by the 1870s mcewan's brewery employed 170 men and boys, and its beers were widely available in england. by 1880, the brewery site covered 12 acres. mcewan's 80/-, a heavy beer, was first brewed in the late nineteenth century; the shilling "/-" denotion refers to the wholesale price for a hogshead of the beer. in 1886, as he prepared to enter parliament, william mcewan appointed his nephew, william younger, as managing director of the brewery. when the company was registered in 1889 it was worth £408,000 and had capital of £1 million, and was the largest brewery in the united kingdom under a single owner. by the turn of the twentieth century the company had a large share of the market throughout scotland, a 90 per cent share of the tyneside market, and was exporting to scottish expatriates across the british empire. at its peak the brewery was producing two million barrels of beer a year, much of it for export.