Ale has been brewed in the British Isles for well over a thousand years, and hopped beer reached England from the Low Countries in the 15th century. In the 18th century the London porter brewers grew into the first industrial breweries: Truman's Black Eagle Brewery in Brick Lane, founded about 1666, became one of the largest in the world and in 1873 bought a brewery in Burton upon Trent, whose hard water made it the home of pale ale. Samuel Allsopp began brewing there in 1807; regional family firms followed, among them Cobbold in Ipswich (at the Cliff Brewery from 1746), Boddingtons in Manchester (1778) and Palmers in Bridport (1794), which still brews in a thatched building.

The 20th century was a long consolidation. Mitchells & Butlers of Birmingham was formed in 1898 and merged with Bass in 1961, the year Allied Breweries was created; Phipps of Northampton went to Watney Mann in 1960, Truman's to Grand Metropolitan in 1971, Brickwoods of Portsmouth to Whitbread in 1971, Matthew Brown to Scottish & Newcastle in 1987 and Boddingtons to Whitbread in 1989. Town breweries closed one after another: Phipps in 1972, Brickwoods in 1983, Devenish in Weymouth in 1985 and Truman's in Brick Lane in 1989. The Campaign for Real Ale, founded in 1971 and now based in St Albans, defended cask beer, and the Beer Orders of 1989 limited how many pubs a big brewer could own. Whitbread and Bass sold their breweries to Interbrew in 2000-01, and Cape Hill in Smethwick and the Cliff Brewery in Ipswich were closed in 2002, Boddingtons' Strangeways brewery in 2005.

Small breweries filled the gap. Mauldons was refounded in 1982, Rebellion started in 1993, Tower in Burton in 2001, and progressive beer duty from 2002 helped many more to open. From 2007 BrewDog and a wave of craft-keg brewers changed the market, old names were revived (Truman's came back in Hackney Wick in 2013), and alcohol-free beer, led by Big Drop and Burnside, grew quickly. Foreign owners now hold many well-known names: Asahi bought Fuller's beer business in 2019, Carlsberg took full control of Carlsberg Marston's in July 2024, and Damm, which bought the Eagle Brewery in Bedford from Carlsberg Marston's, has its first brewery outside Iberia there. C&C has owned Tennent's and the Wellpark Brewery in Glasgow since 2009.

Since 2022 rising costs have closed many breweries. Jennings (October 2022), Dark Star (31 December 2022), Wychwood (November 2023), Ringwood (January 2024) and Banks's in Wolverhampton (August 2025) were shut by their owners; Windswept (February 2024), Gritchie (October 2024), Magic Rock (January 2025) and Redchurch (autumn 2025) also stopped brewing, and Bedlam (February 2023), Love Lane (October 2023) and Cellar Head (April 2024) went into administration. In March 2026 BrewDog's British business was sold to Tilray for £33m in a pre-pack (2 March) and Innis & Gunn went into administration (6 March), with C&C buying the brand and the Inveralmond brewery closing; Molson Coors plans to close Sharp's in Rock by the end of 2026, and Brakspear has been brewed at Hogs Back since September.

New plants are rare but real: Wadworth opened a new brewery on Folly Road in Devizes in 2023, Wells & Co built Brewpoint in Bedford in 2020 and Greene King plans a new brewery in Bury St Edmunds for 2027. Humphrey Smith, owner and chairman of Samuel Smith's of Tadcaster since the 1960s, died in the summer of 2026, aged 81.