It feels only right that the Joule’s Brewery sits tucked behind an original Joule’s pub. The Red Lion has stood at the heart of medieval Market Drayton for centuries, and today it quite literally fronts the brewery that carries its name forward.
Built along traditional tower brewery lines, the building is now a local landmark. On brewing days, the sight of malt being hoisted up the front of the brewery still has the power to stop passers-by in their tracks. It’s brewing you can see happening.
The tower design harks back to the 19th century, when electricity was unreliable and breweries relied on gravity rather than pumps. Raw materials were lifted to the top of the building and allowed to fall naturally through each stage of the process. Simple, efficient and still beautifully effective.
Completed in 2010, the brewery stays true to these traditional principles. Inside you’ll find an infusion mash tun with a Steele’s masher, a copper fitted with a classic ‘cat and mouse’ contents gauge, a hopback designed for whole hops, and open ‘ale’ fermenters perfectly suited to top-cropping yeast. It’s a set-up built for character, not shortcuts.
Behind that traditional shell sits the best of modern brewing technology. This allows us to produce our full range of cask ales alongside our brewery-conditioned beers. Our English Craft Lager, Green Monkey, is fermented and conditioned at zero degrees in dual-purpose vessels for a minimum of three weeks, before being sterile filtered rather than pasteurised, preserving flavour, balance and freshness.
Brewing liquor
Joule’s prize-winning ales have always relied on great water. It plays a defining role in the clarity, balance and drinkability of every pint we brew.
When brewing moved from Stone, it was no coincidence that Market Drayton was chosen as our new home. The town sits above the same Triassic aquifer, giving us access to the mineral-rich water that has shaped Joule’s beers for generations.
Here in Market Drayton, our brewing liquor rises from the bunter pebble beds some sixty metres beneath the brewery, drawn up through our own borehole. The water is naturally very hard, making it particularly well suited to brewing crisp, expressive pale ales.
Local people have long understood the value of what lies beneath their feet. A reminder of this history can still be seen in the front bar of the Red Lion Brewery Tap, where an earlier well remains on display, linking today’s brewery to centuries of brewing on the site.
