is still where John Smith's beers are brewed, mainly due to its excellent site. Although one of the main reasons why the brewery was built: the hard well water of Tadcaster (ideal for brewing) is no longer important due to technological advances, Tacaster remains ideal as it is only a small town (population around 6,000), therefore there is plenty of land for expansion (the brewery has expaned significantly since 1884) and it is well situated near to the cities of Leeds and York and the M1 motorway. The brewery brews roughly 3 million barrels of beer per year.
[edit] Sponsorship
John Smith's sponsors the Grand National, and introduced the John Smith's People's Race in 2007. John Smith's is the biggest commercial sponsor of horse racing in the UK. One of the first races they sponsored was the John Smith's cup at York in 1960. Now in its 47th season, it's the country's oldest commercially sponsored race.
From Brighton on the south coast to Perth up in eastern Scotland, there are a total of 90 John Smith's No Nonsense races spread across 27 courses throughout the UK.
