Roll out the barrel

14,000), producing 80,000 barrels of beer annually for home consumption

and for export as far away as the West Indies and Australia. The first

two of those eight were founded as far back as the second half of the

eighteenth century. But why Alloa?

There was always plenty of good local barley to draw on. And access to

the sea from the Forth for the finished product. But Evelyn Matthews

puts the tradition down to the pure quality of the local water.

His brewery still stands on its own bore hole, drawing water up from

600ft below through the permeable rock strata on which the town sits.

''They say it's the rain that ran off the Ochils 35 years back,'' he

chuckles.

Matthews is new to the Alloa beerage. He and his family bought control

of Maclay & Company, the last independent still brewing in the town,

this time last year. The deal's first anniversary was celebrated on Guy

Fawkes night.

But Evelyn Matthews certainly isn't a stranger to the UK brewing

industry. It's been an almost lifetime career. Before coming to Maclays

he held a succession of senior management posts within the industry

leader, Bass.

Indeed Bass, the parent of Tennent Caledonian in Scotland, now holds

the 14.9% of Maclays not owned by Matthews and his family. Before he

struck his deal last year, Bass had owned 29.3% and Matthews had been

its representative on the Maclay board.

The business has three arms -- the brewery, originally known as the

Thistle Brewery and founded, on its present site, in 1830 by a clerk in

a Tillicoultry ironworks, James Maclay; a bigger drinks wholesaling

business, with several hundred accounts, servicing the free trade with

around 1000 lines; and a 30-strong pub estate, half managed, half

tenanted.

Matthews admits that, once the deal was done, many around him expected

him to shut the brewery and concentrate on the other two arms of the

business. ''We were getting to the point where that's what the

accountants were recommending,'' he says. The buildings are, on his own

admission, extremely old fashioned.

Built high to exploit gravity, they retain the traditional wooden pens

for grain handling, the much-repaired riveted coppers in the brewhouse,

the open, copper-lined mash vessels and an awkward, cellar-like, cask

filling and handling area that opens right on to a busy street.

''They are old fashioned,'' admits Matthews. ''But everything is in

reasonable repair and we are actually quite keen to keep the

old-fashioned atmosphere.'' He recalls attending an Expo function in

Spain and seeing a large circular brass filter sheet hanging on a wall

as a historical brewing artefact. ''We still use these in Alloa,'' he

protested, to his host.

Far from shutting the brewery down, the object of the exercise is, he

adds, to grow all three sides of the business. The new owner is not a

starry-eyed nostalgic about protecting the old ways of brewing. He

recognises, from first hand experience, that the majors like Bass can

produce at a much lower cost per barrel than the independents. On that

basis, he says, shutting independent brewing capacity and buying

substitute supplies from the big boys makes stark economic sense.

But his counter argument is that, as a wholesaler, Maclay can

distinguish much of itself from its competition by having a clear

product identity of its own. That, Matthews argues, brings significant

advantages.

If Maclay were to stop brewing its own range of beers, for every 100

barrels it stopped producing, its wholesaling arm might only pick up

business for 30 or 40 barrels of other people's products. Shorn of

brewing, the business as a whole would inevitably contract.

''There is a market for niche players like ourselves. We are producing

unique products no-one else can match,'' he explains. ''It's the

middle-sized players in brewing who are coming under real pressure and,

in some cases, giving up.''

Does that claim to uniqueness rest on a belief that beer drinkers'

tastes are changing. That a rebellion against bland keg beers is well

underway, with more people seeking real ales with a real taste? Matthews

admits it's a factor. But he's reluctant to overstate the case.

He points to the non-stop decline in ale drinking since the war and

the relentless rise in lager consumption. No small or medium sized UK

brewer has yet done a successful draught lager. On top of that, the

present recession has made selling beer in second rank pubs pretty hard

work these days. Hence Matthews' caution. But he does scent some welcome

change in drinking tastes.

''I suppose the younger generation may be doing what all younger

generations do. They don't drink what their fathers drank. So there is

evidence of a swing away from lager again to stouts like Guinness and

traditional beers.''

To tap the trend, Maclay & Co is looking at its range of products,

dusting down old recipes and experimenting with revived brews to

complement its 60/-, 70/-, 80/- and Scotch ales. Brewery volume is

modestly up. Five new ales have been introduced this year. When I was

there, head brewer Duncan Kellock treated us to a sample of a fine

dry-tasting stout.

On the wholesaling side, the sales force has been doubled. Maclay is

kegging bulk loads of Harp lager, to add to the portfolio. And Matthews

is in the market for pubs. The Maclay estate stood at 80 just after the

war. But 15 outlets in Newcastle were sold in the 1950s, the origins of

the Bass holding in the company.

Today the estate stretches from Dunfermline and Stirling into

Ayrshire, taking in The Three Judges in Glasgow and The Black Bull in

Polmont. With recession, there are plenty of pubs on the market. The

object is to buy where they fit in with the Maclay identity.

Maclay's brewery faces one bit of upheaval in the near future. A new

town centre relief road is going to knock a corner off the historic

plant. But the project opens up an area of land next door on which

Matthews, thanks to an offset deal with the council, is going to be able

to build a new cask and keg warehousing and distribution centre. That

will introduce efficiencies at that end of the brewing chain which does

not compromise the product, but helps the bottom line.

Eveyln Matthews readily admits that, had a few key events not

happened, he might still be sitting today in Glasgow as managing

director of Tennent Caledonian. Oxford educated, he originally joined

Charrington's central marketing unit in London's West End. Shortly after

that Charrington merged with Bass.

Matthews left and found himself working for AGB, a market research

company later acquired by Robert Maxwell. That brought him in touch with

lots of interesting people but he decided it wasn't his long term

future. By then the Bass Charrington merger had shaken down and he went

back as a brand manager.

Later he came to Glasgow for the first time, as marketing manager for

Tennents. He was promoted to marketing director, then sales and

marketing director. In 1985, he moved south again, to Burton, to run

Bass's take home division.

By 1989, he was back in Glasgow, as managing director of Tennent

Caledonian. ''I arrived in March,'' he recalls. ''Within a fortnight,

the Monopolies Commission report into the brewing industry was

published.'' Bass immediately embarked on a managerial reorganisation.

It would have happened anyway, Matthews says now. But the MMC report

speeded the process up.

He was appointed managing director of Bass UK. With a home in

Dumfriesshire which he desperately wanted to retain, he embarked on a

period of commuting between there, Burton and London. After a year, the

strain was beginning to tell. Matthews had turned 50. He decided the

time had come to branch out.

Maclay & Co. had stayed in Maclay family hands until 1896. Then it was

purchased by the Fraser family, licensed grocers and corn merchants from

Dunfermline. Maclays flourished, winning brewing medals as far away as

Vienna and Paris.

The brewing company remained in the Fraser family's ownership until

last year. Bass did emerge as a minority shareholder. But the

controlling link to Fraser & Carmichael (Holdings) of Dunfermline

remained. Latterly Mrs Helen Shepherd, a descendant of the Fraser

family, was the controlling shareholder.

She had had many approaches to sell her interest down the years. When

Evelyn Matthews made his approach, he promised what other suitors would

not, that he would maintain the brewing side of the business along with

the rest. Mrs Shepherd said yes.

A lot of famous brewing names in Alloa are now historical memories.

Across the road from Maclay's front door, the site of the former

Candleriggs Brewery of George Younger & Sons (the family of the present

Royal Bank chairman) is a bleak derelict lot.

Matthews now owns the last independent. But he can trace a family root

to the other productive brewery in the town today, the Alloa Brewery

owned by drinks giant Allied. It was originally Arrol's. And it was

started by Evelyn Matthews' wife's great great grandfather.

With these credentials, maybe he was fated to arrive in Alloa and take

charge of the last independent in a great local tradition.