Tetley's Bitter

Tetley's Bitter

Tetley's Brewery (Joshua Tetley & Son Ltd) was a regional brewery founded in 1822 by Joshua Tetley in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The beer was originally produced at the Leeds Brewery, which was later renamed the Leeds Tetley Brewery to avoid confusion with a microbrewery of the same name.

Tetley's position as Leeds' largest brewer was secured in 1960 when it announced a takeover of the nearby Melbourne Brewery. That same year they merged with Walkers of Warrington to form Tetley Walker. Tetley Walker owned over 1,000 tied houses in Yorkshire alone and a further 2,000 outside the county. In 1961 Tetley merged with Ind Coope of Burton upon Trent and Ansells of Birmingham to form Allied Breweries, then the world's largest brewing conglomerate. At its height in the 1960s, the Leeds Brewery employed a thousand people. In 1978 Allied merged with J. Lyons to form Allied Lyons. The brewery became the world's largest producer of cask ale during the 1980s. In 1998 Tetley was taken over by the Carlsberg Group, a brewing of Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Leeds Brewery was closed in 2011, and demolished in 2012, with production contracted out by Carlsberg to rival breweries in Wolverhampton, Tadcaster and Hartlepool. Tetley retains its links to Leeds through sponsorship of its two main rugby teams, Leeds Rhinos and Leeds Carnegie.

Tetley's remains among the ten highest selling beer brands in the United Kingdom, with over 100 million pints sold in 2011. Its main products are Tetley's Cask and Tetley's Smoothflow.