Asia's first brewery
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There is pre-historic evidence that shows brewing began around 5,400 BC in Sumer (southern Iraq). Some recent archaeological finds also show that Chinese villagers were brewing alcoholic drinks as far back as 7000 BC. However, these pre-historic brewing efforts were on a small, or individual, scale - not on the scale of a modern day brewery.
In Mesopotamia, the oldest evidence of beer is believed to be a 6,000-year-old Sumerian tablet depicting people drinking a beverage through reed straws from a communal bowl. A 3900-year-old Sumerian poem honoring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from barley via bread.
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground...
You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort...
Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
Beer is also mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Beer became vital to all the grain-growing civilizations of classical Western antiquity, including Egypt — so much so that in 1868 James Death put forward a theory in The Beer of the Bible that the manna from heaven that God gave the Israelites was a bread-based, porridge-like beer called wusa. The modern anthropologist Alan Eames believes that "beer was the driving force that led nomadic mankind into village life...It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture."
Despite this ancient history of brewing, Asia's first large scale brewery was not incorporated until 1855 and interestingly was built entirely using European brewing technology. It was set up to supply the British in India by Edward Dyer at Kasauli in the Himalayan Mountains under the name Dyer Breweries. The company still exists and is known as Mohan Meakin Limited, which today comprises a large group of companies involved in many industries.
[edit] History
In the late 1820's, Edward Dyer moved from England to set up the first brewery in India (later incorporated as Dyer Breweries in 1855) at Kasauli in the Himalayan Mountains. The Kasauli brewery launched India's and indeed Asia's first beer, Lion, which was in great demand by the thirsty British administrators and troops stationed in the sweltering heat of India. Lion was much appreciated as a beer, and one famous poster featured a satisfied British Tommy declaring, "as good as back home!".
The brewery was soon shifted to nearby Solan (close to the British summer capital Shimla), as there was an abundant supply of fresh springwater there. The Kasauli brewery site was converted to a distillery, which Mohan Meakin Ltd. still operate. Dyer set up more breweries at Shimla, Murree Murree Brewery, Rawalpindi, Mandalay, Quetta and acquired interests in the Ootacamund Brewery (South India).
Another entrepreneur, H G Meakin, moved to India and bought the old Shimla and Solan Breweries from Edward Dyer and added more at Ranikhet, Dalhousie, Chakrata, Darjeeling, Kirkee and Nuwara Eliya (Ceylon). After the First World War, the Meakin and Dyer breweries merged and in 1937, when Burma was separated from India, the company was restructured with its Indian assets as Dyer Meakin Breweries, a public company on the London Stock Exchange.
Following independence, N.N. Mohan raised funds and travelled to London where he acquired a majority stake in Dyer Meakin Breweries. He took over management of the company in 1949 and built new breweries at Lucknow, Ghaziabad and Khopoli (near Bombay). The company name was changed to Mohan Meakin Breweries in 1967 (the word "Breweries" was dropped in the eighties as the company diversified into other industries).
On the death of N.N. Mohan in 1969, his eldest son Colonel V.R. Mohan took over as Managing Director. He introduced a number of new products that are brand leaders today but died in 1973, soon after taking the helm. In the 1970s the manufacturing activities of the company were diversified into other fields including breakfast cereals, fruit juices and mineral water under the leadership of Brigadier Kapil Mohan (Col. V.R. Mohan's brother). Subsequently the word brewery was dropped from the company name in 1982 to remove the impression that the company was engaged only in beer making. New breweries were built during the seventies and eighties at Chandigarh, Madras, Nepal and Kakinada near Hyderabad.
Today, Mohan Meakin's principal brands are Old Monk rum and Golden Eagle beer. Its other products include Diplomat Deluxe, Colonel's Special, Black Knight, Meakin 10,000, Summer Hall and Solan No 1 whiskies, London Dry and Big Ben gins, and Kaplanski vodka. Asia’s original beer, Lion, is still sold in northern India.
[edit] Beer
Lion Beer is the main brand first sold in the 1840's. It was originally an IPA (India Pale Ale - which makes it the oldest IPA brand still in existence) but was changed in the sixties to a lager. Lion remained the number one beer in India for over a century from the 1840s until the 1960s. After this another Mohan Meakin brand, "Golden Eagle", took the number one spot until the 1980s, when Kingfisher became number one. By 2001, Lion sales had declined substantially and Lion was only available to the Indian Army through the CSD (Canteen Services Department). Mohan Meakin then entrusted the marketing of their original beer to International Breweries Pvt. Ltd. The brand has since been relaunched in the north Indian market. With a new label design and marketing campaign, Lion has established itself once more in the civilian market and is now expanding into markets across India.
Lion earns a place in history as Asia's first beer brand. Lion's popularity with the British during the heyday of the Empire led to the start-up of other Lion beers around the world, in New Zealand, South Africa and elsewhere. Lion remains the number one brand in neighbouring Sri Lanka where Mohan Meakin had introduced it in the 1880's through their Ceylon brewery.
Australian is another popular 5% abv lager distributed by International Breweries (P) Ltd. The 8% abv version is called Max.
