In 1987, the Stag Brewery, Mortlake celebrated 500 years continuous production, making it probably the oldest commercial undertaking with a continuous history in the United Kingdom.
In 1487, John Morgan came to Mortlake where his father had been appointed steward by Henry Tudor. He commenced brewing at Mortlake, which contained one of the palaces of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the royal palace at Shene which was used extensively by Henry VI and his bodyguard, later to be known as the Beefeaters or Yeoman of the Guard.
By the turn of the 18th century the brewery underwent its first major expansion with the arrival of steam driven machinery. The brewery also boasted a Royal appointment to the Queen and the Royal Family and in 1871 the appointment included the Prince of Wales.
The brewery’s prosperity in this period was partly due to lucrative contracts to supply beer to the army in India and the Crimea.
The late 1800’s saw the formation of Watney Combe Reid and Company Ltd. to become the largest undertaking in London and the South and one of the most important in the UK.
An event that was to be critical to the development of beer production took place in 1931. Experiments using mild and bitter ales were carried out using the process of pasteurisation. The beer was subjected to vigorous tests in extreme hot and cold rooms. It was found that despite such ill-treatment the flavour and condition of the beer was quite unimpaired, even after several weeks. This was the fore runner of the keg beers of today, and thus these beers were regarded as suitable for export and the first consignment was sent abroad on 7th March 1933 to India.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s Watneys were in the forefront of technical innovation. A continuous fermentation process was designed and installed at Mortlake, which moved away from the batch process to one of continuous ale production.
A trading agreement between Copenhagen and the UK in September 1969 saw Watneys and Carlsberg combine to sell Carlsberg in the UK.
The go-ahead in 1977 to develop lagering facilities at Mortlake was an important milestone for Stag Brewery an it was the first brewery to be allowed to brew Holsten lager under licence from the famous Hamburg brewery.
In the autumn of 1981 Fosters Draught was introduced to the Watney trade and by 1982 Fosters draught was being brewed at Mortlake and at Websters in Halifax and it rapidly achieved national distribution.
The first brews of Budweiser on site were produced in 1986. With the phenomenal growth of the brand the volume increased rapidly to become 100% of Stag production (1 million UK barrels, or 1.6 million Hectolitres annually) by 1995.
Today we produce annually over 2 million hectolitres of Anheuser Busch brands, the majority of which is packaged on our two high speed bottle lines. The remainder of our beer is transported off site for packaging at co-packers around the UK and Europe. We currently export packaged beer to 37 countries around ‘Europe’, a geographical area from Iceland in the north through western and eastern Europe, the middle east, and down to South Africa and India, a distribution that John Morgan would be proud of.
