As anyone who has been a home brewer, you start to brew as your first love is drinking beer, then comes the, I wonder if I could make it and how good would it be?   That’s where our story begins;

Phil first started to home brew after a ‘Day with a Brewer’ experience at a micro-brewery in Derbyshire, firstly in his kitchen and then once he progressed to a 100ltr bespoke kit, he moved into his garage, by this time Phil had peaked the interest of one of his work colleagues Dave, with whom, on their days off home brewed together in the garage for around 2 years.  It was Dave who introduced Adam, a lifelong friend as the third partner, Adam brought much needed I.T. wizardry to the mix and so the team was born.

Phil, Dave and Adam are Escape Brewery.

The name Escape came about as we all wanted to escape the daily grind of working for someone else.   It is a bit of a cliché, but we really did start off in a garage…as homebrewers first.  We progressed to a 200ltr Latimer Ales brew kit, when Escape was born in February 2019.  We sold our first ever commercial brew “Erik Weisz” a lovely 4.4% Citra Amber Pale in August of that year and is still a staple Escape ales to this date.

We stayed in the garage until January of 2021 when we moved into our first commercial premises at Dodd Lane Business Park, Westhoughton.  We then had a (second hand) 2.5-barrel brew kit from Porter Brewing Company (PBC) and 3 fermenters which drastically increased our brewing capacity. We quickly out grew these premises and managed to secure the lease on Unit P at Dodd Lane which was double the size. In September 2024 we again upgraded our brew kit to a 5 barrel kit previously used by the now defunct Martland Mill brewery in Wigan, which is the kit currently in use.

Our beers are, traditional cask conditioned beers, with a gentle nod to the modern-day tastes.

Our aims are to build on the following we have in the Northwest and go further afield now that we have the capacity to do so and keep on producing the good quality beer which is how the adventure started.

For us the dream has well and truly become a reality……