British Connection
KASAULI BREWERY
QUENCHING THE GREAT
THIRST OF HINDUSTAN
Here is how Edward Abraham Dyer, the master brewer behind iconic brands like Lion and Murree beer, set up Asia’s first brewery in Kasauli…
The Untold Story of General Dyer and Kasauli Brewery
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There are two old symbols of the British presence in Kasauli: The Christ Church and the Kasauli brewery.
Set up more than 200 years ago, this brewery is also connected to one of the most important and watershed events in the history of the Indian freedom movement — the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Edward Abraham Dyer, who set up the brewery in 1855, was the father of Reginald Edward Dyer, nicknamed the ‘Butcher of Amritsar’ for ordering the army to fire into a crowd of unarmed civilians in Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, 1919.
Considered to be a ‘pioneer of the Indian brewing,’ Edward Dyer was born in Calcutta (Kolkata) on July 7, 1831. He was educated in England and had returned to India in the 1850s, looking for business opportunities.
Ian Covin writes in The Life of General Dyer that Edward was persuaded by his elder brother John, a barrister in Mussoorie, to get into the brewing business. John’s advice was shrewd:
With savings in his hands, he (Edward) came to India looking for business, but was persuaded by his elder brother, John, a barrister living in Mussoorie, to go home again and learn how to brew beer, which he did and returned well-equipped. His brother’s advice was shrewd: With the great thirst of Hindustan, there was the conjunction of many Englishmen, servants and soldiers of John Company.”
At that time, beer was imported by Britishers from back home but the cost and the risks involved were higher. As late as 1870s, English beer was still costing between Rs 7 and Rs 10 a bottle against Rs 5 for the locally brewed.
John suggested to his brother that he start up the brewing of English beer. At that time it was thought that the hot Indian weather made it impossible to brew beer here.
Edward selected Kasauli due to its cool climate and abundance of spring water and by the time Edward reached Kasauli in 1855, one unsuccessful attempt had already been made to brew beer in the hills in the 1840s.
Edward improved on the methods of his predecessor and against all predictions, his venture turned out to be a success.
Shortly afterwards, Edward’s wife Mary Passmore joined him in Kasauli sometime before the mutiny in 1857 and a growing brewing business allowed the couple to start what was to become a large family. In the following years, Edward and May had nine children, three of whom were born in Kasauli.
Lion and Murree Beer
Edward’s brewed beer, produced in Kasauli and branded as ‘Lion Beer’ was an instant hit. Originally this beer was an India Pale Ale (IPA), a heavily hopped pale ale. It was the first beer brand of Asia. The lion beer was discontinued in 1960s.
In 1860, Edward became the manager of the Murree Brewing Company and shifted to Murree, a hill station in the Rawalpindi district of Pakistan. Edward was approached by the partners of the Murree Brewing Company — General Cantley and Lieutenant Colonel Oliphants VC — to become the managers of their company.
Edward did not disappoint his employers and took the company further ahead. It was in Murree that Reginald Edward Dyer aka Rex was born on October 9, 1864.
Shimla days
By 1866, Edward had left the Murree Brewing Company and moved to Shimla due to its growing market.
By this time Edward had set up a brewery in Solan also. According to Ian Covin in The Life of General Dyer, “…When Rex was only two years old… Dyers moved to their new home in Simla, presumably to be close to the brewery which Edward Dyer had set up at Solon near-by.”
In Shimla, the family started living in ‘Ladyhill,’ built in English style in a big garden with fruits and flowers, and set up a brewery at a new site on a hillside near St George’s School in Lower Shimla Bazaar.
There used to a brewery named ‘Old Brewery’ in Shimla but had gone out of business some years before Edward opened his brewery which came to be known as the ‘New Brewery.’
And soon Edward started facing competition as HG Meakin started brewing from Old Brewery in Shimla in 1869. At around this time, Reginald Edward was enrolled in the Bishop Cotton School, Shimla.
In 1880, Edward Dyer started a brewery in Lucknow and by the use of refrigerating plant, he overcame the problem of heat, and temperature difficulties. He not only made beer, he made good money.
In Shimla, the children grew up under the supervision of Mary Dyer. Brewing business kept Edward, described as a man of old fashioned and courteous manners, busy and in his home he was “much under the thumb of his wife.” (The Life of General Dyer)
Ian Covin writes in The Life of General Dyer that “Mrs Dyer ruled not only her husband but a much wider circle. She spoke slowly to conquer her stammer and firmly to discipline her family nor did she ever compromise with the candour of her opinion.”
On one occasion, Edward Dyer, while recounting his travels said at a dinner party that “he had once lit a cigarette from a Burma girl’s cheroot” to which Mary expressed her disapproval in words that created a pin drop silence in the room: “That sort of looseness,” she said, “is what has peopled Simla with thirty thousand Eurasians.””
Dyer sells breweries to Meakin
Edward sold his breweries in Simla and Solan to his rival Meakin in 1887 and opened new one in Rawalpindi where it found a good market in the British garrisons of the North West Frontier. Now, there was no longer any need to stay in the hills.
Edward Dyer, who in his later years had come to be regarded as a representative of the Indian brewing died in late April of 1902. His son Edgar took over the brewery business.
In 1935, the company’s name was changed to Dyer Meakin Brewers Ltd from Dyer Meakin and Co. Ltd after it was decided to separate Burma (Mayanmar) from India as Dyer had breweries in Burma also.
NN Mohan buys the breweries
After independence, Narendra Nath Mohan bought the Dyer Meakin breweries and took over the management in 1949 and then in 1966 the company’s name was again changed to Mohan Meakin breweries by dropping the word ‘Dyer.’
According to The Tribune newspaper, one trigger was Nehru’s refusal to visit the brewery during his visit to Shimla in 1960 due to its ‘Jallianwala connection.’
And finally, the word brewery was also removed, making it Mohan Meakin Ltd, in 1980. It’s no longer a brewery but a distillery and still operational.
References
The Life of General Dyer by Ian Covin (1929)
The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer by Nigel Collett (2006)
