There's a saying in the pub trade that customers drink the advertising. At Timothy Taylor's they say the beer speaks for itself.

A hot-shot ad man might warn that's a risky road to travel – a shed-load of loot, spent at regular intervals on national television slots or poster sites is the only way to guarantee a brand name stays in the public eye. But after 150 years, Timothy Taylor's think their alternative route might just work.

Their initials could also stand for Tried and Tested and the boss seems to have total recall of everyone who has ever worked here. That might be due to a remarkable tendency to longevity. Their first head salesman, for instance, first sat down at his desk not long after the charge of the Light Brigade and did not finally vacate it until the Flappers heralded the beginning of the jazz age in 1920. Since he retired, his seat has been occupied by only three successors.

Everything here seems to last a long time, even the yeast. The previous head brewer, Allan Hey, put in 57 years including war service. The man who took over, Peter Eells, has been around for a mere quarter of a century, or almost. Perhaps it's something in the water, or liquor, which, as Peter will inform you, is the proper name for it in his line of business.

It all began with a man in a natty suit. Looking at the expensive tailoring in the sepia photo of Timothy Taylor hints at a man with an aristocratic pedigree. In fact all it indicates is that in later life he still loved a stylish turn-out. In the beginning Timothy had made his living as a tailor and sewed uniforms for the town's Volunteer Rifle Corps in which he also served.

He got to know another local tradesman, Robert Aked, a stationer and printer who some years earlier had published a couple of works by a vicar from nearby by the name of Brontë. Patrick Brontë's pamphlet The Signs of the Times came out in 1835 and A Brief Treatise on the Best Time and Mode of Baptism the following year. They didn't make either man's fortune.

Things looked up when Aked got together with Timothy Taylor to open a brewery in Cook Lane in Keighley. The partnership was sealed when Aked's daughter Charlotte married Timothy and in 1863 the partners bought some land owned by a mill machinery maker at Knowle Spring. They lived in a house on the site and gave the business a family flavour which it still retains. And unlike most successful Yorkshire entrepreneurs who took off to make homes in more alluring pastures once they had made their pile, each generation of this family stayed put.

There have been times in the past when independent craft brewers, who mostly do things the traditional way, have seemed an anachronism in an industry where mergers seems the order of the day. In the 1920s Timothy Taylor's was almost sold to a brewer at Burton-on-Trent. Another sale was only just avoided in the 1950s when there were similar tricky times to negotiate. The change in drinking tastes in the early 1960s, led by the success of Watney's Red Barrel, urged a move into bulk and keg beer. The adverts suggested that keg beer – and later lager – was the lifestyle choice for younger people in pubs with money to spend and they in turn duly drank them.

Timothy Taylor's declined to jump on this or any other bandwagon. They kept faith with a product that appealed to factors beyond fashion – namely the senses of taste, sight and smell of the discerning drinker. It paid off in the long run. Today, in the face of a decline in the overall trend for beer, there's an upturn in sales of real ale. In 1998 the brewery at Knowle Spring was doing doing 26,000 barrels (one barrel equals 36 gallons). Today production is just over double that.

One of the reason that brought Timothy Taylor here is the spring which surfaces at this spot from an aquifer 150 feet below. The water has been filtered for an age through Pennine strata and unusually for the brewing industry is soft rather than hard. "It is fabulous, consistent year in year out," says the managing director Charles Dent.

The instructions inherited by Peter Eells from his predecessor were brief and clear: seek consistency and never stint on the brewing materials. Peter Eells comes from south London and arrived at Keighley via a Manchester brewery in 1984. To make Landlord, he takes Golden Promise barley that has been grown to a stiff specification by farmers who are paid a premium. The barley is steeped for two days and the shoots allowed to grow for five-six days before being dried in a kiln. The resulting malt is crunchy and has a more-ish biscuity flavour.

At the brewery, smooth rollers crack the malt to produce the grist, to which hot liquor is added, making thick porridge. This is left for two hours before the tank is sieved and the husk filtered out or "sparged". The moist spent grain goes for cattle feed. The remaining liquid barley sugars are the wort to which hops, in this case from Hereford and Worcester, are added. They are like herbs in the stew, giving aroma and flavour. There's also 20 per cent added of a variety called Styrian Goldings from Slovenia which currently is a tricky source of supply. They only use original ingredients here, no extracts, which make them vulnerable in the present climate of crop shortages and price rises. The boiled bitter wort is cooled before the yeast is added. They have used the same culture for nearly 30 years which came to Timothy Taylor's from the old Magnet brewery in Tadcaster via a defunct Oldham brewery. The flocculent yeast develops extravagant cauliflower heads which are paddled off with an oar-like device. Four days to ferment
and convert sugars into alcohol, two or three more days of cooling in the maturation house, and it's ready for the barrel.

To make the beer look brighter (a three week process if left to its own devices) one per cent of finings are added. This is isinglass from the South China sea, a sort of super egg white, which drops a blanket of sediment to the bottom of the barrel.

There's been a beer in the Landlord style since the 1930s. It changed its name in the 1950s when they ran a competition, won by a local licensee and a young female member of the family came up with a painting of the Landlord character which has been used on the label ever since. They must be doing something right because it has won more CAMRA awards than any other beer.

The company is still family-run and although strong on tradition it isn't standing still. Charles Dent says he's excited by the future after spending £12m acquiring and investing in pubs, including the Lord Rodney, ex-Tetley's and one of the oldest in England, which is in a prime spot in the heart of Keighley.

In a new departure for them, the Royal Oak at Ripon is to re-open soon as a "gastro dining experience". And there's the refurbishing of the KT night club on which they are spending half a million "for anyone gagging to go clubbing in the middle of Keighley" in the words of Charles Dent.

For their 150th they have come up with Celebration Ale – apparently it's how beer would have tasted, but not looked like, in 1858. In those days they preferred them darker. This one is a roasty, reddish tipple whose flavours owe something to the fact that they add double the amount of hops used in Landlord.

More than 100 pubs in the land sell Timothy Taylor's including 50 in London where Madonna told Jonathan Ross on his TV show that she used to order it at the Dog and Duck in Soho. She later described it to Michael Parkinson as "the Champagne of ales". It's not clear if Madonna plans to stock it at the Punchbowl pub in Farm Street in Mayfair which she and her husband have just bought for £2.5m.

The brewery is pleased at her interest but does not try to wring out every last drop of the celeb endorsement as most businesses would. You might remark on similar restraint in the case of their Havercake Ale. This uses Golden Naked Oats (so called because the husks have been removed) in the brewing.

Imagine what an excitable copywriter might make of that – delivered by the woman with the breathy voice from the Marks and Spencer TV adverts: "These aren't just any sort of oats – these are naked oats that have been seductively stripped and rolled..."


Special edition beer fit to honour worker who won Victoria Cross

Havercake Ale celebrates the Timothy Taylor connection with the Duke of Wellington's Regiment – the Havercake Lads – which for 250 years recruited its soldiers from the Pennine areas of the old West Riding. The havercake was an oatmeal bread cake and recruiting sergeants would attach one to the end of their swords as an added inducement to those tempted to take the King's shilling.

The most notable member of the brewery staff to have served with the regiment was Private Arthur Poulter, a stretcher-bearer who on April 10, 1918 was on the Western Front, close to Erquinghem-Lys, during the great German spring offensive.

Ten times, as heavy artillery shells rained down, he went out and carried wounded men back to safety. Although his unit were ordered to retreat over a river, Private Poulter went back and in full view of the advancing Germans, carried another wounded soldier to the British lines.

He bandaged up 40 men and his conduct, described as being "a magnificent example to all ranks" earned him the Victoria Cross.

Afterwards, Private Arthur Poulter explained that he got his strength from his job carrying heavy sacks of barley at Timothy Taylor's maltings.