stout is a dark beer, only 3% ABV, but with a full sweet taste and only a hint of the roasted malt used in brewing it. Mackeson belongs in the sparsely populated sweet stout category. This style was first known as “milk stout,” as in the early part of the 20th century brewers were keen to promote the health-giving properties of their products; it is now an illegal label designation in the UK. Milk stouts were so-called because they contained lactose, or milk sugar, a carbohydrate that is not fermented by beer yeasts. Lactose is not as sweet as sucrose or dextrose, so it can add fullness and body to the beer without making it cloyingly sweet. See milk stout.

The beer was originally brewed by Mackeson & Co. Ltd at Hythe, in Kent, England in 1907, a brewery founded in 1669. See kent, england. Mackeson’s brewery was bought by a competitor, H. & G. Simonds of Reading, Berkshire, in 1920, who later sold it on to another brewer, Jude, Hanbury & Co. Ltd in Wateringbury, Kent. The latter company along with the Mackeson brewery became part of the Whitbread empire in 1925. Whitbread soon disposed of the draught version of Mackeson, but in bottled form it became a national brand during the 1960s. A stronger version, at 4.9% ABV, known as “Mackeson Triple X,” was produced for the American market; it was brewed by the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a time. A similar version is produced by Carib Brewing in Trinidad. Whitbread itself was taken over by Interbrew, now Anheuser-Busch InBev, and Mackeson Stout is presently a brand of Interbrew UK.