BBC - A History of the World - Object : A bottle of Wrexham pilsener lager

Contributed by Wrexham County Borough Museum

A bottle of Wrexham pilsener lager brewed in Wales to mark the centenary of the Wrexham Lager Beer Company.

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Wrexham Lager brewery was the first successful lager brewery to be established in the United Kingdom.Wrexham Lager is one of the icons of the town of Wrexham in north-east Wales. Otto Isler and Ivan Levinstein, two German immigrants from Saxony, established the Wrexham Lager Beer Company in 1881 and started brewing lager a year later. Their brewery struggled to survive in the early years, but with the help of another German immigrant, Robert Graesser, the company established itself as probably the most famous lager brewery in the United Kingdom. The company's logo ' the ace of clubs' could be seen on bottles served on GWR trains and Cunard liners, while the soldiers besieged with General Gordon in Khartoum, Sudan, sought refreshment by cracking open a bottle of Wrexham Lager. In 1978, Allied Breweries, the owners of the brewery, decided to re-launch Wrexham Lager. The new Wrexham lagers won many awards and admirers, but not enough to keep the brewery open. In 2000 Carlsberg Tetley, the latest owners, closed the brewery.

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2 comments
1. At 09:54 on 5 March 2010, nick-bbclocal-north-east-wales wrote:
We've been researching the 19 breweries that once operated from Wrexham: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/northeastwales/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8519000/8519912.stm
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2. At 19:41 on 11 March 2010, Liz Robinson wrote:
It's a shame that the oldest lager in the UK has been allowed to fade and die...I know there are those out there who wish to relaunch the brand in a micro brewery setting, I only hope they do.
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