What is queer BRewing?
Queer Brewing is the UK’s first queer- and trans-owned brewery, making queer beers and beer queer since 2019. Founded by beer writer, editor, photographer, and ceramicist Lily Waite-Marsden after recognising a significant lack of LGBTQ+ representation in the beer world, she set out to take up space in an industry dominated by cisgender, heterosexual, male voices.
Starting as a collaboration project with UK-based and international breweries, Queer Brewing has now grown into an empowering brand and fully operational brewery in its own right. Producing a wide range of beer styles with evocative branding to provide visibility and representation for LGBTQ+ people, we’ve raised tens of thousands of pounds for LGBTQ+ charities—first from funds raised from collaboration beers, and as of 2024 by donating 10p from every pint and can sold.
Between late 2020 and early 2025, we produced all of our beer via contract production: Lily wrote the recipes and sent them to our friends’ breweries to be brewed. In early 2024, we came to realise that model no longer worked for us, and we were faced with a choice: call time on Queer Brewing, or dive in and build our own brewery.
In September 2024 we took on the unit next to our warehouse in Leyton, East London, and commenced building our very own brewery.
We installed a 30hL refurbished (and probably slightly overengineered!) brewhouse from Gravity Systems, with six 30hL new fermenting vessels (and one enduring and time-worn 20hL tank from our friends Pressure Drop via our neighbours Square Root Soda), a gorgeous canning line, and a reverse osmosis water treatment system—all to give us the capability to brew the best beer we possibly can, and to allow us to explore and execute any style we’d like.
After so many years, Andy and Lily are now brewing Queer Brewing beer in our own home, and making everything a little more us.
It’s been a long, and hard road to where we are today. We’ve faced some difficult challenges, but we’re where we want to be: with a passionate and hard-working—and, as one of the only breweries in the world where this is true, 100% queer!—team and our own brewery, we can at last begin to realise the potential we’ve long seen in Queer Brewing.
We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re brewing, baby.
Meet The Team
LilY Waite-marsden
Founder and owner
charlotte waite-Marsden
creative director
Andy Potter
head brewER
Stef MArtin
Marketing lead
Charlotte was the first addition to the team. Charlotte’s background in design, coupled with her interest in everything beer, means she was perfect for the role of helping grow Queer Brewing. You’ll find her handiwork on each can of beer, t-shirt, and tap handle. She loves going to gigs, disgusting music, collecting miniature animal figures, and being screamed at by her and Lily’s dogs, Teddy and Pickle.
Lily founded Queer Brewing in 2019, and, until late 2020, led the project on her own. She deals with the running and growing of the company, endless admin, and is now our second brewer. When not working on Queer Brewing, she works as a multi-award-winning beer writer, photographer, and ceramicist. Her favourite QB beer is Serving Kunst, and her karaoke song is One Last Breath by Creed.
Boz Pagliaro
Warehouse keeper
BETH HILL
Account manager
Boz runs fulfilment at Queer Brewing, helping organise our warehouse, fulfil orders, and serving delicious pints at the taproom. They joined us in 2023 to help out over Christmas, and they've been with us ever since. If you've received a webshop or trade order this year, chances are Boz's fair hands picked and packed it!
Fave QB beer? Michael Romance! Fave Chappell Roan song? My Kink Is Karma!
Beth is our account manager, and comes with half a decade of brewery sales under her belt and is also an active member of the LGBTQ+ community. She’s a proud northerner, who's lived in the capital for over a decade. When she isn't in a taproom, pub, or at a drag show, you can find her at home watching a nature documentary and eating ramen.
Stef joined in late 2024 to help tell the story of Queer Brewing, as we began the next phase of our company’s life. She’s known Lily and Charlotte for decades, has a huge amount of experience in marketing and comms, and as such was the perfect choice for the role.
She’s also a portrait, fashion, and music photographer, a huge fan of live music, and a lover of Japanese fried chicken.
Andy joined us in late 2024 as our first ever head brewer, bringing a wealth of experience from head and lead brewer roles at a number of London breweries. He’s a lover of literature, history, cricket, old men’s fashion, and delicious pints of sparkled bitter.
His fave QB beer is Existence, and his favourite other beer is Theakston’s Old Peculier.