Felinfoel Brewery is a

brewery A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of be ...

based in the village of

Felinfoel Felinfoel (pronounced ) is a small village and electoral ward on the River Lliedi on the northern border of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, West Wales, with a population of about 2,000. The Felinfoel Brewery, home of Double Dragon Ale, is the oldest ...

near

Llanelli Llanelli ("St Elli's Parish"; ) is a market town and the largest community in Carmarthenshire and the preserved county of Dyfed, Wales. It is located on the Loughor estuary north-west of Swansea and south-east of the county town, Carmarthen. ...

Carmarthenshire Carmarthenshire ( cy, Sir Gaerfyrddin; or informally ') is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as ...

, Wales. The existing brewery building dates from 1878 (according to a date plaque on its south facade), constructed by local innkeeper (and iron and

tinplate Tinplate consists of sheets of steel coated with a thin layer of tin to impede rusting. Before the advent of cheap milled steel, the backing metal was wrought iron. While once more widely used, the primary use of tinplate now is the manufacture of ...

works owner) David John. The brewery grew to employ fifty people and expanded its market to the surrounding counties. After John's retirement his sons took over the business and, in 1906, it was registered as a

limited company In a limited company, the liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a company limited by ...

. In the 1920s the company was managed by John's daughter, Mary Anne Lewis, a formidable woman who always carried a big stick. In 1935 Felinfoel became the first brewery in the UK (and one of the first breweries in Europe) to produce beer in cans. It managed to stop the beer reacting with the metal by coating the inside of the cans with wax, unlike the

Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company The Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company was a brewery in Newark, New Jersey founded by Gottfried Krueger and John Laible (Gottfried's Uncle) in 1858. The company produced Krueger's Special Beer, the first beer to be sold in cans, in November, 193 ...

in the US, who had to create a new pasteurised drink to get around the problem when they produced the world's first canned beer earlier the same year. Felinfoel were spurred into action when the '' Western Mail'' announced rival brewery

Buckley's W. K. Buckley Limited is a corporation operating in Canada that manufactures medicines for health problems such as the common cold. They also have children's medicine which are sold under the brand Jack & Jill. The company is located in Mississauga ...

was investigating canned beer. Felinfoel won the race, producing their first canned beer in December 1935. Felinfoel had the advantage of owning a tinplate works. In turn, the local tinplate industry benefited from the developments, with Llanelli's Trostre tinplate works going on to produce all of Britain's tinplate for food and drink cans and cookware. The cans were originally half

pint The pint (, ; symbol pt, sometimes abbreviated as ''p'') is a unit of volume or capacity in both the imperial unit, imperial and United States customary units, United States customary measurement systems. In both of those systems it is tradition ...

containers, with a crimped metal top. They were packaged in cardboard boxes of twenty four cans. Because of their light weight, relatively to the traditional glass beer bottles, the Felinfoel beer was a popular choice to send to the British soldiers during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. However, the wax coating did not work so well in warmer climates, melting and giving the beer an unpleasant taste, possibly leading to Felinfoel's nickname of "Feeling Foul". The Felinfoel Brewery building has a

heritage listing This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

, as a "rare surviving example of a once important industry in Wales". It continues to be run as a brewery by descendants of David John.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.felinfoel.com/ Companies based in Carmarthenshire Llanelli Breweries in Wales