George Samuel Brewery, Shildon, Co. Durham
A classy microbrewery with a nod to the region's railway heritage
As a publican, Andrew Ferriman was inspired to start brewing his own beer. Later, combining roles as a brewer and salesman for the likes of Black Storm in Whitley Bay or Play Brew in Middlesbrough, he found pubs kept asking for his own brews.
Today, he’s in charge of George Samuel Brewery and runs a thriving taproom at his premises in Shildon. What was once a British Rail canteen, serving up lunches on an industrial scale for workers at the wagon works, is now devoted to craft ale, delivering first class beer to discerning drinkers.
The brewery started life in an out building at The Duke Of Wellington in Welbury, North Yorks. Later it moved to Andrew’s garage in Spennymoor before moving to its current home in 2020. Before the doors even opened, the pandemic forced Andrew to close temporarily. Since then, though, his brewery tap has been on the right track.
“It’s going well,” he said. “I just enjoy brewing the beer that I like making, and I like standing behind the bar on a Friday or Saturday night and talking to people who are drinking my beer.”
‘I’ve always found yeast a miraculous thing’
George Samuel is a craft brewery, but not one that gets too excited by the latest beer fads. For the most part, it sticks to the kind of classics that might have been served across the road in the Mason’s Arms, a former pub that also claimed to be the world’s first railway ticket office.
“Generally, our range is just well-produced traditional beers – brown ales, bitters, IPAs, a porter,” Andrew said. “Sure, we have some that are maybe a bit gimmicky, we’ve got a chocolate honeycomb stout on at the moment, but there is a market for them. Same with some of these new hoppier ones that are heavy on the adjunct side, lots of oats, lots of wheat to make them thicker and cloudier.
“But I was chatting to one of our regular customers, a bloke who puts in a big order most months, and he was saying we’re one of the few breweries that’s kind of in between these crazy craft ones and the really traditional ones. I thought that hit the nail on the head.”
A love of brewing tradition also extends to technique. Susie Mansfield, whose Fram Ferment is one of those flourishing micropubs and bottle shops, identified George Samuel as one of the most consistently reliable breweries in the area. For Andrew, that’s due to keeping it simple.
“I’ve always found yeast a miraculous thing,” he said. “A lot of breweries make things far too complicated. They jump from one tank to another, conditioning tank, bright tank.
“It’s like trying to artificially carbonate things. Why? The cost of CO2 has gone through the roof, and the yeast will do it all for you. It does a miraculous job. It only takes one tank, leave it in there and it’ll condition itself up, clean itself up and as long as you’ve got a good yeast count once you’re whacking into your bottles or casks, it’ll carbonate itself up. For free!
“As long as you look after your yeast and you watch your yeast count, I don’t really see the need for messing around with things.”
‘Everyone here wants to be here and drink decent beer’
Having had old-school pubs and now a craft brewery, Andrew has seen how drinking culture is changing. And there’s good news and bad news.
“I find I’m saying to a lot of people that the days for a lot of the traditional pubs are numbered,” he said. “A lot of them are too big, too expensive to run and they’re just not getting the people in to cover their costs.” That gloomy prognosis is underscored by the fact that two of the three pubs Andrew had eventually closed their doors for good.
However, there’s a boom in micropubs springing up across the region.
“They are thriving,” he said. “Micropubs cost a lot less to run and quite often you can offer a wider selection of products because you’re not tied to buying certain things from certain breweries. All these places setting up in former shops, or even just in someone’s front room, they can get their beer from wherever they want. It’s great, they can get beers from all over the world.”
A different type of pub caters for a different type of drinker, looking beyond bland, big-name brews.
“I think people still drink like that, but you don’t see it in places like this or the micropubs like the Little Tap in Spennymoor,” Andrew said. “We tend to get a more selective crowd. Here, for example, we don’t really have a shop front. We’re tucked out of the way and people sometimes complain that it takes a while to find us.
“But the thing is, they do find us. That’s great. Everyone in here has made the effort. They want to be here and they want to drink decent beer, rather than sinking their bodyweight in cheap lager until they can’t even walk home.
“They’ve come for something different, something higher quality.”
‘It’s got a quirky history - that’s why we like it’
Shildon’s rail heritage is inescapable. The town is known as the Cradle of the Railways and the memory of pioneering locomotive engineer Timothy Hackworth is preserved in street names, the local school, the town park and the industrial estate where George Samuel has its taproom.
The building’s heritage – it was the actual British Rail canteen room serving staff at the town’s wagon works – was a big part of its attraction.
“That was one of the reasons why we liked the building,” Andrew said. “It’s got a bit of history to it. We looked all over at industrial units and they’re all the same. They’re all breezeblock walls with a tin roof and just lifeless, could be anywhere.
“But this was ideal. It’s got a bit of a quirky history and it’s not stuck in the middle of an industrial estate. We have the estate, which is handy for the canteen side of things during the day. But we’re also close enough to houses for people to come and have a pint of an evening.”
The décor reflects that rail heritage, from bewhiskered old buffers from the board of director posing for a photo in what is now the car park to a discreet scattering of steam age memorabilia.
Heritage also shapes the brewery’s branding. After moving to Shildon, which is already gearing up to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its role in the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 2025, a rail-related theme made sense. New brews reflected new surroundings, from the Locomotion No. 1 pale ale to the autumnal Leaves on the Line bitter.
Even before that, though, the region’s history of hard, thirsty work influenced George Samuel’s style. “There was always a kind of northern, industrial heritage them running through them,” Andrew said. “I come from a mining background, so a lot of our beers had that kind of link. Some of them still do; Harvey, our porter, is named after a coal seam. We kept that when we moved here because it won awards and had a good reputation. Even though it’s a dark beer, it’s still our biggest seller.”
However, the George Samuel name has rather younger roots.
“It’s the middle names of my two sons,” Andrew smiled. “The oldest is Thomas George, the youngest is James Samuel. I don’t remember who came up with the idea but someone said it and I just thought ‘that sounds really beery, it’s got a nice kind of brewery ring to it’.”
‘As close as you can get to what comes out of the handpump’
The kids, currently 12 and nine, are too young to sample dad’s wares, but they love the idea of having a company named after them. James is even happy to help out with the bottling side of the business – something that started as a necessity during lockdown and continues on a larger scale now the brewery tap is fully operational.
“When we were in Spennymoor, we just didn’t have the space,” Andrew said. “We were literally brewing in a garage. Even now, it’s a laborious process.
“We did send our beer away to be bottled during the lockdown because that was the only way we could sell it, but I’m not a big fan of that. Nine times out of 10 it comes back and it’s not the same product. It’s had the life filtered out of it and it comes back a bit bland and boring.
“So now we always bottle in house. Everything is bottle-conditioned, as close as you can get to what comes out of the handpull, only at home. It means people have to look after them a little bit; you can’t shake them up or lie them on their side. But even if I lose a couple of customers who don’t like that, I’d rather stick to bottle conditioning. It’s just a far better end product.”
‘I enjoy the face-to-face stuff too much’
For this business small is definitely beautiful. Don’t expect to see the name franchised across the pubs of the world – it’s too much fun keeping it local and hands on.
“I never went into this to be a millionaire,” Andrew said. “I don’t want to be the next AB Inbev. I think if you can just enjoy what you’re doing, that’s half the battle.
“Right now, it’s going well. We have live music every month and it’s great to see people enjoying themselves, drinking something I’ve made. If we grew a lot bigger, sure we might keep the taproom and work a few shifts there. But would I have time to work behind the bar and chat to our customers, or would I be too busy worrying about the accounts and sending vans all over the place? I enjoy all the face-to-face stuff too much to move behind the scenes.”