Guinness

Guinness is a stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in the 18th century. It is now owned by the British multinational alcoholic beverage maker Diageo. It is one of the most successful alcohol brands worldwide, brewed in almost 50 countries, and available in over 120. Sales in 2011 amounted to 850,000,000 litres. It is the highest-selling beer in both Ireland and the United Kingdom.
The Guinness Storehouse is a tourist attraction at St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin, Ireland. Since opening in 2000, it has received over 20 million visitors.
Guinness's flavour derives from malted barley and roasted unmalted barley. The unmalted barley is a relatively modern addition that became part of the grist in the mid-20th century. For many years, a portion of aged brew was blended with freshly brewed beer to give a sharp lactic acid flavour. Although Guinness's palate still features a characteristic "tang", the company has refused to confirm whether this type of blending still occurs. The draught beer's thick and creamy head comes from mixing the beer with nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
Guinness moved its headquarters to London at the beginning of the Anglo-Irish trade war in 1932. In 1997, Guinness plc merged with Grand Metropolitan to form the multinational alcoholic-drinks producer Diageo plc, based in London.

History

started brewing ales in 1759 at the St. James's Gate Brewery, Dublin. On 31 December 1759, he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery. Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain.
Arthur Guinness started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term "stout" were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s. Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or stout and foreign stout for export. "Stout" originally referred to a beer's strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour. Porter was also referred to as "plain", as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O'Brien's poem "The Workman's Friend": "A pint of plain is your only man."
Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness's sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876. In October 1886, Guinness became a public company and was averaging sales of 1.138 million barrels a year. This was despite the brewery's refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were 20 times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading.
The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym "Student" for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student's t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student's t-test.
By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2.652 million barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market.
When World War I broke out in 1914, employees at Guinness St. James Brewery were encouraged to join the British forces. Over 800 employees served in the war. This was made possible due to a number of measures put in place by Guinness: soldiers' families were paid half wages, and jobs were guaranteed upon their return. Of the 800 employees who fought, 103 did not return.
During World War II, the demand for Guinness among the British was one of the main reasons why the UK lifted commerce restrictions imposed in 1941 to force Ireland into supporting the Allied Powers.
Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, "It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s."
Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more "drinkable". The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerised hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter.
Guinness acquired The Distillers Company in 1986. This led to a scandal and criminal trial concerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid.
In the 1980s, as the IRA's bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the harp as its logo.
In 1997 the company merged with Grand Metropolitan to form Diageo. The company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
The Guinness brewery in Park Royal London, closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James's Gate Brewery, Dublin.
Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts.
The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St. James's Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.
Initially, Diageo dismissed talk of a move as a rumour, but as speculation mounted in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed it was undertaking a "significant review of its operations". This review was part of the company's ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St. James's Gate plant.
On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for the development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development.
On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St. James's Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo and Guinness workforce in Ireland. Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland's 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK's 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London Stock Exchange denying the report. Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporate name Diageo for a brief period in 1997.
In 2017, Diageo made their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by introducing a new filtration process that avoided the use of isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.

Composition

Guinness stout is made from water, malted barley, roasted barley, hops, and brewer's yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurised and filtered.
Until the late 1950s, Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed "iron lungs".
Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass
in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead, making the drink acceptable to vegans and vegetarians.

Present day Guinness

Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO₂, giving a "creamier" and "smoother" consistency over a sharper and traditional CO₂ taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash—a mathematician turned brewer—discovered the mechanism to make this possible.
Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic "surge". This "widget" is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. Foreign Extra Stout contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste.
Although Guinness is black, and is referred to as "the black stuff" in Diageo marketing, it is also "officially" referred to as a very dark shade of ruby.
The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints influenced subsequent distribution and bottle changes.