A brewpub is a pub or restaurant that brews beer on the premises. Some brewpubs, such as those in Germany, have been brewing traditionally on the premises for hundreds of years. Others, such as the Les 3 Brasseurs chain in France, and the various chains in North America, are modern restaurants.

“We do not brew to specific gravity, or add any chemicals to our beer. We do not carbonate our beers, rather relying on the natural bubble that forms during the brewing process to give it its fine fizz. Our beer is not filtered or pasteurised, making it a live product,”

Before the development of large commercial breweries, beer would have been brewed on the premises from which it was sold. Alewives would put out a sign such as an ale-wand to show when their beer was ready. Gradually men became involved in brewing and organized themselves into guilds such as the Brewers Guild in London of 1342 and the Edinburgh Society of Brewers in 1598; as brewing became more organized and reliable many inns and taverns ceased brewing for themselves and bought beer from these early commercial breweries.

Microbrewery fresh beer However, there were some brewpubs which continued to brew their own beer, such as the Blue Anchor in Helston, Cornwall, England, which was established in 1400 and is regarded as the oldest brewpub in the British Isles. In Britain during the 20th century most of the traditional pubs which brewed their own beer in the brewhouse round the back of the pub, were bought out by larger breweries and ceased brewing on the premises. By the mid-1970s only four remained, All Nations, The Old Swan, the Three Tuns and the Blue Anchor.

In Germany, the brewpub or Brauhaus remained the most common source of beer. However, the trend throughout the rest of the world during the early to mid 20th century was for larger brewing companies.

The trend toward larger brewing companies started to change during the 1970s when the popularity of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA)'s campaign for traditional brewing methods, and the success of Michael Jackson's World Guide to Beer, encouraged brewers in the UK such as Peter Austin to form their own small breweries or brewpubs. In 1979 a chain of UK brewpubs, known as the "Firkin" pubs, started.

Interest spread to America, and in 1982 Grant's Brewery Pub in Yakima, Washington was opened, reviving the American "brewery taverns" of well-known early Americans as William Penn, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. Growth was initially slow – the fifth American brewpub opened in 1986, but the growth since then has been considerable: the Association of Brewers reports that in 2006 there were 1,389 regional craft breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs in the United States. In the UK, there are plenty of small independent brewpubs such as: The Ministry of Ale, Burnley, The Masons Arms in Headington, Oxford, The Brunswick Inn, Derby, The Watermill pub, Ings, Cumbria and The Old Cannon Brewery, Bury St Edmonds to name a few.

In France a chain of American style brewpubs operate under the name Les 3 Brasseurs.
In Canada, changes in outdated liquor control laws finally allowed "Spinnakers" to open in Victoria, British Columbia in 1984. Legislative changes followed in other provinces and brewpubs quickly sprouted up across the country in the 1980s and 1990s.