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JW Lees

United Kingdom · Regional · ★ Award winning · Known for a full range of styles
★ Award winningKnown for a full range of styles

JW Lees is a family-owned brewery and pub company at Middleton Junction, on the edge of Greater Manchester. Retired cotton manufacturer John Lees founded it in 1828; the company calls itself Manchester's oldest brewery, and the Greengate Brewery still stands on the original site, its brewhouse rebuilt in 1876. The family runs it in the seventh generation alongside an estate of around 140 pubs, inns and hotels across the North West and North Wales. Cask ale is the core: bitters, a dark, a strong ale and a vintage barley wine, joined by lagers and a small-batch plant called The Boilerhouse.

14Beers
8Styles
4.7%Avg ABV
1828Founded

Beers by JW Lees

14 beers

← scroll to see all 14 beers →

Brewery DNA

The recurring character behind the beers

JW Lees brew a broad range across 8 style families.

Signature · 14 beers
Amber 4Lager 3Strong 2IPA 1Dark 1Stout 1Pale Ale 1Fruit Beer 1

Across these 14 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:

malty
12 of 14 beers
smooth
10 of 14 beers
citrusy
8 of 14 beers
clean
8 of 14 beers

Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one.

Compared with the wider catalogue of similar styles:

typical for similar stylesJW Lees
in no beersin every beer
citrusy
in 8 of 14 · typical similar styles brewery: 1 in 5
Notably more citrusy than typical.
How we measure this

Two thresholds are at work here:

  • The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
  • The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.

A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.

Similar Breweries

hopIQ exclusive

Based on style overlap and flavor profile

Fuller's Griffin Brewery
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95%match
Propeller Brewing Company
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Brew York
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92%match

About JW Lees

JW Lees is a family-owned brewery and pub company at Middleton Junction, on the edge of Greater Manchester. Retired cotton manufacturer John Lees founded it in 1828; the company calls itself Manchester's oldest brewery, and the Greengate Brewery still stands on the original site, its brewhouse rebuilt in 1876. The family runs it in the seventh generation alongside an estate of around 140 pubs, inns and hotels across the North West and North Wales. Cask ale is the core: bitters, a dark, a strong ale and a vintage barley wine, joined by lagers and a small-batch plant called The Boilerhouse.

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Location
Middleton · United Kingdom
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