In 1882, two German Immigrants, Ivan Levinstein and Otto Isler, set forth to brew lager beer in the UK. Levinstein and Isler sought to engineer a brewery based on traditional Bavarian method, which was to use the naturally cold and stable temperatures as a means to best ferment their beer, followed by the use of ice banks to store their beer cool enough to facilitate lager beer’s smooth flavour and keeping properties.
A successful site in Wrexham was chosen, but this method was compromised by the insufficient cooling the ice banks achieved, which led to early runs of Wrexham Lager being sub-par compared to their European competition.
A chance meeting with a local German-born Industrialist, Robert Graesser, solved this issue by implementing Graesser’s mechanical refrigeration at the cost of relinquishing a share of the business. Initially, the dark lager sales rose, which gave the fledgling brewers the confidence to brew its first pale lager; and so Wrexham Lager was born!
