Lacons Brewery
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| Location | Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK | ||||||||||
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| Coordinates | 52°35′28″N 1°44′02″E / 52.5911°N 1.7338°E | ||||||||||
| Opened | 1760 | ||||||||||
| Key people | Mick Carver | ||||||||||
| Annual production volume | 9,000 hectolitres (5,500 imp bbl; 7,700 US bbl)[1] | ||||||||||
| Website | lacons | ||||||||||
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Lacons Brewery is an independent brewery in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK.[3] In 2013, it produced 7,500 pints of beer a week.[1]
Lacons Brewery was founded in 1760, but shut down in February 1968 and reclaimed independence in 2013.
In 1640, Jeffrey Ward operated as a brewer and a maltster in Church Plain, Great Yarmouth, on a site which was to become The Falcon Brewery. His son, George Ward who died in 1690, and his grandson Robert Ward, who died in 1741 managed the business in succession. Ward's widow took their son-in-law John Laycon in partnership. Laycon became the sole owner of the brewery on her death in 1760 and thus Lacons Brewery was formed. By the 1810s the business owned three maltings, two breweries and 45 tied houses in Great Yarmouth.[4]
In the 1850s, the brewery held fifty public houses and controlled over 300 pubs in the East of England.[3] In 1814, Lacons supplied over 20,000 pints of beer to a festival dinner held in the town to celebrate the final defeat of Napoleon's France.[5] In the mid 1800s Lacons Brewery decided to sell to the London market and by 1866 it was despatching upwards of 50,000 barrels yearly to London, 20,000 to other locations, as well as the local market.[6] The brewery produced around 100,000 barrels of beer a year.[5]
In 1952, the directors of Lacons decided to float the company on the stock market and five years later sold 20% of the company to Whitbread. Whitbread bought Lacons for £3.2 million in 1965 and in 1968, Whitbread decided to shut down the brewery. Whitbread's brands and trademarks were later taken over by Anheuser-Busch InBev and thus the Lacons trademark went to Anheuser-Busch InBev.[5]
Lacons deposited a sample of their brewing yeast in 1957 at the Norwich-based National Collection of Yeast Cultures, as a backup in case their own cultures got contaminated.[7][3]
