What does it tell you about the world that if you want to access the electronic archives of The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, one of the planet’s great campaigners for raw capitalism, you can do so for free, via your local council’s website; but if you want to access the electronic archives of The… Read More Stout v Porter: a northern perspective
Rarely (but thrillingly) a book comes along that makes everything else ever written on the same subject instantly redundant. There must have been more books written about Guinness, the brand and its brewers, than any other in the world. I’ve got 14, now, four of them written by people called Guinness. But the latest to… Read More Arthur Guinness’s true genetic roots
Where and when was the first Guinness brewery opened in England? If you answered “Park Royal, 1936”, whoops, the loud noises and flashing lights have gone off, that’s the WRONG answer, by more than 100 miles and just under 100 years. In 1838 John Grattan Guinness junior had been sacked from the brewery business in… Read More Bristol-fashion Guinness and the roast barley question
There’s an entry in The Guinness Book of Guinness, the volume of reminiscences produced in 1985 to mark the 50th anniversary of the building of the Park Royal brewery in London, which talks about the daily tastings of bottled Guinness undertaken by senior staff in the Park Royal sample room. Guinness being the sort of… Read More Out of step …
The arrival of increasing numbers of African immigrants to the UK in the 1990s meant that demand sprang up for Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, the strong (7.5 per cent ABV) version of Dublin’s black brew, which is made in breweries across Africa, and is one of the biggest selling beer brands on the continent. Guinness… Read More FES three different ways
