Ahead of a new TV drama about the early years of the Guinness dynasty, we've got some surprising facts about the world's favourite Irish beer.
Later this year, a glossy new Netflix series about the Guinness dynasty will hit our screens. The series called House of Guinness, from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, follows the fortunes of the four children of Benjamin Guinness, brewer and grandson of founder Arthur.
Set in the 19th century, the drama will star actors including James Norton and Dervla Kirwan. The action will take place in New York and Dublin – with Stockport and Liverpool doubling up for the latter. Knight says of the show, "The Guinness dynasty is known the world over — wealth, poverty, power, influence, and great tragedy are all intertwined to create a rich tapestry of material to draw from".
Today Guinness is arguably the most famous beer brand in the world and is still as popular as ever. In fact the stout is currently so trendy with Generation Z and Tik Tok-ers that there’s been a recent surge in demand which has caused a shortage in some areas.
Owner Diageo said it’s been struggling to keep up recently due to ‘exceptional consumer demand’. Supplies earmarked for Ireland have been redirected to the UK in an attempt to fulfil orders.
One London pub – The Old Ivy House in Clerkenwell – even introduced a ration card, requiring punters to buy two other drinks before they earned the right to buy a Guinness. Rather apt for a drink with the slogan, ‘Good things come to those who wait’.
But when was Guinness founded and how did it become such a phenomenon? Here, ahead of St Patrick’s Day on March 17, former Guinness Brewer David Hughes, explores the history.
Guinness Stout is now brewed in 50 countries and sold in 153 countries around the world and that’s due to the ambition of founder Arthur Guinness. In 1759, he was able to obtain a 9,000 year lease at £45 per year on a disused brewery at St James’ Gate in Dublin, close to the banks of the River Liffey.
He started by brewing ale, but switched to brewing porter, a dark beer made with barley fashionable in London. In 1821, a stronger (8% alcohol) version called Extra Superior Porter was created which was flavour-matured for two years in wooden vats. It later become known as Extra Stout.
The iconic label for Guinness with its signature harp, Arthur’s signature and the distinctive Guinness wordmark was first introduced in 1862 and trademarked in 1876.
By 1884, St James’s Gate Dublin Brewery was the biggest in the world and huge volumes of Guinness were being shipped from Dublin to Liverpool.
House of Guinness is set in the 1880s, around the time the company was preparing to issue their shares on the London Stock Market. It was 20 times oversubscribed and was dubbed ‘the Guinness Rush’.
Overnight, the Guinness family became one of the richest in the UK. By 1986, when Benjamin Guinness stepped down as Chairman, there had been six generations of the Guinness family in charge.
The company was mired in scandal in the late 1980s, with former Chief Executive Ernest Saunders and three others convicted of inflating the share price.
In 1997, the company merged with Grand Metropolitan to become premium drinks company Diageo.
Incredibly, Guinness did not advertise their product prior to 1929. Then they employed the advertising agency S H Benson to manage their UK advertising, with John Gilroy as the account artist. Their iconic poster campaigns such as Guinness for Strength, My Goodness My Guinness, and It’s Guinness Time had a huge impact.
The toucan, the girder man, the woodcutter, the horse and cart and the zoo keeper (based on Gilroy himself) and his animal menagerie have gone down in marketing history.
In 2009 Guinness advertising collector Steve Tedds came across an original signed John Gilroy artwork for sale in New York. I validated the artwork and since then some 550 original oil canvases have been discovered, much of the art never used commercially and never seen before.
I’ve published three books showing the artwork for the first time, including Gilroy was Good for Guinness.
Like many, I became a big collector and an expert on their advertising and merchandise.
Alongside adverts, Guinness issued promotional material to pubs, clubs, grocers and off licenses. These included stand up show cards, ashtrays, playing cards, drinks trays, clocks, postcards, over 100 different miniature bottles, bottle openers, Carlton Ware figures, thermometers, tea towels, pen knives, glasses, lighters, calendars and mirrors.
In 1933 Guinness started sending doctors whimsical illustrated booklets with rhymes at Christmas. Over 40,000 were sent each year, up until 1966 (except during the war years).
Guinness did not bottle their beer, but supplied 12,000 bottlers with bulk beer in wooden barrels. Grocery stores, hotels, off licenses, pubs and local brewers bottled the Guinness, and many used their own design labels (approved by Guinness).
As well as Porter and Extra Stout, Guinness brewed small quantities of Invalid Stout and Nourishing Export Stout as a tonic for the infirm.
There were many more types of Guinness labels printed than for any other brewer, especially when the Foreign and Export labels are included. Label collectors love Guinness!
As I discovered when I worked as a Guinness brewer in Nigeria, the beer is incredibly popular in some parts of the world. In fact, Guinness has been exporting since 1801, when it launched its Foreign Extra Stout. The beer was brewed with more hops to keep longer and with greater acidity for stability in hot climates.
Twenty Export Bottling Companies, in Dublin, Liverpool and London, arranged shipping to places such as New York, Barbados and Lisbon, using their own labels on strong glass bottles – often Champagne bottles - sealed with corks and a lead capsule.
A sea journey to Australia would take about 120 days in the 1880s and it was a risky business. There are bottles of Guinness in the 1911 wreck of the Titanic, some 12,600 feet down and nicely chilled! They are probably still drinkable.
Guinness’s most ingenious marketing scheme was their “Ocean bottle drops” – literally, dropping bottles from the side of ships in the middle of the sea. The first drop of 50,000 bottles took place in 1954, and the second, of 150,000 specially embossed bottles, in 1959. Finders who returned the bottle would be sent a gold metal leprechaun that had, “Kissed the Blarney Stone”.
Inside was a message ‘From the office of King Neptune’, a booklet about the history of the company and, in the 1959 drop, instructions on how to turn the bottle into a table lamp.
Bottles washed up on the coast of North and South America and in the Pacific. In the 1980s, a wildlife film crew came across about 20 intact bottles on a beach in Baffin Bay, Northern Canada. The local Inuit people called the area “Bottle Beach”.
As a 22-year-old graduate I worked at Guinness from 1972 and was living in a staff house on site in Park Royal, which had opened in 1936. Due to my shift patterns, after 5pm, I was responsible for the biggest brewery in the UK. It was a fun company to work for where sport and social activity was encouraged, and many Guinness staff inter-married.
The supply of Stout to the UK was split 50:50, roughly along a line from Liverpool across to the Wash. Dublin supplied the north, London the south.
Park Royal closed in 2005, with all UK Guinness now brewed in Ireland.
The current Earl of Iveagh and the Guinness family are worth around £983m, and own a £200m stake in Diageo.
The Guinness name still dominates British culture, with various scions of the family becoming household names, like model Jasmine Guinness and It Girl Mary Charteris. Socialite, model and designer Daphne Guinness is known for her trademark platinum blonde hair and fierce make up, while TV producer Sabrina Guinness, from the banking side of the family, once dated Prince Charles and is now married to playwright Tom Stoppard.
The family is not without tragedy, however, with the death of Oxford University student Olivia Channon dominating headlines in the late 1980s.
David Hughes' book A Bottle of Guinness Please is out now.
The House of Guinness TV Show will be on Netflix in late 2025.
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