Maclay's Brewery was a Scottish

brewery A brewery or brewing company is a business that makes and sells beer. The place at which beer is commercially made is either called a brewery or a beerhouse, where distinct sets of brewing equipment are called plant. The commercial brewing of be ...

based in

Alloa Alloa (Received Pronunciation ; educated Scottish pronunciation /ˈaloʊa/; gd, Alamhagh, possibly meaning "rock plain") is a town in Clackmannanshire in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. It is on the north bank of the Forth at the spot where ...

Clackmannanshire Clackmannanshire (; sco, Clackmannanshire; gd, Siorrachd Chlach Mhannainn) is a historic county, council area, registration county and Lieutenancy area in Scotland, bordering the council areas of Stirling, Fife, and Perth & Kinross and the hi ...

until 2001. It remains a beer brand in Scotland and Canada, produced under contract at other breweries in each country.

History

In 1830, James Maclay (1801-1875) founded the brewery as James Maclay, Ale, Porter, Table and India Beer Brewer of Alloa. James Maclay established himself as a brewer of great repute over the next 39 years and in 1870, James built the Thistle Brewery, which until 1999, was the home of the ales, which bore his name. James Maclay died in 1875, leaving his two sons James and John to run the company. The Fraser family, licensed grocers and spirit merchants from

Dunfermline Dunfermline (; sco, Dunfaurlin, gd, Dùn Phàrlain) is a city, parish and former Royal Burgh, in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. The city currently has an estimated population of 58,508. Accord ...

took over Maclay in December 1896 and in December of that year, the firm became a private limited company named Maclay & Company, Limited. Maclays ales won medals at Vienna in 1894, Newcastle in 1898 and Paris in 1900. Despite the renown of their Oat Malt Stout, the change in fashion away from dark beers led to difficulties for the company in the 1990s and brewing at the Thistle Brewery ceased in 1999. In 2001 the company ceased using the buildings as their office base. The Thistle brewery has since been demolished and replaced by retail units and flats. Only part of the brewery survives and is now a pub called The Old Brewery, owned by Belhaven. On March 10, 1994, the company changed its name to Maclay Inns Limited to better reflect its current business model. The company acquired the Clockwork Beer Company in Glasgow, which now operates as the de facto Maclays brewery under the Three Thistles PLC, brewing its own range of beers and Maclays recipes. In 2012 Tennent Caledonian acquired a substantial minority shareholding. On 23 January 2015 it was announced that the company had gone into administration after failing to find a “strategic solution to the financial pressures facing the business”. Administrators EY continue to operate the business whilst trying to find a buyer. The 15 pubs are reported to be trading profitably. In June 2015 it was reported that Stonegate Pub Company had bought the Maclays owned pubs from administration.

Beers

Maclays beers are now brewed under licence by

Belhaven Brewery Belhaven Brewery is a brewery based in Belhaven, Scotland. The brewery dates from 1719, at least; by 2005 it had become the largest and oldest surviving independent brewery in Scotland. In November 2005, the Suffolk based brewery Greene Ki ...

and by

Sleeman Breweries Sleeman Breweries is a Japanese-owned Canadian brewery founded by John Warren Sleeman in 1988 in Guelph, Ontario. The company is the third-largest brewing company in Canada. Along with its own Sleeman brands, the company produces under licence the ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

References

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External links

Maclay Inns Limited

* http://www.threethistles.co.uk/ Breweries in Scotland Companies based in Clackmannanshire 1830 establishments in Scotland Food and drink companies established in 1830 Alloa