ABSTRACT

In contrast to Britain, the market for beer in Ireland remained fairly limited prior to the mid-nineteenth century. Despite all the best efforts of the Irish administration to subordinate spirit production, while simultaneously encouraging brewing, the expected shift to beer consumption never materialised. Robert Peel observed in 1817 that ‘whiskey from long habit’ was still the nations favoured drink (Shipkey 1973:295). A few years later in 1823, the Dublin brewer, Arthur Guinness, informed the Irish Revenue Commissioners that beer was drunk predominantly in the towns and cities of Munster and Leinster and to a lesser extent in parts of Connacht. He pointed out that the urban working class were the main consumers, while ‘the lowest order of people’ had a greater preference for whiskey (Malcolm 1986:26). With a much smaller urban working class compared with Britain, and a stronger predilection towards whiskey and poteen amongst a large rural peasantry, the prospects for the brewer’s art in early nineteenth-century Ireland did not at first glance look promising. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, Guinness had become the largest brewery in the world.