A great way to learn about the drinks we love is via the medium of a good story. Roger Protz introduces family brewers: Iconic, family-run breweries that have been fundamental in the evolution of the British brewing landscape for hundreds of years, without which today’s beer scene would be very different.

Of course, many of the new wave of small independent craft brewers are family-owned too. In this context, I am talking about stalwarts of the industry who have been around for centuries, some from the Georgian period. Somehow, against all the odds, some 30 of these family-owned breweries have survived. They have withstood not only takeover frenzies, but, in earlier times, the threat of invasion from revolutionary France, world wars, bombings, recessions and attacks from politicians who were ill-disposed to the brewing industry.

It is because their story is so remarkable and that they are such a notable and historic feature of the British brewing landscape that I have written a book about Family Brewers

We take them for granted.

We see their names on pub signs but don’t pause to think: “That’s a Shepherd Neame pub – and Sheps has been around since 1698.”

Most importantly, they are the flag-bearers for this country’s unique contribution to beer – cask-conditioned real ale. They are not fuddy-duddies, lost in the past. Many of them are also producing modern beer styles such as craft keg and lager. Some have branched out into adding unusual flavours such as herbs and spices, and are also ageing beer in oak casks obtained from the wine and whisky industries.

But without their commitment we would no longer enjoy a type of beer that’s not finished in the brewery, but which reaches maturity and perfection in the pub cellar. It requires skill and even a little love to “tap and spile” a cask, allow the beer to breathe and for the yeast sediment to fall to the base of the container before it’s pulled to the bar by a simple handpump without the need for applied gas pressure.

People who write off cask beer and doubt it has a future should pause and look at simple statistics gained from my visit to Timothy Taylor’s brewery in Keighley, West Yorkshire. I asked chief executive Tim Dewey how much beer he produced a year. “70,000 barrels,” he replied. And what proportion of that is cask? “80 per cent,” he responded crisply. That’s not a type of beer that’s heading for oblivion..

I’ve been writing about beer and brewing since the late 1970s.

One thing I’ve discovered over those long years is that you never stop learning.

Trawling through the archives of the family brewers proves it’s clear they are far from being whiskery old gents lost in the past. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the early brewers of the 17th and 18th centuries produced dark beers for the simple reason that grain destined for brewing was dried and heated over wood fires that created brown malt. As soon as coke replaced wood as the fuel in malting, brewers in country areas embraced pale malt and pale beer with as much enthusiasm as those based in towns and cities.

Palmers in Bridport in a remote part of Dorset, with rudimentary transport and slow communications, nevertheless hurried to join the pale ale revolution within a few years of the new style being perfected in far-off Burton-on-Trent. A century earlier, the pioneers among the family brewers moved fast to join the race to produce the ground-breaking style of the 18th century: Porter and Stout. They are thought to be quintessentially urban beers, brewed in London and Dublin, but the early family brewers became celebrated for their versions of the style.

Families fall out and there have been some spectacular rows and disputes over the years, most notably in Yorkshire. In the 19th century, Samuel Smith and John Smith opened rival breweries cheek-by-jowl in Tadcaster, and a century later the Theakstons of Masham also went their separate ways. The Theakston row was especially bitter, with members of the family slugging it out in the High Court in London, one side accusing the other of conspiracy. This resulted in Paul Theakston opening his own Black Sheep brewery in buildings formerly owned by his cousins.

Palmers in Bridport in a remote part of Dorset, with rudimentary transport and slow communications, nevertheless hurried to join the pale ale revolution within a few years of the new style being perfected in far-off Burton-on-Trent. A century earlier, the pioneers among the family brewers moved fast to join the race to produce the ground-breaking style of the 18th century: Porter and Stout. They are thought to be quintessentially urban beers, brewed in London and Dublin, but the early family brewers became celebrated for their versions of the style.

Families fall out and there have been some spectacular rows and disputes over the years, most notably in Yorkshire. In the 19th century, Samuel Smith and John Smith opened rival breweries cheek-by-jowl in Tadcaster, and a century later the Theakstons of Masham also went their separate ways. The Theakston row was especially bitter, with members of the family slugging it out in the High Court in London, one side accusing the other of conspiracy. The result led to Paul Theakston opening his own Black Sheep brewery in buildings formerly owned by his cousins.