The Burton union sets were not the only ones to retire from the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC), now Carlsberg Britvic, on 31 May 2024. The sets had been carefully maintained and repaired for decades by one Mark Newton, Burton’s last working cooper. After 30 years, it was time for him to step down from his post. It’s no real surprise that CMBC took the opportunity to stand down the Burton unions for good at the same time.
Of course, there has been a lot of coverage of CMBC’s subsequent gift of a union set to Thornbridge brewery in Bakewell and of the genuinely superb beers that it has brewed on it. But there has been surprisingly little mention, to my mind, of the loss of another brewery cooper.
A dedicated cooperage was once relatively a common sight at a UK brewery and itinerant coopers would travel the country tending to the needs of smaller businesses that didn’t need, or couldn’t afford, their own. However, the introduction of sturdy and cost-effective stainless-steel casks meant that the skilled craft of barrel-making started to look like a decidedly unnecessary expense. The trade dwindled rapidly in numbers from the 1960s onwards.
Of course, breweries are not the only enterprises that make use of wooden barrels. There are still more than 200 coopers working in the whisky trade in Scotland, for example, and the rising star of the English and Welsh wine industry is starting to have an impact on demand for this artisanal commodity too. But while the craft beer revolution has seen some resurgence in demand for beer from the wood, in most cases that consists of ageing beers in recycled wine or spirit casks to impart additional flavour, rather than commissions for new oak.
In 2010 it was widely reported that there were four dedicated brewery coopers left. Marston’s Mark Newton is the latest to retire, and before him, the last brewery master cooper, Alastair Simms, left Wadworth in Devizes to set up his own business in 2013.
The only stamp of the cooper that remains on Wadworth now is the name of their signature beer, 6X. Quite literally in fact, as it was cooper Reg Morris who shortened the barrel stamp of the original 6 per cent ABV brew from “XXXXXX” (denoting its alcoholic strength) to simply 6X. The name stuck, even though the ABV did not, thanks to the rationing of raw ingredients during WWII.
Which leaves only two working brewery cooperages in the UK today. Samuel Smith of Tadcaster use its oak casks for Old Brewery Bitter on handpull as well as to mature the Yorkshire Stingo. Some of the Stingo barrels that are maintained by the cooper’s shop are more than a century old.
One of Samuel Smith’s two current coopers, Ethan, celebrated the completion of his apprenticeship in November 2024 with a traditional trussing in ceremony. In a rite dating back to the 14th century, the apprentice is lifted into a 54-gallon hogshead by their fellow coopers (and no doubt a few other helpers these days), before having buckets of hops, beer, treacle and oak shavings poured over them. They are then rolled around the yard before being unceremoniously sacked as an apprentice. The festivities are rounded off with their immediate re-employment as a journeyman cooper. The title of master cooper is reserved for when they have successfully trained an apprentice of their own.
The final cooperage is at Theakstons in Masham. There has been a Theakstons cooper since its foundation in 1827 and Old Peculier is still sent out to pubs in the North in its own casks. The cooperage is currently under the custodianship of Euan Findlay, who has spent his entire 11-year career training and working at the brewery. He “enjoyed” his own trussing ceremony in 2021.
It is hard to imagine anyone setting up a new brewery cooperage now, let alone covering the costs of the four or so years of apprenticeship that is required to train somebody up in the skilled and physical craft of barrel construction. But Euan gives me hope that it will not die just yet. He has started his own TikTok, under the name EuanTheCooper, and people are loving it. His brilliant short videos have gathered him more than 16.5k followers and are introducing a whole new generation to the mesmerising art of the cooper. Who knows, maybe one or two of them will be inspired to take it up for themselves.
