Region & History

Anyone walking through Cardiff on a match day will pass pubs near the Arms Park that are packed hours before kickoff. The beer inside is often Brains, malty, copper-brown, and relatively light at around four percent alcohol. This is how Welsh ale tastes to most Welsh people: like bitter and dark mild, both top-fermented.

Samuel Arthur Brain founded his company in Cardiff in 1882. In 1999, Brains took over the Hancock's brewery near Cardiff Central station and moved onto its site in 2000. Since 2019, the company has brewed at the new Dragon Brewery in Cardiff Bay. The flagship beer, Brains SA, is considered a prime example of a malty best bitter.

In the 19th century, Cardiff was a coal port, and in the valleys behind it, miners dug the coal out of the ground. A light, dark beer like mild was seen as the drink to have after a shift. The Nonconformist chapels took a dim view of this. The Sunday Closing (Wales) Act of 1881 banned the sale of alcohol on Sundays, and the rule was only lifted district by district over the course of the 20th century.

In December 1935, the Felinfoel brewery in Llanelli became the first in Britain to can its beer. The tinplate came from the region itself, since Llanelli had a major tinplate industry. The can thus marked the start of a development that would bring beer out of the pub and into the living room.

There's no dedicated protected designation for Welsh ale. In the EU register, the only British entries are Kentish ale and Rutland bitter, both from England. Today, more than a hundred small breweries operate in Wales, including Tiny Rebel in Newport, alongside Brains as the biggest name.