Catherine The Great (Catherine II) reigned as Empress of Russia from July 1762 until her death in November 1796, and it is generally recognized that she was responsible for a revitalizing period of modernization in that country. She oversaw an expansion of the Russian Empire (adding around 200,000 square miles), and during her reign Russia became one of the great powers of Europe. She assumed power after a conspiracy deposed her husband, Peter III. Perhaps Catherine’s greatest feat was to enact measures that enabled Russia to be governed more efficiently, and these resulted in the country being divided into provinces and districts.
Catherine agreed to a commercial treaty with Britain in 1766, although she was wary about British military power. One rather unusual outcome of her contact with Britain was her reported predilection for London stout. Henry Thrale’s Anchor Brewery in Southwark brewed such a drink, which was exported to the Russian Court from the 1780s onward, arriving via Danzig and the Baltic States. This was a very strong “export stout” with an original gravity of approximately 25 degrees Plato and probably reached nearly 12% ABV. By 1781 Thrale had sold his brewery to his brewing supervisor, John Perkins, and a member of the Barclay banking family. The drink acquired the soubriquet “Barclay Perkins Imperial Brown Stout.” When Barclays merged with John Courage in 1955, the beer was rebranded “Courage Imperial Russian Stout,” and this beer was brewed in London (where it was matured in oak casks for one year prior to bottling) until closure of the site in 1981.