Breweries

Southwold brewery on the Suffolk coast, known for pale bitters and for moving early into lower-strength, hop-forward beer.

The Burton brewery that made pale ale a global product, and whose red triangle was among the first registered trade marks in Britain.

London brewery whose session IPA and strong visual identity did much to move craft beer onto supermarket shelves in Britain.

Dunbar brewery and the most widely exported example of Scottish ale.

British alcohol-free brewery that reaches low strength by brewing there rather than by removing alcohol afterwards.

Masham brewery founded by Paul Theakston, using Yorkshire square fermenters a few hundred metres from the family firm he left.

Aberdeenshire brewery that took American craft brewing’s hop intensity and marketing style into the British market at scale.

Edinburgh brewery that kept direct-fired open coppers in use into the modern era, and whose pale ale carried Scottish cask brewing nationally.

London brewery built around lager at a moment when British craft brewing was almost entirely ale.

Lake District brewery behind a pub, whose bitter won the national championship and stayed a small brewery’s beer.

Black Country family brewery whose pale bitter is distributed almost entirely within a few miles of it.

Dorchester brewery, now closed, whose Thomas Hardy’s Ale was the strongest and longest-lived English bottled ale of its era.

The Chiswick brewery whose London Pride is among the most widely available British bitters, and whose strong ales are benchmarks for the category.

Bury St Edmunds brewery and pub operator whose Abbot Ale and IPA are among the most widely distributed British cask beers.

Lewes brewery whose Sussex Best is frequently named by British drinkers as the finest cask bitter available.

Oxfordshire brewery operating from a Victorian tower brewery still driven in part by its original steam engine.

British producer working exclusively in alcohol-free beer, and among the first to reach widespread pub draught distribution.

Burton brewery and the last operator of the Burton union fermentation system, whose Pedigree is the beer most associated with it.

Abingdon brewery, closed in 2000, whose Old Speckled Hen survives as a brand brewed elsewhere.

Peterborough brewery that built its reputation on pale, intensely aromatic single-hopped cask ales.

Stockport family brewery, still independent and still supplying its own pub estate.

Tadcaster brewery that still ferments in stone Yorkshire squares and maintains a distinctive house yeast character across its range.

Black Country home-brew pub whose Victorian brewhouse was restarted in 1987 to the original recipe, and whose dark mild is the style’s reference.

Cornish brewery whose Doom Bar became, by volume, the most widely sold cask ale in Britain.

Faversham brewery that describes itself as Britain’s oldest, sitting in the middle of the Kentish hop country.

Cornish family brewery whose Tribute became one of the best-selling cask beers in Britain.

Island brewery whose dark ale is among the few Scottish beers to have carried the older Scottish style vocabulary into modern distribution.

Masham brewery best known for Old Peculier, and one of very few British breweries still employing a working cooper.

Derbyshire brewery whose Jaipur is generally credited with showing British brewers what American hops could do in a pale ale.

Keighley brewery whose Landlord is widely treated as the benchmark for pale, hop-forward Yorkshire bitter.

Burslem brewery in the Potteries, named for the Titanic’s Stoke-born captain.

Brewery in the grounds of Traquair House in the Scottish Borders, working from eighteenth-century oak vessels rediscovered in 1965.

Devizes brewery in Wiltshire, one of the last in Britain to deliver beer to local pubs by horse-drawn dray.

Kentish brewery that revived brewing in Westerham using yeast recovered from the town’s original brewery.

Burton brewery whose White Shield is the surviving link to the bottle-conditioned India pale ales of the nineteenth century.

Witney brewery whose Hobgoblin brought a dark, malt-forward strong bitter to national supermarket distribution.

London brewery whose Wandsworth Ram Brewery site claimed the longest continuous brewing history in Britain until it closed in 2006.

Portland, Maine brewery built around Belgian styles at a time when American craft brewing was overwhelmingly British- and German-derived.

San Francisco brewery whose rescue in 1965 is generally taken as the starting point of American craft brewing, and whose Steam Beer defined California Common.

St Louis brewer whose pale adjunct lager became the template for mass-market beer in much of the world.

American brewery that makes only alcohol-free beer, and the first at that scale to treat it as a category rather than a concession.

Michigan brewery, one of the oldest surviving American craft producers, best known for Two Hearted Ale.

New York brewery that revived brewing in Brooklyn and whose amber lager reintroduced pre-Prohibition American lager character.

Pennsylvania brewery, the oldest operating in the United States, whose amber lager survived Prohibition and the century of consolidation after it.

Bend, Oregon brewery whose Black Butte Porter is among the longest-running American craft dark beers.

Delaware brewery known for continual hopping and for beers reconstructed from historical and archaeological evidence.

Central Californian brewery whose blonde ale is the clearest commercial example of an American entry-level style.

Grand Rapids brewery whose coffee-and-chocolate oatmeal stout became a template for the American breakfast stout format.

Rochester brewery whose cream ale is the surviving reference for a near-extinct American style.

Chicago brewery whose Bourbon County Stout established barrel-ageing as a category in American brewing.

Massachusetts brewery that makes only lager, and the clearest argument that American hop character does not require an ale yeast.

Petaluma brewery whose IPA became one of the highest-volume American craft beers.

Colorado brewery whose milk stout did more than any other beer to establish nitrogen dispense in bottles.

Fort Collins brewery founded after a bicycle tour of Belgian breweries, and long employee-owned.

Californian brewery whose Russian imperial stout has been the American reference for the style since before the style had a modern market.

Colorado brewery that put craft beer in a can in 2002, when the format was assumed to be for beer nobody cared about.

Santa Rosa brewery whose Pliny the Elder defined the American double IPA and whose barrel-aged sours pioneered the American wild ale category.

Boston Beer Company, whose Boston Lager introduced a great many American drinkers to a fuller-flavoured beer than mass-market lager.

Chico brewery whose Pale Ale established Cascade as the defining American hop and effectively created the American pale ale category.

Escondido brewery whose deliberately confrontational bitterness helped define West Coast IPA.

Vermont brewery whose Heady Topper is generally credited with originating the hazy, soft, aroma-driven New England IPA.

Downingtown, Pennsylvania brewery built around German brewing practice and whole-flower hops.

Bamberg brewery that still malts its own grain over beechwood fires, producing the reference smoked beer.

The oldest independent Munich brewery, whose Helles is widely treated as the benchmark for the style.

Bavarian village brewery at Aying whose doppelbock and Helles are widely used as international reference examples.

State-owned Black Forest brewery whose Tannenzäpfle pils acquired a cult following far outside its region.

Berlin brewery whose Weisse is the most widely distributed survivor of the city’s own beer style.

Eifel brewery whose pils is among the most widely poured draught beers in Germany.

Cologne brewery and brewhouse beside the cathedral, one of the largest producers of Kölsch.

Dortmund brewery whose export lager gave a style its name and its international identity.

Brewery in the town whose exported beer became, through Bavarian dialect, the word "bock".

Bavarian wheat beer specialist and the largest wheat beer brewery in the world, with a substantial alcohol-free range.

Frisian brewery on the North Sea coast producing one of the most assertively bitter pilsners in Germany.

Cologne brewery producing Kölsch under the city’s protected designation.

The Bavarian state brewery, founded as the ducal court brewery and now best known internationally through its beer hall.

Benedictine monastery brewery on the Holy Mountain above Lake Ammersee, brewing continuously for over five centuries.

Danube monastery brewery which claims the longest continuous monastic brewing history in the world.

Thuringian brewery whose Schwarzbier kept the black lager tradition alive through the twentieth century.

Bamberg brewery whose unfiltered, low-carbonation lager is the international reference for Kellerbier.

Munich brewery descended from a monastic community whose strong Lenten beer is the origin of the doppelbock category.

Cologne brewery producing the best-selling Kölsch, and the one most often used as the reference point for the style.

Leipzig producer that kept Gose alive through the period when the style had effectively disappeared.

Kelheim brewery specialising entirely in wheat beer, and holder of the rights that allowed commercial weissbier brewing when it was a royal monopoly.

Munich brewery central to the development of both Märzen and pale lager, and an early adopter of mechanical refrigeration.

Düsseldorf brewpub producing the reference Altbier, served from wooden casks by roaming waiters.

Bavarian state brewery at Freising that claims the longest continuous brewing history in the world, and the reference producer for Hefeweizen.

Lambic blender in Beersel that began as a café buying wort from others, and is now among the small number of houses defining gueuze.

Abbey brand whose blonde is, for most of the world, the first Belgian beer encountered.

Ardennes brewery in Wallonia, producing strong blond and brown ales under the Chouffe name.

Trappist brewery producing a single beer, dry-hopped and refermented with Brettanomyces so that it changes substantially over its shelf life.

Wallonian farmhouse brewery whose Saison Dupont is the beer the modern saison category was largely reconstructed from.

Lembeek producer of traditional lambic and gueuze, and one of the operations that kept spontaneous fermentation commercially alive.

Buggenhout brewery, seven generations in one family, best known for Tripel Karmeliet and Kwak.

The brewery founded by Pierre Celis that revived Belgian witbier after the style had died out entirely.

Ghent brewery whose strong golden ale, sold in a painted ceramic-look bottle, became many drinkers’ first Belgian beer.

Pajottenland lambic brewery, and the producer that took sweetened fruit lambic to international distribution.

Watou brewery which brewed under licence for the Westvleteren monastery for several decades.

Trappist abbey brewery at Sint-Sixtus, producing only enough beer to support the monastery and selling it only at the gate.

Brussels lambic brewery operating as a working museum, and among the most uncompromising traditional producers.

Trappist brewery at Scourmont whose colour-coded range made Belgian abbey beer internationally familiar.

Breendonk brewery whose Duvel established the Belgian golden strong ale as a category.

Oudenaarde brewery and the reference producer for the East Flanders brown sour tradition.

Trappist brewery producing three beers numbered rather than named, of which the 10 is a benchmark Belgian dark strong ale.

Roeselare brewery maturing beer in hundreds of large oak foeders, and the reference producer for Flanders red.

Trappist abbey brewery whose Dubbel and Tripel gave both categories their names and their reference examples.

České Budějovice brewery producing a long-lagered Czech pale lager, and party to a naming dispute with the American Budweiser lasting over a century.

The Plzeň brewery whose first pale bottom-fermented beer in 1842 established the model for pale lager worldwide.

Czech family brewery, restarted from a derelict site, that built its position on unpasteurised lager at a time when the large brewers were going the other way.

Prague brewery in Smíchov, the largest producer in the Czech capital.

Velké Popovice brewery south of Prague, whose dark lager is among the most widely exported Czech beers.

The other historic Cork stout, drier and more roast-forward than Murphy’s and long the third of the Irish stout trio.

Irish brewery that made a dry stout at a time when the category had effectively become one company’s product.

The Dublin brewery whose dry stout became the reference point for the style worldwide, and the most widely recognised beer brand of any kind.

Cork brewery whose stout is the best-known alternative to Guinness in Ireland, and a noticeably softer and sweeter interpretation of the style.

The Vienna brewery where Anton Dreher produced the first Vienna lager in 1841, and the origin of the amber lager tradition.

The last substantial independent brewery within Vienna itself.

Austria’s largest privately owned brewery, in Salzburg, and the most widely exported Austrian lager.

Adelaide brewery and the custodian of Australian sparkling ale, bottle-conditioned and family-owned since founding.

Fremantle brewery whose pale ale introduced American hop character to mainstream Australian drinking.

Japanese brewing group whose Super Dry created the "dry" lager category and reordered the Japanese market.

The oldest continuously operating brewing brand in Japan.

Monterrey brewer of the amber lager that most of the world means by the term.

Mexican brewing group whose Negra Modelo continues the Vienna lager tradition brought to Mexico by central European brewers.

Trappist brewery at the Koningshoeven abbey near Tilburg, and the only Dutch member of the Trappist family.

Amsterdam brewery whose pale lager is among the most widely distributed beers in the world, and an early adopter of pure-culture yeast.

Dunedin brewery, among the earliest of New Zealand’s modern independents.

Wellington brewery known for showcasing New Zealand hop varieties across a wide and frequently changing range.

Brewery re-established on the original site to bring back Grodziskie after production ceased entirely.

Polish brewery whose Porter is a reference example of the strong bottom-fermented Baltic porter tradition.

Quebec brewery making bottle-conditioned Belgian-style ales, and the beer most people outside Canada can actually name.

Chinese brewery founded by German brewers during the German lease of Qingdao, and the origin of Chinese lager brewing at scale.

Copenhagen brewery whose laboratory isolated the first pure brewing yeast culture and gave it away rather than patenting it.

Finnish producer of commercially available sahti, a farmhouse tradition that never stopped.

Farmhouse brewery in French Flanders, and the producer that made bière de garde a commercial category.

Italian brewery whose pale lager is the country’s most exported beer, brewed with a maize variety grown for it.

Kingston brewery whose stout is the reference for the sweet, strong tropical style brewed for warm markets.

Barcelona brewery founded by an Alsatian brewer, and the reason Spanish lager tastes the way it does.