Guinness Begins Brewing Porter

During the 1770s, Arthur Guinness began brewing porter at the St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin. He had initially concentrated on ale after leasing the brewery in 1759, but porter—an English dark beer that had developed in London earlier in the century—was gaining popularity in Ireland. Records summarized by the Guinness Archive and Guinness Storehouse place the brewery’s adoption of porter within this decade. The change connected Guinness to the expanding international porter trade and laid the foundation for the brewery’s later specialization in dark beer. Surviving excise evidence indicates that Guinness was selling porter to England by 1778. Porter production subsequently became increasingly important to the business, although Guinness continued brewing ale until it abandoned ale production entirely in 1799.