>The Keighley News

> Bad news for the drinkers of Keighley. The Albert, leased from Timothy Taylor by the Ossett Brewery for the last eight or so months, is back with the original owners. I say bad news, but it’s all relative – nobody will mind having Taylor’s ales back at the Albert (although Ossett did have a couple of TT pumps as ‘guests’), but it was nice to have the full range of another brewery in the town. I only managed to get into the Ossettised Albert once, but I was very impressed. The Albert had been refit from a tired old rocker’s pub – complete with motorbike bolted to the wall – in about 1995 when Taylor’s refurbished their entire estate, and ended up being done in a sort of chintzy Victorian-lite. Ossett improved the interior a lot with a their retro-contemporary touches, open fire and knocked about Windsor chairs. The beer was spot on, too – especially the Silver King which is still a favourite of mine. It’s not clear why Ossett’s bridgehead in Keighley failed – some say it was caused by contractual wranglings with Taylor’s. It might simply be that footfall wasn’t enough to justify the battalion of seven or eight (ten?) handpumps and a large pub which must have cost a small fortune to run. I don’t have any pictures of the Albert’s interior, but there are some here on the fine Huddersfield-based beer ‘n’ pubs blog A Swift One.

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