Old Truman Brewery — The World's Biggest Brewery
The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane in London became the largest brewery in the world by 1853, producing 400,000 barrels of porter annually across a six-acre site. Founded in 1666, the operation expanded dramatically after Thomas Fowell Buxton introduced steam power in 1808. In 1831, Buxton hosted British cabinet members at the brewery shortly before slavery was abolished. In 2010, the beer was revived using its original preserved yeast strain.
London · from the walk “Steam, Soot & Steel: London's Industrial Revolution” · Generated
91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL
- Joseph Truman joined the brewhouse on Brick Lane in 1666 before taking full control in 1679.
- By 1853, the Old Truman Brewery spanned six acres and drew water from 520-foot-deep artesian wells.
- Thomas Fowell Buxton hosted 23 cabinet members at the Old Truman Brewery in 1831 to discuss abolishing slavery.
- In 2010, brewers revived the Old Truman Brewery beer using an original yeast strain preserved in liquid nitrogen.
When did the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane become the largest brewery in the world?
Look around you. This entire stretch of Brick Lane was once dominated by a single, Colossal industrial operation... the Black Eagle Brewery. The story begins in sixteen sixty-six — the very same year as the Great Fire of London. Joseph Truman joined William Bucknall's modest brewhouse right here on Brick Lane, eventually taking over when Bucknall died in sixteen seventy-nine.
Now, what turned a small brewhouse into a world-beating industrial giant? One word... Porter. Porter was the first mass-produced beer, a dark, heavy stout that inspired Guinness in Ireland — and it led to a rapid expansion of many of London's breweries, including this one.
Under Benjamin Truman, who joined the family firm in seventeen twenty-two, business Boomed. The weekly money he withdrew in the seventeen sixties ran to almost three thousand seven hundred fifty pounds a year — the equivalent of over five million pounds today. He became so wealthy that he was knighted by George the Third in seventeen sixty, in recognition of the enormous loans he made to finance the Crown's foreign wars. And his portrait? It was one of the largest and most powerful canvases Thomas Gainsborough ever painted — a brewer, immortalised like a king!
But here's where the Industrial Revolution truly enters the picture. Thomas Fowell Buxton joined the company in eighteen oh eight, improved the brewing process, and converted the works to Steam power. Under Buxton's involvement, the firm expanded through steam-powered machinery and refined malting techniques, enhancing production capacity. The brewery used a hundred and thirty horses, consumed five hundred thousand barrels of water a year from its own five-hundred-and-twenty-feet-deep artesian wells, and even had its own wharf on the Thames.
By eighteen fifty-three, this was the Largest brewery in the world — four hundred thousand barrels a year, covering six acres. Think about that... six acres of industrial machinery, Right Here, in the East End.
But Buxton had another life beyond beer. It was here at the brewery, on the fourth of June eighteen thirty-one, that he entertained twenty-three members of Lord Grey's cabinet — men who were about to agree to Abolish slavery. After a dinner of steaks and porter, the Lord Chancellor got so carried away he mounted a brewery horse and rode it around the yard! Just two years later... the Abolition Act was passed.
If you look toward the corner of Brick Lane and Dray Walk, you can still see the Directors' House — the couple moved into that very building in eighteen oh eight, and it was their main residence until eighteen fifteen. A blue plaque on the wall honours Buxton to this day.
Charles Dickens knew this place well — in David Copperfield, Mrs. Micawber mentions Truman, Hanbury and Buxton as an example of the "e-Nor-mous" profits to be made in brewing.
And one final, extraordinary detail. In twenty ten, Truman's beer was actually Revived using the original yeast strain, frozen in liquid nitrogen. Three centuries of industrial ambition... preserved in ice, and brought back to life.