Guinness Stops Brewing Ale and Concentrates on Porter

In 1799, Arthur Guinness stopped brewing ale at the St. James’s Gate Brewery and concentrated the business entirely on porter. Guinness had begun producing porter during the 1770s while continuing to make ale, but the dark beer became sufficiently successful for the brewery to abandon its earlier product line. The decision made porter the defining product of Guinness and established the specialization from which its later stout beers developed. By the time Arthur Guinness died in 1803, the brewery had built a successful business and an expanding export trade based on porter. His son, Arthur Guinness II, subsequently continued the brewery’s growth and developed additional porter varieties for domestic and overseas markets.