A Beer From God

I didn't know the story of Arthur Guinness but read a brief bit about him today in Michael Frost's book Exiles. Here is the excerpt. It's worth the read.

"In 1759, a determined man named Arthur Guinness, thirty-four years of age, rode through the gate of an old, dilapidated, ill-equipped brewery situated at St. James's Gate in Dublin. He had just signed a lease on the property for nine thousand years at 79$. At that time, beer was almost unknown in rural Ireland, where whiskey, gin, and poteen were the alcoholic beverages most readily available. Cheap to buy, high in alcohol content, and readily available, these drinks were responsible for widespread alcoholism and indolence.

Arthur Guinness was a builder. He was an entrepreneur who could dream up business plans and marketing strategies, who could make a worthless brewery into a booming industry. He was also a devout Christian with a deep social conscience. He was concerned about the plight of young Irish drunks who wandered aimlessly around the whiskey and gin houses found on nearly every street corner. Once, while walking the streets of Dublin, he cried out to God to do something about the general drunkenness of Irish society, and he felt overwhelmingly burdened to be a part of the answer to his own prayer. Like a true apprentice-child, he decided there and then to brew a drink that the Irish would enjoy and that would also be good for them.

Guinness decided to brew a beer relatively new to Ireland at that time. The beverage contained roasted barley that gave it a characteristically dark color. This brew, well known in England, was called "porter" because of its popularity with the porters and stevedores of Covent Garden and Billingsgate in London. But Guinness's recipe produced more than your average dark beer. With its rich creamy head, it's the beer we'll drink in heaven. Full-bodied, smooth, creamy, slightly bitter, it's a wonderfully delicious beverage. In fact, it's more like a meal, since it is so full of minerals and natural trace elements. Guinness was so heavy and full of iron that most drinkers couldn't drink more than a couple of pints. This, coupled with the fact that it has a considerably lower alcohol level than whiskey or gin, meant that fewer people were getting drunk.

So young Arthur Guinness made a beverage for the Irish that was good for them. Soon, his porter was overtaking the sales of Irish ales and English porters, and then became more popular than Irish whiskey. Today it is the national drink of Ireland." Pg. 190-191