Bitter Brew

For almost two centuries Arthur Guinness Son & Co., Ltd. has stood on the banks of Dublin's River Liffey and brewed a dark and pungent beer. It is known the world over as Guinness, and it is Ireland's national drink in a country where the average beer consumption is 100 pints a year per person. Therefore, Guinness has been little advertised in Ireland. But last week Dubliners were surprised to see the famous slogan--"Guinness Is Good for You"*--plastered on Dublin's buses. The ads, said Guinness & Co., were not for Irish eyes, but for the benefit of tourists. "After all," explained Managing Director Sir Hugh Beaver, "if you went to Mecca, you'd expect to see some quotations from the Koran." But the ads baffled Dubliners. Said one: "Next, somebody will be telling us we should eat spuds."

From its huge, 64-acre St. James's Gate brewery, in the heart of Dublin, Guinness produces 80% of Ireland's beer (3,500,000 bbls. a year). It is the biggest and most benevolent industrial employer in Ireland (4,000 employees) and the largest taxpayer. Last year more than 50,000 visitors trooped through the brewery.

Pure Ingredients. Porter probably originated in London's pubs in the early 18th Century, but legend has it that the father of Founder Arthur Guinness discovered it while brewing for an Irish bishop. In making beer one day he burned the barley and accidentally turned out a dark, bitter brew that everyone liked. Whoever discovered it, the brew came to be known as porter because of its popularity among laborers and porters. An enterprising brewer put out an even stronger beer called "stout porter." In Ireland, only the visitor asks for "Guinness." Irishmen simply ask for "a pint" when ordering Guinness stout. At Dublin's Dolphin Hotel, the "quality" mix their Guinness with champagne in a "black velvet" (which was also Bismarck's favorite drink).

Although brewers said that good porter could be made only with water from London's Thames River, Arthur Guinness disagreed. In 1759, he signed a null lease on the St. James's Gate brewery in Dublin, which used spring water. While other brewmasters took advantage of porter's dark hue to hide impurities swimming around in their vats, Guinness insisted on "none but the best ingredients."

Pure Heresy. By the end of the 18th Century, Guinness, grown to be the biggest brewery in Ireland, was rocked by the only crisis that has ever really shaken the firm. In Catholic Ireland, the Protestant Guinnesses were accused of signing an anti-Catholic petition, and Guinness was boycotted as "Protestant Porter." Explained a contemporary satirist: "A learned doctor has analyzed the anti-popery porter [and found it produces] a disposition to bowels particularly lax, an inclination to pravity and to singing praises of the Lord through the nose." The trouble was, he said, that Guinness had its porter makers "mash up stereotype Protestant Bibles and Methodist hymn books . . . thus impregnating, in the act of fermentation, the volatile parts of the porter with the pure ethereal essence of heresy."

Guinness outlived the religious persecution and its fame spread. A weary soldier fighting against Napoleon at Waterloo wrote in his diary: "When I [could] take some nourishment, I felt the most extraordinary desire for a glass of Guinness." Doctors wrote in to say that they found Guinness good for everything from "insomnia, neurasthenia, debility and constipation" to an "effective aid for nursing mothers." Guinness tried to get stout admitted into the U.S. during Prohibition as a medicine, but the Treasury Department coldly said no.

No Hurry. The boss of Guinness is the second Earl of Iveagh (rhymes with diver), 76, pink-cheeked, white-haired great-great-grandson of the founder. Lord Iveagh, who by preference and habit drinks only Guinness or water, was twice winner (1895-96) of the Diamond Sculls at the Henley Regatta, pioneered pure milk production in England, now runs a dairy farm on his 23,000-acre estate in England. Lord Iveagh and the Guinness family still have controlling stock in the company which, in 1950, earned -L-1.9 million ($5.3 million).

Under Lord Iveagh the company began its first advertising in 1928 in England. It quickly became Britain's biggest advertiser. Business boomed, and it built a London brewery. In 1948 Guinness also opened a small American brewery (100,000 bbls.-a-year capacity) in Long Island City. It found New York's tap water as suitable as that from Dublin springs.

But Americans, used to a light, mild-tasting beer, did not take to the bitter draught. And when Guinness launched an advertising campaign, the Treasury censored its famed slogans, including "My Goodness, My Guinness" (a weak substitute: "A Man's Drink").

Though U.S. sales have gone up slowly, Americans still aren't convinced that Guinness is good. Arthur Guinness Son & Co., Ltd. is in no big hurry. Says old Guinness hand and U.S. production director John Anderson: "We're plotting for the year 2000."

* Dublin-born James Joyce, in Finnegans Wake, preferred his own version: "genghis is ghoon for you."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.