Because they owned no pubs and had a bottle-conditioned beer in every pub, Guinness mostly escaped the ire of CAMRA. And weren’t considered part of the evil Big Six, despite having a market share as large as that of Courage.
The company operated two European breweries: St. James Gate in Dublin and Park Royal in London. The latter was opened in the 1930s in reaction to trade friction between the UK and the newly-founded Irish Free State. In General, the North of England and Scotland received beer from Dublin and the South from London.
Before 1970, the vast majority of Guinness sold in UK pubs was in bottle-conditioned format. Most of which wasn’t bottled by Guinness themselves, but by other brewers or third-party bottlers. For example, in Leeds, all the Guinness in Tetley’s pubs was bottled by Musgrave & Sagar, a former brewery in the town.
In 1970, a satellite racking facility was built in Runcorn. This seems to have been mostly dedicated to filling Draught Guinness into 50-litre kegs. The beer came from both their Dublin and London breweries. It had an annual capacity of 500,000 barrels and was intended only to supply the North of England.
Guinness needed the facility after signing agreements with 19 of the 20 largest breweries to sell draught Stout in their pubs. At Park Royal, where kegging had taken place up until then, there was insufficient space for expansion.
For home brewers, Guinness Extra Stout was an excellent source of a very active yeast. Me and my brother used it often.
I was in a pub in south Manchester around the time Guinness closed their Park Royal Brewery in London in the mid 2000s and there was all this advertising stuff around the place trying to put a PR spin on the decision by proclaiming that all their stout now came from Dublin, which was pretty disingenuous given, as you say, that the North of England had always been supplied from there anyway.
ReplyDeleteStrictly speaking, the Republic didn't come into being until 1937, a year after Park Royal opened, but De Valera had certainly been moving things in that direction since he took power in 1932, kicking off the Anglo-Irish Trade War which made the London brewery necessary.
ReplyDeletePointless trade war for the sake of parish pumping which may have killed off independent small brewers.
DeleteOscar
Even more strictly speaking, Ireland didn't technically become a republic until 1949 when it left the Commonwealth and the King ceased to be the titular head of the Irish Free State, which he continued to be in other Dominions like Canada and Australia. As Beer Nut says, it was de facto one after the 1937 constitution abolished the post of Governor General and replaced him with an elected President (De Valera described Ireland after this point as a republic externally associated with the British Empire and opposed it leaving the Commonwealth as both unnecessary and a barrier to reunification with the North).
ReplyDelete1949 was when the Republic was recognised in British law, but that doesn't count from the Irish perspective.
ReplyDeleteYes, The brewery where i worked for a time kegged and bottled Guiness for its own trade, It arrived unfiltered and unpasterised and was IMO, a lot nicer than when it left the brewery in its packaged forms.
ReplyDeleteBut thats just me.
Beer Nut,
ReplyDeleteI've changed it to Irish Free State. Is that correct for the 1930s?
An interesting fact is that 100 pubs in the spring of 1973 both sides of the border still served casked Guinness.
DeleteOscar
Yep: Free State from 1922 to 1937, or 1922 to 1949 for slow learners.
ReplyDeletebigLurch Habercom ,
ReplyDeletewhen was that? Was it still bottle-conditioned?
Question - given everyone else was doing it, why did Guinness stay out of the pub ownership business?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeletebecause they didn't need to. They already had access to all the pubs in the country. Why invest massive amounts of capital for no real advantage?
In the end Guinness won the others of the big seven lost.
DeleteOscar
I think that a chain of Guinness pubs with porter as their house beer would not necessarily appeal to many drinkers in 1970, even if that had been par for the course a hundred years earlier. Would we have seen Kilkenny and Hop House a generation sooner?
ReplyDeleteGuinness’ odd position in the beer market is possibly also a reason why it wasn’t taken over by one of the Big Six. If, say, Bass bought Guinness, they would immediately see its value plummet below what they had paid for it, as rival brewers would stop selling it in their pubs.
Sorry Ron, It was not bottle conditioned, It was 1997. It was part of my job in QC to take a sample from the back of the lorry for lab testing, More often than not, especially on Night Shift to take several samples usually in the vessel resembling a pint glass before it went for filtering and then bottling/kegging. PR supplied came in plain tankers whilst Dublin supplied in Guisness branded tankers. Dublin always tasted better.
ReplyDeleteDave Line and Graham Wheeler spoke highly of the Guinness yeast. Hard to imagine there was a time when it was fresh and freely available to homebrewers for the price of a bottle of Guinness. I know there are ‘Guinness yeast’ strains out there from the usual suspects, but one has to wonder how much it has drifted since.
ReplyDeleteGuinness was incredibly canny not getting caught up in the tied pubs game. Made the business much more flexible and far reaching.