Queer Brewing Alcohol-Free Beers

Queer Brewing: taking up space, brilliantly

Queer Brewing is the UK’s first queer- and trans-owned brewery, founded in 2019 by Lily Waite — an award-winning beer writer (the youngest-ever British Guild of Beer Writers’ Beer Writer of the Year) who set out to create LGBTQ+ representation in an industry that had very little. It began as a collaboration project — the first beer, Queer Royale, launched simultaneously in dozens of bars in April 2019 — and grew through contract brewing into a fully-fledged brewery.

Since 2024 it has brewed in its own home: a 30-hectolitre brewhouse and taproom in Leyton, East London, run by a team that is entirely queer — a rarity anywhere in world brewing. The charitable thread has never broken: tens of thousands of pounds raised for LGBTQ+ charities, with 10p from every pint and can now donated. The beers, incidentally, are all vegan.

It’s also simply a very good brewery — Waite is one of the most decorated beer writers of her generation, and the beers are brewed to be judged on flavour first, representation gladly included. The Leyton taproom, pouring eight fresh lines a short walk from Lea Bridge station, has quickly become a destination in its own right.

Queer Brewing on Unhopped

We list Bold AF Pale Ale — citrus, stone fruit and pine over a crisp malt base, with a name that does exactly what Queer Brewing does best. It belongs on any best-of-UK list — and every can sold supports the cause.