Our speaker on Tuesday 25th February was Rod Smith.
Rod had authored a book with this title and he gave us a potted history of how Guinness first started and what how the Guinness family developed the beer and their brewing dynasty over the years. The reason for his interest was his connection with the family through his mother in law. However, it was only after 22years of marriage into the Burke family that his mother in law had sufficient trust in her son in law to share some of the Guinness family secrets which lead him on to further research that resulted in him publishing “Guinness Down Under” book.
The family story started out from holy orders – Archbishop Arthur Price who was Vice Chancellor of Trinity College gave Richard Guinness a home and income while he worked as his Secretary and Estate Manager. Richard had a son Arthur who at the age of 34 in 1759 took on the lease of a disused brewery on 4 acres of land at St James Gate in Dublin and started brewing ale. In the 1770’s he started brewing Porter using roasted barley which gave the brew a dark ruby colour and rich aroma. This special brew was so successful he stopped making ales and concentrated on what was to become the famous Guinness beer. The original strain of yeast has been kept going and is still the foundation of the brew today!
Following a further 2 generations of the Guinness family the brewery was inherited by Edward Cecil Guinness under whose leadership it became the largest brewery in the world. It was floated on the London Stock Exchange and Edward became Chairman. A member of the family was Chairman right up to 1986. The brewery had been built up and sales were running at 1.2M barrels a year, it occupied 60 acres of land and was a major part of the economy of Dublin and the country as a whole. Edward’s philanthropy was recognized by becoming a Lord Iveagh.
Subsequent generations developed 5 breweries overseas with licensed manufacturing occurring in 150 countries. In 1997 Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan and became known as Diageo (derived from the Latin word for day “dia” and the Greek word for world – because very day around the world millions of people enjoy the company’s brands).
Guinness is sold in over 150 countries and 10 million glasses are enjoyed daily around the world!
Jim Duckworth was the lucky winner of the raffle that had an autographed copy of the book as the prize!
Guest Speaker Rod Smith
President Mike with Guest Speaker Rod Smith and Jim Duckworth winner of the book raffle