Thought this might be interesting…because I love Guinness.
History
Guinness started brewing porters and ales, initially in Leixlip, but at the St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin, Ireland since 1759, when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery. Ten years later in 1769 Guinness exported their product for the first time, when six and a half barrels were shipped to England.
Although commonly believed to have originated the stout style of beer, the first use of the word stout in relation to beer was in a letter in the Egerton Manuscript dated 1677, almost 50 years before Arthur Guinness was born. The first use of the word stout in the context of a Guinness beer was their Stout-Porter of 1820.
Guinness brewed their last porter in 1974.
Guinness Stout is also brewed under licence internationally.
The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005.
History of ownership
The grandson of the original Arthur Guinness, Sir Benjamin Guinness, was Lord Mayor of Dublin and was created a baronet in 1867, only to die the next year. His eldest son Arthur, Baron Ardilaun (1840–1915), sold control of the brewery to Sir Benjamin’s third son Edward (1847–1927), who became 1st Earl of Iveagh. He, his son and great-grandson, the 2nd and 3rd Earls, chaired the Guinness company into the 1980s, at which time non-family chief executive Ernest Saunders became chairman as part of the merger with leading Scotch whisky producer Distillers. After Saunders was forced out following revelations that the Guinness stock price had been illegally manipulated (see Guinness share-trading fraud), the family presence on the board declined rapidly, and today no member of the Guinness family sits on the board of the holding company Diageo PLC.
May 15, 02:19 pm
I went to the Dublin Brewery. Have you been there? I not you have to go—that 9000 year lease is embedded in a huge cylindrical block of glass, in the floor of the brewery, and lit from the bottom. The whole place is really well done. And the beer truly is better on site, if that’s possible.