EPISODE 862 GOBBLING UP THE LAND FOR A NEW WORLD….MAYBE GOOD, MAYBE NOT SO GOOD ..brain brewery once nearby

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3 Responses to “EPISODE 862 GOBBLING UP THE LAND FOR A NEW WORLD….MAYBE GOOD, MAYBE NOT SO GOOD ..brain brewery once nearby”

1. 

   April 6, 2024

   John Brain

   I am a descendent of John Brain Sr. (died 1865) through his son John Brain Jr. (died 1895) First known as “Brains Brewery” and then as “Brain Brothers Brewery” it remained in operation till 1916. When restrictive laws closed down many such establishments. The brewery initially made strong English Ale, then an ice house was constructed in about 1877 and then the brewery produced mostly lager beer. The last family proprietor of the brewery was John Chisholm Brain (son of Edwin Brain)

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2. 

   November 26, 2024

   Bob Ellenton

   I know a few things about the Brain Brewery but not details about the actual brewing just what I have read on line. However, my Dad was a Brain descendant and remembers going to the site and seeing the ruins of the brewery (likely he was there in the late 30’s/40s). There were a few Brains in the area starting in the 1820’s. The ponds on the site were used for ice so that the brewery could produce lagers the whole year long.

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3. 

   December 4, 2024

   Jacob G

   Hi Alan,

   I just came across this while googling the Brain Brewery to see if anyone else knew anything–so there’s at least two of us! I’m the great-great-great-grandson of brewery founder John Brain, and also an economic historian-in-training. Other than what you have here and this great article in Halton Hills Today from April 2024 (https://www.haltonhillstoday.ca/then-and-now/hornby-once-home-to-haltons-largest-brewery-8656617) I can tell you what I learned about the brewery from the 1871 Canadian Census of Industrial Establishments, using data on it and all other Ontario breweries, downloaded from here: https://borealisdata.ca/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.5683/SP2/31PLH3

   In 1871 there was a “Brain and bros” brewery in Esquesing, Halton. John Brain was born in 1795 so was probably no longer around in 1871. I’m guessing this brewery was run by some of his 10 children (though not my great-great-grandfather Theodore Brain, whose wife apparently as a condition of marriage demanded that he have nothing to do with the brewery.)

   They employed 6 men (no women or children), paying them an average monthly wage of $33.33 each, and had invested $6,000 of fixed capital. They used steam power (many others still used horse or waterpower) to turn barley, hops, coal, and wood into 100,000 gallons of beer sold for $20,000. This seems to be a pretty solid, mid-size operation: among the 96 brewing establishments in Ontario that year, average employment was 5.4, average wage was $25.70 (nice pay premium to work for the Brains!), and average fixed capital invested was $9,469 (for comparison, John Labbat’s brewery in London employed 14 men, invested $25,000 of capital and had $39,600 of sales while George Sleeman’s in Guelph employed 9 men, invested $20,000 of capital, and had $22,000 of sales). And by one measure of everyone’s favourite buzzword–productivity–Brain’s was almost twice as productive as the average Ontario brewery ($2,117 vs. $1,121 value-added per worker), probably helped a lot by the steam power, and seem to have passed it on to their workers as above-average pay!

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