Guinness E-Book

Bill Yenne

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 373

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

A perfectly poured history of the world's greatest beer. "Joseph Conrad was wrong. The real journey into the Heart of Darkness is recounted within the pages of Bill Yenne's fine book. Guinness (the beer) is a touchstone for brewers and beer lovers the world over. Guinness (the book) gives beer enthusiasts all the information and education necessary to take beer culture out of the clutches of light lagers and back into the dark ages. Cheers!" -Sam Calagione, owner, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and author of Brewing Up a Business, Extreme Brewing, and Beer or Wine? "Marvelous! As Bill Yenne embarks on his epic quest for the perfect pint, he takes us along on a magical tour into the depths of all things Guinness. Interweaving the tales of the world's greatest beer and the nation that spawned it, Yenne introduces us to a cast of characters worthy of a dozen novels, a brewery literally dripping with history, and-of course-the one-and-only way to properly pour a pint. You can taste the stout porter on every page." -Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Epigraph

Notes on Measurements and Terminology

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Origins

Chapter 2 - Arthur Guinness, Brewer

Chapter 3 - A Family Business

Chapter 4 - Generations and Dynasties

Chapter 5 - Bottlers and the Export Trade

Chapter 6 - Building Sales While Building Rails

Chapter 7 - A Public Company

Chapter 8 - The Guinness World Travellers

Chapter 9 - To the Ends of the Earth, and Manchester, Too

Chapter 10 - War at Home and Abroad

Chapter 11 - Trouble, Triumph, and the Toucan

Chapter 12 - Brewed in Britain and America, Too

Chapter 13 - World War II

Chapter 14 - The Postwar Years

Chapter 15 - Great Men and Great Ideas

Chapter 16 - A Family Business at Two Hundred

Chapter 17 - Nitrogenation, the Really Great Idea

Chapter 18 - A Lager Called Harp

Chapter 19 - Into Africa, Malaysia, and Beyond

Chapter 20 - Diversification and Expansion

Chapter 21 - The Watershed Decade

Chapter 22 - A Widget in the Pint

Chapter 23 - A Growing Company and the Perfect Pint

Chapter 24 - Guinness in the Twenty-First Century

Chapter 25 - Inside the Gate with the Master Brewer

Appendix A - Generations of the Guinness Family in the Leadership of the Family Business

Appendix B - Guinness Head Brewers

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

Any opinions set out in this book are those of the author and not of Guinness & Co. or its related entities. This book is not endorsed or approved by Guinness & Co. nor its related entities. The Guinness word and associated logos are trademarks and are used with permission of Guinness & Co.

Copyright © 2007 by Bill Yenne. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Yenne, Bill, 1949-

Guinness : the 250-year quest for the perfect pint / Bill Yenne

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN : 978-0-470-52417-6

1. Guinness (Firm)—History. 2. Brewing industry—Ireland—History. 3. Guinness family. I. Title.

HD9397.I74G859 2007

338.7’6634209417—dc22

2007024226

.

At the pub on the crossroads there’s whiskey and beerThere’s brandy and cognac that’s fragrant but dearBut for killing the thirst and for easing the goutThere’s nothing at all beats a pint of good stout!Some folk o’er the water think bitter is fineAnd others they swear by the juice of the vineBut there’s nothing that’s squeezed from the grape or the hopLike the black liquidation with the froth on the top!

—from the Irish folk song, “Drink It Up Men”

Fanny ate a whole fowl for breakfast, to say nothing of a tower of hot cakes.Belle and I floored another hen betwixt the pair of us, and I shall be no soonerdone with the present amanuensing racket than I shall put myself outside a pintof Guinness.

—Robert Louis Stevenson (letter from Samoa, February 19, 1893)

Dear Jack, this white mug that with Guinness I fill,And drink to the health of sweet Nan of the Hill,Was once Tommy Tosspot’s, as jovial a sot,As e’er drew a spigot, or drain’d a full pot—In drinking all round ‘twas his joy to surpass,And with all merry tipplers he swigg’d off his glass.

—William Makepeace Thackeray (from Burlesques, 1880)

That’s why people look for that Holy Grail of the perfect pint. They come toIreland looking for the best pint. People are always looking for that. Even I’mlooking for that perfect pint. That’s why Guinness is such a legend.

—Guinness Master Brewer Fergal Murray

Notes on Measurements and Terminology

For historic purposes, volume measurements are stated in the unit of measurement used at the time. S. R. Dennison and Oliver MacDonagh of Cork University Press note that Guinness measured beer in hogsheads consisting of 52 imperial gallons and barrels consisting of 32 gallons before 1881 and 36 gallons thereafter. An imperial gallon is equal to 1.2 U.S. gallons. By comparison, U.S. barrels (when used as a form of measurement) contain 31 U.S. gallons. A U.S. gallon is equal to hectoliters.

Currency figures are generally given in British Pounds Sterling, the form of currency in which the data was originally calculated. In 1900, a pound was worth $4.85 in then-current U.S. dollars, and in 1939 (on the eve of World War II), it was $4.00. In 1950, a pound was worth about $2.80 and, in 1980, it was worth about $2.22. In 2000, a pound was equal to $1.45 and at press time it was around $2.00. According to the Consumer Price Index tables developed by Robert Sahr at Oregon State University, adjusted for in inflation, a U.S. dollar at press time would have been worth $0.04 in 1900, $0.07 in 1939, $0.12 in 1950, $0.41 in 1980, and $0.85 in 2000.

As for terminology, this book, though mainly researched in Ireland, was written in the United States. Therefore, the spelling conventions are consistently American with the exception of the Anglo-Irish word draught, which Americans spell draft. The term draught is part of a Guinness product variant name, therefore, we have used the Anglo-Irish spelling throughout for the sake of consistency, capitalized or not. The product name now written as Guinness Draught was once written as Draught Guinness, but we have used the current term Guinness Draught throughout for the sake of consistency.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the people without whom this book would not have been possible, especially Master Brewer Fergal Murray. Thanks are also due Guinness Archivist Eibhlin Roche, for giving me access to many original documents—and more—and for her patience in working with me and answering my myriad questions. Special thanks also to Rhonda Evans for facilitating my research work in Ireland, to Matt Holt for believing that this book was important, and to John Coakley, who doesn’t know that without him, this book would not have happened as it did. Thanks also to the beautiful ladies who have traveled with me through Ireland, Carol, Azia, and Lisa; and all the people with whom I have shared a pint at Vince Hogan’s pub, including Mike, J. R., Dan, Nick, Todd (with whom I have also enjoyed some wonderful road trips involving quests for perfect pints), and Tom, who long ago helped infuse in me a passion for Guinness.

Prologue: The World’s Greatest Beer

Surely this is hyperbole!

How can there be such a thing as the world’s greatest beer?

I believe there can be, and I believe that this is it.

Even those who would quibble with such an assertion will agree that Guinness has a place of prominence among the pantheon of the world’s greatest beers. As we hear in the folk song, “there’s nothing that’s squeezed from the grape or the hop like the black liquidation with the froth on the top.”

Indeed. There is nothing quite like it.

In more than two decades of writing about beer and brewing history, I’ve been asked countless times to name the “best” beer, or my “favorite” beer. I’ve even been guilty of asking those impossible questions a time or two myself. The easy answer, and an answer often given, is “the beer I have in my hand at the moment.” For me, such an answer is usually not a flippant one because, wherever I go, I seek out the local brew, and the local brew usually has two of the characteristics most desirable in a beer: It is the work of a local craftsman who takes pride in his—or often her—craftsmanship, and it is fresh.

A global search for the “best” beer is a moving target. It is always qualified by freshness and many other factors, especially craftsmanship. The “best” beer is many beers. It might be a glass of Anchor Steam in Fritz Maytag’s wonderful brewery on Potrero Hill. It might be an astounding farmhouse brew or an exquisite Trappist monastery ale, sipped at their sources in Belgium. Or, of course, it may well be a pint of Guinness poured in Dublin itself, or at a pub called the Dubliner that may be five or ten thousand miles from the Emerald Isle.

A global search for greatness begins on the never-ending road to the “best” beers, for no beer can be great without also having earned a place among the best. But greatness is derived from many sources. For Guinness, this includes its passionate following who sip the two billion pints that are poured and enjoyed around the world each year. No other beer with a flavor profile so complex and so rewarding is enjoyed by so many people in so many places—in at least 150 countries—around the world.

While deriving greatness from its truly global charisma, Guinness also derives greatness from its unique sense of place. No other brand of such wide appeal is more endowed with roots that extend so deeply into its native soil. The Irish write folk songs about Guinness. James Joyce mentions it dozens of times.

Meanwhile, no other beer with such a complex and rewarding flavor profile has been enjoyed for so long. The greatness of Guinness comes also from a history that stretches back across a quarter of a millennium. When my mother’s grandparents, Matthew Cunningham and Margaret Fennesy, were born in Ireland’s County Clare in 1830 and 1840, respectively, Guinness was already permanently establishing itself as the largest brewery—and the leading stout in the Emerald Isle.

When my father’s grandparents, Dennis and Margaret O’Leary were born in County Cork during the Famine years of 1842 and 1845, respectively, Guinness was one of Ireland’s leading exports and the payroll at the brewery at St. James’s Gate was a powerful keystone in the rapidly changing Irish economy.

Though rooted in Ireland, the greatness of Guinness is without borders. It has a unique place in global beverage folklore. Guinness is a beer with a long and colorful history and mythology—while at the same time having a passionate following among beer connoisseurs around the world today.

The global search for greatness begins on the never-ending road to the “best” beers. For me, the road that has taken me on my personal global search for the best and greatest has taken me to many rewarding places.

One day, this search led me through that big black gate on James’s Street in Dublin.

—BILL YENNE

Introduction: What Is Guinness Stout?

A pint of Guinness is a magic thing—black magic. It is the rich color of dark chocolate, with an equally rich and creamy head unlike any other beer. A pint of Guinness is a magic thing that rewards the palate as no other beer on earth.

Technically, Guinness is a “stout porter,” a dark, top fermented beer that is strikingly distinctive both in taste and appearance. Culturally, Guinness Stout is an enduring icon that has been deeply intertwined with Irish life and folklore—both at home and abroad—for a quarter of a millennium. Guinness is a beer apart from mortal beers, but it is even more than that.

What is Guinness Stout, and where does one go to answer that evocative question? To the source, of course.

For generations, the Guinness brewery at St. James’s Gate was Dublin’s largest employer. Everyone knew someone who worked there, and nearly everyone was related to someone who worked there. The address has no number, for none is needed. Everyone in Dublin knows St. James’s Gate, and every Dublin cab driver I’ve met has a story to tell about St. James’s Gate and the beer they make there.

I was still listening to my cab driver’s story about his brother and his brother’s friend, and his brother’s friend’s friend, and their perfect pint as we drove through what has been the main gate of the brewery since before George III ruled Ireland and George Washington presided over that upstart democracy across the water.

The actual St. James’s Gate, for which the brewery is named, was the old medieval city gate through which people once passed on their way to the south and west of Ireland, or as they began religious pilgrimages to holy sites in continental Europe. It stood for at least five centuries immediately perpendicular to the location of the present brewery gate. Everywhere I look, I find myself staring at history and history staring back.

I’m here to meet Guinness Master Brewer Fergal Murray, not in a steel and glass corporate headquarters, but in the house where Arthur Guinness took up residence in 1759 and where his children and grandchildren were raised. Arthur Guinness brewed his first batch of beer within a stone’s throw of where I’m standing.

Arthur was brewing at this place for 30 years before the French Revolution, and nearly two decades before the American Declaration of Independence. His was the epoch of Mozart and of Handel, of Jonathan Swift and of Samuel Johnson, of Voltaire and of Benj amin Franklin. This was an age, it has been said, that bequeathed to posterity many things of lasting importance.

One such thing is the black liquidation with the froth on the top called Guinness.

Having inherited greatness from that truly great era, this singular beer has been brewed fresh every day for generations by men such as Fergal Murray. He started at Guinness in 1983 with an applied sciences degree from Trinity College in Dublin, as well as an MBA, and a master brewer degree from the Institute of Brewing in London.

When I mention his scientific credentials, he shakes his head and tells me: “My heart lies in being able to talk to people about the qualities of the brand. I’m certainly more passionate about that than sitting back and thinking about the science of it.”

When the man who makes the stuff uses the word “passionate” in describing his product, I know that I’m off to a good start. When he goes on to toss around phrases like “the perfect pint,” it makes me think that I’m home in my local pub talking with friends who are ardent Guinness fans. In fact, I’m discovering that the man who makes the stuff is himself an ardent Guinness fan.

The perfect pint.

Is that not, after all, what Guinness is all about?

The pint is point of contact between all Guinness fans and Guinness, and the mythic perfect pint is the often spoken Holy Grail of those who drink this beer.

How better to introduce the subject of the black liquidation with the froth on the top than with the ritual of the pouring of the pint, the slow and thoughtful two-shot pour?

“No other beer has to go through a ritual,” Murray smiles. “We make the ritual important. It’s theater. The ceremony behind pouring a pint is essential to the consumer’s requirement for a perfect pint of Guinness. It’s all part of the indefinable essence. The ritual and the crafting of the pint is about serving the beverage to your customer in the right way. With any other beer, you can just put it under the tap and hand it out. But with Guinness you’ve got to think about it.”

It is reckoned that more than four million pints are poured every day around the world, but each pouring is like a sacred ceremony. As any publican will tell you, pouring a pint is not something to be rushed. Three or four pints of other beer can be poured in the time that it takes to slowly and carefully pour a pint of Guinness.

“We do the two-part pour to build the strength of the head,” Murray says, slipping back into his scientific training as he introduces the ritual. “First, you place a clean, dry, branded pint glass under the faucet at a 45-degree angle, never allowing the faucet to touch the glass or the beer. You aim the font at the harp [the Guinness logo] on the pint glass, and pull the handle slowly toward you. Allow the beer to flow smoothly down the side of the glass until it’s about three-quarters full, tilting it slightly to straighten it. You stop the pour when the beer is about an inch and a half from the top, then you set the glass on the bar to allow the beer to settle.”

All good things require a wait, our mothers have told us, paraphrasing our age-old cultural adage. The more theatrical among us would call this a dramatic pause. The settling is the intermezzo in the process where the thirsty drinker is given the opportunity to enjoy the pint visually before he or she is allowed to touch or taste it.

As if by magic, a reverse waterfall of tiny bubbles the color of roasted barley malt surge up though the blackness from the base of the pint.

As if by magic. A pint of Guinness is a magic thing, and part of the magic is the visual show that we are required to pause and enjoy before we are permitted to treat our sense of taste to other forms of magic.

“You give the consumer a vision of the surge,” Murray says proudly. “People like to see this activity, which is unique in the beer world.”

What is this phenomenon that he calls “the surge” and others call “the waterfall effect?”

As with any good ritual, there is a story. As with all the Guinness stories, we’ll be getting to that in due time, but suffice to say the key word is nitrogenation. In my first conversation with Fergal Murray, he told me that I could do a whole chapter on nitrogenation, and I have. Most Guinness fans know that there is nitrogen in their pint, but few know the story behind it. A long time ago, in the late 1950s, a man named Michael Ash—a scientist, like Fergal Murray, with a passion—figured out that adding these little two-atom molecules would be part of the key to perfection in the head of a pint of Guinness.

“Because the surface tension of the beer is so strong, the nitrogen doesn’t escape,” the passionate scientist Murray tells me. “The bubbles float to the top, surrounded by the surface tension of the beer. That’s why they don’t dissipate as fast as carbon dioxide bubbles that occur naturally in all beer. The carbon dioxide bubbles dissipate because there is less surface tension to hold them in place. The nitrogen bubbles don’t dissipate. The nitrogen can’t escape because the protein-carbohydrate mix that holds the beer together is so strong. The quality of the raw materials in Guinness is directly associated with the sustainability of the perfect head. The strength of the head is one of the fundamentals of a good pint of Guinness. That’s why we do a two-shot pour, to create a foundation for a wonderful head.”

Pointing to the tiny surging bubbles, he explains that “during the settling you allow the consumer to see the wonderful surge, the activity of the nitrogen bubbles trying to get back into solution after they’ve been energized. They can’t get back into solution because of the surface tension of the beer, so they surge to the top, down the outside, and back up the middle.”

It is an art, but an art that can be mastered. When the surge is complete, and the beer considered “settled,” the publican tops off the pint with a domed head that has the texture of rich whipped cream, unlike nearly any other beer.

“For presentation purposes, it’s always best for a pint to be completely settled,” the master brewer says, doubling as master of this ceremony. “If you taste it before that, there shouldn’t be any difference in the taste. It just looks better.”

He explains that the surge and settle time is affected by the gas mixture and by the temperature of the beer. Ideally, the beer should be between 4 and 6 degrees centigrade (38 to 44 degrees Fahrenheit). The specifications for the temperature and the mix of gas are created to provide a perfect head, which measures 18 millimeters from the base of the head to the lip of the glass, and 22 millimeters from the base to the top of the head.

Adjusting the gas mixture is a lot like tuning a musical instrument. The only criterion is the end product. In the U.S. market, Guinness is poured with a mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide that is specified at 70 percent nitrogen, plus or minus 5 percent. In Ireland, it is about 80 percent, although, as Fergal Murray points out, this is individually tweaked at the pubs. He adds that in Ireland there are individual temperatures and individual gas specs for each line running from keg to tap.

“During the settling, the beer is building a nice, consistent strength of head,” he says proudly eying his work of art. The pint is “art” both in the work of the brewer and the work the publican, whom he compares to another profession. “It’s like an architect, when the final vision of his building is to put a dome on the top. He has to have a very strong foundation to support the dome. You’re allowing the strength of the foundation to occur by settling. You can’t do a dome if you fill the glass with a one-shot pour. You might get a nice-looking head, or you might not, but you won’t get a dome.”

Then the passionate man turns to that word “perfect” again: “To pour a perfect pint, you build that strength, you allow it to settle, and then you top off the beer, allowing this wonderful, creamy head to form. You don’t want it rushing into the glass, it’s always a slower speed top-off. The final step is to serve the perfect-looking pint.”

What is Guinness Stout?

Is this is it?

Yes and no.

There is more to Guinness than the ritual pour that is the point of contact between us and our beer. There is even more to this beer than the nitrogenated form we know in pubs. To half the Guinness-drinking world, nitrogenization does not exist. Nor did nitrogenization exist for two centuries before the epiphany of Michael Ash.

Out of the 250 years of Guinness history, there have emerged the three principal product variants that we know today. The oldest of these is Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, which traces its origin to West Indies Porter, first brewed here behind these walls in 1801. Next is Guinness Extra Stout, whose direct precursor was Guinness Extra Superior Porter—for which the founder’s son penned a recipe in 1821. Finally, there is Guinness Draught, which dates back half a century to 1959, the year that Michael Ash and the Guinness scientists figured out their foolproof way to create the perfect head on that perfect pint.

The three variations on the stout that comprise the heart of the Guinness portfolio contain essentially the same ingredients, although Foreign Extra Stout is higher in alcohol. This is because its ancestor originated with a requirement for a beer with higher alcohol to withstand the rigors of being exported over great distances in conditions such as existed in sailing ships in the nineteenth century. It contains about 7.5 percent alcohol by volume, although that varies slightly depending on which market in which it is found. The other two variants have 4.2 percent alcohol by volume.

Foreign Extra Stout is found throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and the Far East, but rarely elsewhere. Guinness Draught is found in Ireland, the United Kingdom, North America, Australia, Europe, and Japan, but rarely in the same markets as Foreign Extra Stout. Extra Stout is sold in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and North America.

“Before 1959, it may not have happened in exactly the same way, but great pubs and great bartenders have always been creating great rituals and great ceremonies,” the master brewer continues as he contemplates the carefully crafted pint of Guinness Draught and reflects on its two dozen decades of family heritage. “There has always been an art to drafting beer. Getting beer out of a cask and into a glass with the right consistency, the right temperature, and the right look, was an art, it is why people went to a specific pub. Being a draught publican was a real trade.”

Turning to a bottle of Extra Stout—for it is available only in bottles, as was the custom with nearly all Guinness for many years. He explains that “there is a ritual to pouring from a bottle of Guinness Extra Stout, but a different ritual. In Ireland, a publican will not pour a bottle of Extra Stout into a glass for you. He’ll give you the bottle and the glass. It may be a pint glass, a half pint or a tankard. Then you get the excitement of continuously topping it off yourself, of continuously creating a new head every time. You get the excitement of the explosion of the carbonation, and the lovely brown head. The bartender will never replace the glass. The bartender will just drop you the bottle. He knows that it’s your glass, and that you’re creating your own ritual. He’ll just give you a new bottle and there you are. This was a ritual in its own respect before Guinness Draught, and it’s something that we’re proud of.”

Far from Ireland’s shore, Foreign Extra Stout has also come to enjoy an identity of its own. “I’ve talked to Nigerians who think of Guinness as their national beer,” said Murray, who worked as a Guinness brewer in that West African country for more than three years. “They wonder why Guinness is sold in Ireland. You can talk to Nigerians in Lagos who will tell you as many stories about their perfect pint as an Irishman will. They’ll tell about how they’ve had a perfect bottle of Foreign Extra Stout at a particular bar on their way home from work.”

Yet, Guinness, in its various forms, is enjoyed in nearly every nation on earth because of the Irish, the people from that tiny green island in the North Atlantic. That, as they say, is part of both the history and the folklore of Guinness.

“The brand has been fundamentally associated with Ireland since 1759,” the master brewer tells me. “As Irish people have traveled around the world, they want to hold onto that piece of Ireland, they want to hold onto something tangible. Guinness is a great connection with home. When an Irishman travels, he’ll always sniff out an Irish bar somewhere. We know that we can be among our own and watch a rugby match.”

Indeed, it is the craic, the Irish term for good times, that causes everyone else to seek out a good Irish pub.

“We’re very proud that people will always gravitate to an Irish pub because of the fun aspect,” Murray smiles. “I was in Australia recently and had a fascinating night on my own in Melbourne. There was a medical conference going on in the hotel where I was staying, and the people were gathering in the lobby to go out for a social night and they were asking for the nearest Irish bar. That defines what it means. They were stuck at a convention in Melbourne and they wanted to go somewhere for a bit of fun. Their view was that to find that fun, they had to find an Irish bar. That sums it up. That’s why this feeling transcends boundaries. When they turn up at the Irish bar, the Guinness is the celebrated choice with which to enjoy the evening.”

Whether in Dublin, or in a pub called The Dubliner in Melbourne or Mombasa, the essence of Guinness is that which we seek, and this is what leads us through their doors—or through that big black gate at the place called St. James’s Gate.

“It’s a bit of craft, and it’s a bit of theater. It’s a ritual,” Murray says of the Irish pub, and of the pouring of the pint. “If you get the bartenders doing this in a passionate way, they’ll enjoy themselves commercially and they’ll be proud of what they do. Consumers will recognize this and they’ll enjoy their pint even more as well. Once it’s done correctly, it delivers an extraordinary experience to the customer. You get what is probably the most attractive beer product in the world. We say you drink Guinness with your eyes first. And the bonus is in the complexity and balance of the flavor.”

Today, millions of people visit Ireland to enjoy the rolling green hills and the craic. Of them, nearly a million visitors come to St. James’s Gate each year to touch a piece of Guinness history and to enjoy a pint of the most attractive beer product in the world—at the source, of course.

Will their pint be the elusive perfect pint?

As Fergal Murray has assured us, the perfect pint is dependant on the hand of the publican and the perfect pour. Beyond that, it is the perfect ambiance, the crafting of the perfect pub. This is one part the job of the publican—and one part that intangible something within us that reacts to the craic to produce that perfect smile, just as the nitrogen reacts within the Guinness to produce the perfect visual manifestation within the black liquidation with the froth on the top.

As the mysterious and enigmatic author B. Traven masterfully relates in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and as countless others convey in countless tales of quests for buried treasure and Holy Grails, the quest is as much about the quest itself as it is about the pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow. It is the search that inflames the mind and fires the spirit. In large measure, the perfect pint is made perfect by the adventures and the myriad of pints along the road that have led us to the mythic perfect pub.

“That’s why people look for that Holy Grail of the perfect pint,” Murray muses. “They come to Ireland looking for the best pint. People are always looking for that. Even I’m looking for that perfect pint. That’s why Guinness is such a legend.”

The perfect pint is, after all, a state of mind that you and I and countless others have created within ourselves as we have walked that long and winding road. You and I walk this road alone, just as we walk it in the company and the footsteps of others.

Long ago, before all of us, and before there were all of those pubs and pints and footsteps, there was a single set of footsteps on that road to the perfect pint. They were those of one Arthur Guinness, and therein begins our tale.

1

Origins

Brewing has been part of civilization since antiquity. Professor Solomon Katz at the University of Pennsylvania has found Sumerian recipes for beer that date back four millennia, and beer is mentioned often in ancient Egyptian literature. As H. F. Lutz points out in Vitaculture and Brewing in the Ancient Orient, published in 1922, Middle Kingdom texts from Beni Hasan “enumerate quite a number of different beers.” Among these a “garnished beer” and a “dark beer.” As David Ryder points out in the Newsletter of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, Egyptian beer “was also used as a medicine, a tonic for building strength . . . a universal cure for coughs and colds, shortness of breath, problems of the stomach and lungs, and a guard against indigestion.”

It has been suggested that the brewing of beer is at least as old as the baking of bread, and certainly both have been practiced since the dawn of recorded history. Indeed, the art and science of the brewer and those of the baker are quite similar, both involving grain, water, and yeast. In fact, the Sumerians baked barley loaves called bappir that could be stored in the dry climate and either eaten as bread of mixed with malted barley to form a mash for brewing.

Beer, by definition, is a beverage originating with grain, in which the flavor of the grain is balanced through the addition of other flavorings. Since the Middle Ages, those other flavorings have principally been hops. Today, a brewer typically starts the process with cereal grains—usually, but not exclusively, barley. The grains are malted, meaning that they are germinated and quickly dried. The extent to which malted grain is then roasted imparts a specific color to the beer, a step in the process that is obviously important to making Guinness what it is. The malt is then mashed, meaning that it is soaked long enough for enzymes to convert starch into fermentable sugar. The mashing takes place in a vessel that is generally called a mash tun, although the old Irish term kieve has always been the word favored at Guinness.

Next, water is added to the mash to dissolve the sugars, resulting in a thick, sweet liquid called wort. The wort is then boiled in what brewers call a brew kettle. At this point, most brewers add hops, the intensely flavored flower of the humulus lupulus plant. Originally a preservative as much as a flavoring, hops have been used by brewers for centuries. Throughout history, brewers have occasionally added seasonings other than hops to their beer. The Egyptians added flavorings such as fruit and honey, and certain modern beers contain fruit and spices.

Finally, the yeast is added to the cooled, hopped wort and the mixture is set aside to ferment into beer. During the fermentation process, the yeast converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Having been brewed at the birth of civilization in the regions surrounding the Mediterranean, the beverage grew up with that civilization. Beer is mentioned by Xenophon and Aristotle (as quoted by Athenaeus). Among others, the Roman consul and scholar Pliny the Younger estimated that nearly 200 types of beer were being brewed in Europe by the first century. The Latin texts refer to the barley beverages as cerevisia or cerevisium, root words that are still with us in the Spanish and Portuguese words for beer—cerveza and cerveja—as well as in the latin name for brewer’s yeast, saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Brewing, like wine making, was practiced in the lands whose shores were washed by the Mediterranean, but it was also practiced in Europe’s northern latitudes. Here, cereal grains and brewing flourished, while grapes and viticulture usually did not.

In the British Isles, brewing existed in the misty distant past, long predating the Roman occupation. In the first century, Pedanius Dioscorides, the Greek pharmacologist and botanist traveled extensively throughout the Roman Empire collecting various substances with medicinal properties. He observed that the Britons and the Hiberi, as the Romans called the Irish, used a liquor variously known as “cuirim,” “courm,” or “courmi,” an ale made from barley. Meanwhile, cuirim is also mentioned in the first century, the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), the central tale in the Ulster Cycle, one of the four great cycles that make up the core of Irish mythology. In these stories, the Irish king Conchobar (Conor) MacNessa spends his day drinking cuirim “until he falls asleep therefrom.”

The beer brewed in the Middle Ages was similar to modern ale, which is fermented at cellar temperatures using saccharomyces cerevisiae, a top-fermenting yeast. Today, such beer styles include porter and stout, as well as ale. These beers are distinct from lager beer, which is fermented at much colder temperatures using saccharomyces carlsbergensis, a bottom-fermenting yeast. Lager, whose cultural importance is described in more detail later, is also fermented for a longer time than top-fermented beers. Perfected in Germany early in the nineteenth century, lager is named for the German word meaning “to store,” a reference to the longer fermentation.

The use of hops to flavor the beer, which is now the universally accepted standard, originated in central Europe, while in the British Isles, bayberries and ivy berries, as well as the flowers of the heath and other bitter herbs, rather than hops, were used as seasonings up through the Middle Ages.

In the fifth century Senchus Mor, the well-known book of the ancient laws of Ireland, there are abundant references to the growing of barley for malt, and to the enjoyment of ale. Later in the fifth century, a man named Mescan is widely described as having been the brewmaster of St. Patrick’s household. In the ancient texts on the life of St. Patrick that were translated by Whitley Stokes in the 1880s, we learn that while the saint was dining with the King of Tara, “The wizard Lucatmael put a drop of poison into Patrick’s cruse, and gave it into Patrick’s hand: but Patrick blessed the cruse and inverted the vessel, and the poison fell thereout, and not even a little of the ale fell. And Patrick afterwards drank the ale.”

Thomas Messingham, the seventeenth century Irish hagiologist who published biographies of many Irish saints, made note of the fact that the celebrated St. Brigid of Kildare (451-525) was, herself, a brewer. Translations from Rawlinson Manuscript B512 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford explain that Brigid was extremely diligent about brewing high quality ale that was filled with nutrients. The Rawlinson papers also note that she once supplied 17 churches with an Easter Ale that she brewed from one sack of malt.

At the beginning of the seventh century, when Irish monks set out to revitalize classical scholarship in Europe by founding monasteries as centers of learning, at least two of them brought the brewer’s art. Saint Columbanus (543-615) and Saint Gall (550-646) traveled into the Frankish and Italian duchys, setting up a number of such cloisters, and legend has it that these places had breweries. This probably contributed to the tradition of European monastic brewing that survives—especially in Belgium—into the twenty-first century. A biography of Columbanus notes that “When the hour of refreshment approached, the minister of the refectory endeavored to serve the ale, which is bruised from the juice of wheat and barley, and which all the nations of the earth—except the Scordiscae and Dardans, who inhabit the borders of the ocean—Gaul, Britain, Ireland and Germany and others who are not unlike them in manners use.”

In Europe during the Middle Ages, each town had numerous breweries and a great deal of beer was consumed. As graphically portrayed in the scenes of daily life painted by Peiter Brueghel, beer was a routine part of life in Northern Europe’s villages and towns. Indeed, beer was a major element in the medieval diet. Boiled during the brewing process, beer was essentially germ-free, which meant that it was a good alternative for the typically unsanitary drinking water. Beer was also high in nutrients and food value.

During the Middle Ages, beer, like bread, was produced at home. The peasant housewife brewed for her family, the baron’s servants brewed in the kitchen of his castle and the monks brewed in their monastery. As taverns and inns sprang up in the towns and along major roads, many of these establishments brewed their own, much in the manner of modern brewpubs. Gradually, small commercial brewers came into being, brewing larger quantities for sale to taverns and individuals. Such establishments remained small by later standards, with a relatively confined distribution radius.

By the end of the twelfth century, a number of breweries existed in Ireland along the Poddle River, which flows into the Liffey in Dublin. In the tradition of St. Brigid, many of the brewers were women. Indeed, female brewers—known in Old English as “brewsters”—were common throughout Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. Barnaby Rich in his New Description of Ireland, published in 1610, gives an account of the brewing industry in Dublin during the reign of James I and Charles II. By that time, he estimated that there were more than 1,100 alehouses and nearly 100 breweries and brewpubs in the city of Dublin, whose population was only 4,000 families. Rich also describes at length the tradition of a certain celebrated Holy Well near St. James’s Gate, where an annual summer festival took place. St. James’s Gate was the ancient entrance to the city from the suburbs to the west. It took its name from the Church and Parish of St. James, which date back to the twelfth century. The gate is mentioned in the thirteenth century, and shown both on Speed’s 1610 map of Dublin and on Brooking’s 1728 map of the city. It was here, more than a century later, that Arthur Guinness would lease his Dublin brewery. The original medieval St. James’s Gate itself deteriorated over time and was pulled down in 1734.

“On the west part of Dublin they have St. James, his Well,” wrote Rich, “And his feast is celebrated the 25th of July, and upon that day, a great mart or fair is kept fast by the Well. The commodity that is there to be vended, is nothing else but ale, no other merchandise but only ale.”

The fair or festival of St. James was also described by Richard Stanihurst in his 1577 “Description of Dublin,” in which he mentioned booths and ale-poles pitched at St. James’s Gate in connection with the event.

Though brewing certainly existed in the vicinity of St. James’s Gate in the sixteenth century, it is not known when the first brewery was established here. We do know that in 1670, a brewer named Giles Mee obtained a lease from the Municipal Corporation that included water rights described as the “Ground called the Pipes in the parish of St. James.” These rights eventually passed into the ownership of Sir Mark Rainsford, a brewer and alderman. Documents preserved in the Public Registry of Deeds in Dublin record that in 1693, Rainsford had a brewhouse at St. James’s Gate where “beer and fine ales” were made. In November 1715, Rainsford leased his brewery to Paul Espinasse for 99 years.

By the turn of the eighteenth century, the brewing of beer in European cities such as Dublin was gradually passing from the hands of small pub brewers and home brewers to those of larger commercial brewers, who had first been incorporated in Dublin by Royal Charter in 1696. Soon there would be an industry consolidation that saw the rise of larger commercial breweries both in Ireland and England.

Among these commercial breweries in Ireland was the St. Francis Abbey Brewery in Kilkenny, which was founded by John Smithwick in 1710 on the site of a Franciscan abbey where monks had brewed ale since the fourteenth century. This brewery is worth singling out because today it survives as Ireland’s oldest operating brewery—and because the brewery, as well as the Smithwick’s brand, have been part of the Guinness portfolio since 1956.