Former Wrexham Lager offices, Central Road, Wrexham
Britain’s first lager brewery was managed from this Victorian building.
Two Germans, Otto Isler and Ivan Levinstein, started brewing a dark lager in Wrexham in 1882 but struggled until Robert Graesser took a stake in the business. Saxony-born Robert had been a partner from the 1860s in Ruabon’s chemical factory (later Monsanto and Flexsys). His refrigeration expertise transformed the brewery, which began to produce the pale lager that made Wrexham famous.
In October 1883 the shareholders of the Wrexham Lager Beer Company had a tour of the almost completed new brewery, built to the plans of general manager Stanislav Fenzl. It included a “System Fenzl” machine for cleaning and sorting barley. Stanislav’s malt-kiln ventilation method was said to avoid defects in British and Continental kilns. He held a patent on the bottle-washing technology. The ice machine produced 5,000 tons a year.
This building, which was at the main site entrance, was created for the company’s offices. Perhaps the round tower with its conical roof reminds you of a German castle!
Wrexham Lager travelled better than typical British ales. It was drunk in many parts of the British Empire and was served aboard glamorous trans-Atlantic liners. In 1931 a goods train conveyed Britain’s biggest-ever consignment of lager: 1,700 Wrexham Lager barrels, packed in ice, for Cunard Line.
As the First World War began, the company told the public that all of its capital was held by British subjects and all but two of its managers and staff were British. The company offered a large room at the Wrexham brewery for munitions production.
By December 1916, 50 of the 76 employees had gone to the armed forces. Another was on standby to join the Belgian army. The company appealed against conscription into the British army of Justus Wilhelm Kolb, a German-born British national who had become the brewery’s maltster and brewer in 1910. In February 1917 he was told to join a military unit for “soldiers of alien birth”. He served in the Middlesex Regiment’s 3rd Infantry Labour Company, and retired from Wrexham Lager in 1949.
The brewery was rescued after the Second World War by Ind Coope and diversified into other beers. It had a £2.5m modernisation in the 1960s. In 1992 its output of c.10,000 barrels per week was one-third Castlemaine, one-third-Löwenbrau and rest Skol and Wrexham Lager.
The brewery closed in 2000. Clwyd South MP Martin Jones, a former Wrexham Lager employee, bought the brand for £1 and the Roberts family restarted Wrexham Lager production in 2011.
In 2021 the brewery started sponsoring the Wrexham Lager Stand at the Racecourse Stadium. In 2024 Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, owners of Wrexham football club, took a majority stake in Wrexham Lager.
The original brewery was demolished and replaced with a retail park, but the former Wrexham Lager HQ building was retained and used by other businesses. Financial advisors Hadlow Edwards moved in in May 2018.
Postcode: LL13 7SU View Location Map
Website of Hadlow Edwards
Website of Wrexham Lager