Drinking institution · United Kingdom
Tied house
A pub owned by a brewery and obliged to sell that brewery’s beer — the arrangement that shaped British beer economics for a century and was largely broken up in 1989.
Industrial brewing created a distribution problem, and buying the pubs solved it. By the late nineteenth century the largest British brewers owned thousands of houses, which guaranteed volume, suppressed competition at the point of sale and made the brewery rather than the publican the decisive commercial actor.
The consequences are still legible. Consolidation into a handful of national brewers, the narrowing of choice that CAMRA formed in 1971 to protest, and the Beer Orders of 1989 that forced divestment are one continuous story about who owns the room the beer is drunk in.
Where the form came from
Brewers bought outlets through the nineteenth century to secure sales for industrial-scale output. The Supply of Beer (Tied Estate) Order 1989 capped the tied estates of the largest brewers and triggered wholesale divestment, which reshaped rather than ended the tie.
What it is for
- The brewery, not the licensee, decides what is on the bar, which changes what a pub can be for its neighbourhood.
- A brewery tap — a house attached to the brewery itself — is the sympathetic end of the same arrangement, and is often where a brewery’s beer is at its best.
What you will find
- Ownership or a lease with a beer-supply obligation attached.
- A list dominated by one brewer, with limited or no guest beer.
- Rents and supply prices set by the owner, which is the commercial heart of the arrangement.
The beer culture it produced
- The tie is the reason British beer choice narrowed sharply through the twentieth century, and therefore the reason a consumer campaign for cask beer existed at all.
How it differs
These forms are only really understandable against each other, so the difference is stated rather than left for the reader to infer.
A free house buys where it likes. A tied house buys from its owner, at its owner’s price.
Questions
What is a tied house?
A pub owned by, or contractually bound to, a brewery, and obliged to sell that brewery’s beer. The system let nineteenth-century brewers guarantee outlets for industrial output, and it is the direct reason British beer choice narrowed through the twentieth century. The Beer Orders of 1989 forced the largest brewers to divest much of their estate.
Connected
Countries: United Kingdom
Last reviewed 2026-08-29.