{"id":7196,"date":"2021-05-04T18:20:13","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T18:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/?p=7196"},"modified":"2021-05-05T20:03:14","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T20:03:14","slug":"reids-brewery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/?p=7196","title":{"rendered":"Reid\u2019s Brewery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few weeks ago I was on the Internet and decided to Google my surname – Reid. According to Ancestry.com the name Reid<\/a> means:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cnickname for a person with red hair or a ruddy complexion, from Older Scots reid \u2018red\u2019. topographic name for someone who lived in a clearing, from Old English r\u00afd \u2018woodland clearing<\/em>\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ancestry.com also informed me that between 1841 and 1921, there were more Reids in Scotland than in any other country. I remember reading, many years ago, that it was one of the most common surnames in Scotland. Again, a little Googling confirmed this. In 2014, it was the 11th most common surname<\/a> in Scotland.

Even more interesting was the fact that in 1840, according to Ancestry.com, there were 51 Reid families living in Ohio (for those of you that do not know me, I was born in and grew up in Scotland, but now live in Ohio). This represented approximately 10% of all the recorded Reid’s living in the United States. Indeed, in 1840, Ohio had the highest population of families named Reid in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Number of Reids by State in 1840 (Source: Ancestry.com<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n


What does any of the above have to do with beer? Nothing actually, except it was while I was down this Google rabbit hole searching the Reid name that I discovered that in 19th century London, UK there was a brewery called Reid Brewery Co. Ltd<\/a>. My attention peaked and I did a little internet sleuthing to see what I could discover about the brewery that bore my name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I begin the story of the Reid Brewery in 1775, when Richard Meux and Mungo Murray formed a partnership and purchased Jackson\u2019s Brewery in London\u2019s Mercer Street. The purchase price was \u00a315,000. Coincidentally, Mercer happens to be my late-Mother\u2019s maiden name. The brewery suffered a major fire<\/a> in 1763 Rather than rebuild in the same location, Meux and Murray decided to build a new new brewery on the somewhat appropriately named Liquorpond Street (now Clerkenwell Street). A new name, Griffin Brewery, was also agreed upon by the two business partners. In 1790, Murray made the decision to leave the partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Griffin Brewery in 1790<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 1787, Griffin Brewery produced an impressive 49,651 barrels of beer. In 1793, Andrew Reid, a distiller and wine and spirit merchant, became a partner with Meux, and formed what then became Meux, Reid & Co. The brewery\u2019s annual output continued to grow and reached an excess of 100,000 barrels<\/a> for the first time in 1795.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1797, Richard Meux Jr. and Andrew Reid\u2019s brother, John, became partners in the brewery. In 1816 Thomas Meux resigned from the partnership<\/a>, which then became Reid & Co. At the time of Meux\u2019s resignation the brewery\u2019s annual production was 190,000 barrels. In the years following Meux\u2019s resignation Reid & Co. purchased several smaller breweries in both London and its environs. John Reid died in 1821 and his brother, Andrew, died in 1840. William Reid, son of Andrew Reid, maintained the Reid family’s interest<\/a> in the brewery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1853, Reid\u2019s was London fourth largest brewery – there were somewhere in the region of 160 breweries<\/a> n London at this time. The primary style of beer brewed<\/a> by Reid\u2019s was Porter. In all likelihood, some of that beer made its way to India to supply the British army<\/a> there. In 1898 Reid & Co merged with the large London brewer Watney and another brewer, Combe and Co. This is considered the first big merger<\/a> to take place in the British brewing industry. After the merger, Griffin Brewery on Liquidpond Street (owned by Reid) was closed. Production was concentrated<\/a> in Watney\u2019s Stag Brewery in the Pimlico district of London. The merged entity, Watney, Combe, Reid, became a major force in London brewing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Watney\u2019s truck delivering Reid Stout<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Reid brand name continued to be used until the 1950s. In the early 1950s Watney\u2019s was brewing and bottling three variants of their Reid\u2019s Stout<\/a> – Reid\u2019s Stout, Reid\u2019s Family Stout, and Reid\u2019s Special Stout. Two versions of the Reid\u2019s Stout was available – one with an ABV of 4.39% and the other with an ABV of 6.75%. The Family and Special Stout had ABVs of 3.21 and 4.72% respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the original brewing company bearing the Reid name is long gone, there is at least one craft brewery in the United Kingdom bearing the name – Reids Gold Brewing Company<\/a> in Stonehaven, Scotland, which was established by Barry Reid in 2018<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I was on the Internet and decided to Google my surname – Reid. According to Ancestry.com the name Reid means: \u201cnickname for a person with red hair or a ruddy complexion, from Older Scots reid \u2018red\u2019. topographic name for someone who lived in a clearing, from Old English r\u00afd \u2018woodland clearing\u2019.\u201d … Continue reading Reid\u2019s Brewery<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41,44,194],"tags":[1216,1215,1219,1214,1221,1220],"class_list":["post-7196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-international","category-people","tag-griffin-brewery","tag-london","tag-meux-reid-co","tag-reid-brewery-co","tag-reids-gold-brewing-company","tag-watney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ReidsStout.jpg?fit=1253%2C533&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p66jt3-1S4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7196"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7298,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions\/7298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebeerprofessor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}