Brewing Irish Classic Beer Styles
Ireland was ruled by Britain for centuries, and the north of Ireland still remains a part of Great Britain. But it is worth pointing out that it was the Normans who first invaded Ireland sometime after they had conquered England. It would be a gross under-statement to say that British rule was mostly less than benevolent, but it did give them British-style brewing. Indeed, all the four Irish beers I am going to talk about derived directly from British, or more accurately, English brewers. Irish brewers took porters and stouts, which were quintessentially London beers, and made them their own. They brewed porter long after the beer’s decline in England and developed distinctive versions of stout, such as extra stout and foreign extra stout. Later there came a version of English bitter, which we call Irish red ale.
Agriculture appears to have been established in Ireland several thousand years ago, and brewing could have followed soon after. Recent archaeological work suggests that brewing dates back 3,000 years in the country, but there are no written records to verify this. A supposed 5th century manuscript is said to have described brewing procedures and suggested that St. Patrick himself may have been a beer drinker. It would not be surprising if he was since at that time most monasteries would have had had their own breweries. By the 7th and 8th centuries there were numerous written references to brewing and drinking ale (not beer, since hops were not then used).
The scale of brewing was small, most of the ale being brewed at the ale houses or monasteries where it was drunk. In England the wholesale brewing only really began to develop in the 18th century, although the commercial brewers of Dublin became incorporated in 1696. Even by 1733, out of 220 brewers in the region of Cork only nine were common or wholesale brewers.
A notable common brewer was Smithwick’s founded in Kilkenny in 1710. The brewery was founded on the site of St. Francis Abbey Brewery — all the monasteries and abbeys in Ireland having suffered the same fate of dissolution by Henry VIII in 1540 as their English brethren. Not much beer was drunk in the central part of Ireland where there was little in the way of a money economy, so brewing and drinking beer was mostly concentrated in the bigger port cities, notably Dublin and Cork. Indeed it would be in those cities that Ireland’s biggest breweries were to come later. Smithwick’s brewery must have been fairly small since Kilkenny was somewhat inland, and its output at that time would have been beer rather than unhopped ale. Hops would have been imported from England as they were not grown in Ireland.
Irish brewing remained small scale and pretty much self-contained until about 1750 when English imports started to become a threat, mainly the relatively new beer, porter. It was claimed at the time that Irish brewers were at a financial disadvantage because English brewers paid less in duty than the Excise levied on Irish beers. In fact, the cost advantage the English brewers had was more likely to have been that they were much bigger than any in Ireland and the so-called economies of scale enabled them to keep their costs down.
In any case it also appears that at that time Irish beers and ales were of poor quality, and they were somewhat slow to take up porter brewing. By 1773 only 3 out of 33 brewers in Dublin were brewing this ‘new’ beer, despite the fact that in 1765 Malone and Andrews of Dublin had won prizes from the Royal Dublin Society for brewing saleable porter. As late as 1785 an English visitor declared Cork porter to have been the very worst he had tasted! The result was that by 1773 London brewers had 80% of the porter market in Dublin, and some 25% of the Dublin brewers had gone bankrupt.
Of course, in 1759, Arthur Guinness set up a brewery in Dublin, but he produced only ales until the very end of the 18th century. His production up to 1774 ran to only about 200 hogsheads (about 400 US barrels). But Arthur was obviously a capable businessman and brewer, and the brewery was on a sound footing at the end of the century when English imports declined steeply, partly as a result of a variety of problems caused by the country’s wars with France and partly because Irish commercial brewing was finally coming of age.
In part the Irish brewers had learned the technology of brewing porters and stouts and in part they had begun to increase in size and to start to achieve those economies of scale (at the expense of retail and other small brewers). An example of this was the establishment in 1792 in Cork of Beamish and Crawford, which traded as the Cork Porter Brewery. They did so by taking over the largest Cork brewery (Allen’s), and investing heavily in it and employing brewery operatives who had trained at various London porter breweries. Soon after this Beamish and Crawford became Ireland’s largest brewer with an annual output of around 70,000 US barrels. Other Cork brewers such as Lane’s, Abbot’s, and Walker and Cashman were important contributors to the almost 400,000 US barrels of porter brewed in Cork in 1809.
Guinness had concentrated on ales until as late as 1796 when the brewery first began to produce porter. In 1801 the company brewed its first West Indies Porter, the forerunner of Foreign Extra Stout. By 1802 it was also producing four other kinds of porter and by 1804 it ceased production of ale and concentrated on porter alone. In addition to the West Indies, exports to England began to grow; in 1804 Irish breweries as a whole were exporting more beer than was being imported into Ireland.
At this time Guinness porter was brewed from a mixture of brown and pale malt only, so their porters would have had little in the way of roasted flavors, and would likely have been brown rather than black. But in 1817, a certain Daniel Wheeler took out an English patent for a kind of coffee roaster adapted to roasting malt instead. The product was very dark, being basically what we call black malt today. Use of the hydrometer (introduced to brewing in England in the 1780s) had shown that brown malt, on an extract basis was more expensive than pale malt. So “patent malt” was first promoted as a coloring agent for porter, allowing brewers to decrease or even omit entirely the use of brown malt while still enabling them to achieve the right color.
This new malt caught on very quickly in both England and Ireland. In 1819 two maltsters, the Plunketts set up roasting houses in Dublin literally outside the walls of the Guinness brewery, so were presumably selling it directly to Guinness. The importance of this step is that it led to the idea that a roast flavor was desirable in stout, and so led up to today’s Irish dry stout style.
Guinness went from strength to strength (take that as a pun if you like) and by 1825 was exporting its beers not only to the West Indies, but also to the East Indies and the USA. In 1833 it surpassed Beamish and Crawford as Ireland’s largest brewer. Between then and 1850 Irish brewing in general began to decline somewhat in part because of a temperance campaign, but more seriously due to increased duties on malt and hops. In Cork for example the number of breweries dropped from eighteen to only six during this time. Guinness, however, was little affected by this because by 1840 no less than 53% of its sales were in England and Scotland.
After 1850 the Irish brewing industry began to grow again, and James J. Murphy, already a successful distiller opened a new brewery in Cork in 1856. This brewed both porter and ale initially, but from 1862 its sole product was porter, until stout became a part of the portfolio in 1889. Just two years after start up sales amounted to just under 30,000 US barrels in total of which ale made up only 2,800 US barrels. Just twenty-five years later (in 1883) total output had risen to almost 170,000 US barrels. But at this time Guinness was producing no less than 1.3 million US barrels and was about to eclipse England’s Bass as the world’s largest brewer. Which makes an interesting point that the Irish brewers’ main products remained porter and stout, beers which had lost popularity in their “home’ country, England, in favor of highly-hopped pale ales.
There was competition for Guinness in Dublin, in the form of the Phoenix Brewery which had been set up by a London brewer, Samuel Madder. Madder’s porter had a reputation for excellent quality and the Phoenix Brewery lay second to Guinness up to the end of the 19th century. But going into the 20th century Guinness, Murphy’s, and Beamish and Crawford remained the pre-eminent Irish brewers of porter and stout. Guinness built up its exports to Britain by some very clever marketing and some famous advertising. It needed that because of the English tied-house system. That is many of the pubs were directly owned by brewers who allowed only their beer to be served in those pubs. Guinness never had any tied houses yet was able to get the brewer-owners to sell Guinness in their pubs. This was partly due to the fact that many British brewers had given up producing stout, so did not regard Guinness as a direct competitor to their own beers. So successfully did Guinness carry out this policy that even those brewers who still produced their own stout would see it as necessary to carry the Irish beer!
The beer sold in England was almost solely extra stout and was bottle-conditioned until towards the end of the 20th century until the company started large-scale production of draught Guinness, alongside pasteurization of bottled beers. In the 1970s, before I emigrated to the U.S. from England, when I was brewing at home I would get the wort boiling, then nip down to the corner store for a pint bottle of Guinness. As soon as the wort was cool enough for pitching I would drink the beer and toss the sediment into the wort and, remarkably fermentation would be well underway after eight hours or so.
Guinness became a global behemoth with breweries in Nigeria, England, Long Island (New York), and Jamaica, as well as exporting their beers to the rest of the world. But the latter three have now closed as demand for stouts declined in those areas. Guinness itself was absorbed by Diageo, a giant wine merchant and distilling company. A similar fate came to Murphy’s, who are now owned by Heineken as also is Beamish, but their stout brands are still in production and widely available.
Irish Red Ale
The origin of this style is unclear, partly because Irish ales took second fiddle to stouts and porters and for centuries were not widely distributed. However, red beers are unlikely to have appeared before the 18th century, because the color could only come from roasted malt of one kind or another. The first definite occurrence appears to have been in 1864, when George Killian started to brew Enniscorthy Ruby Ale at the eponymous town in the county of Wexford. This remained in production until the brewery closed in 1956. Some twenty-five years later the brand was licensed to the Pelforth brewery in Lille, France who sold it under the name George Killian’s Biére Rousse. At 6.6% ABV this was a fairly strong version of the style (4-4.5% ABV is more often accepted today). At some time in the 1980s the name was licensed to Coors, who introduced George Killian’s to the US.
There are now several modern versions of Irish red ale, brewed in both Ireland and USA. The example from Smithwick’s Kilkenny brewery may be the most authentic since the brewery had concentrated on ales since its inception in 1710, and its modern version arises from Smithwick’s No. 1, originally a bottle-conditioned ale.
You might wonder why IPA never caught on in Ireland. There is no definitive answer, but it may in part be due to the fact that porter and stout dominated the market, and these beers are very far removed from pale ales. Another reason might be that hops were generally imported from England or Europe, and were therefore expensive. That would have been particularly true for George Killian and Smithwick’s, since these breweries were inland and their transport costs for hops would have been even higher than for those breweries in the bigger coastal cities such as Dublin and Cork.
Be that as it may, Irish red ale should come in at ± 4.5% ABV, 20-30 IBU, and about 10-15 SRM. The color might originally have come from the use of a portion brown malt, and from black malt in the 19th century, but now is more likely to come from the use of caramel and/or roasted barley, with the latter giving a dry character to the beer. Some commercial examples have a buttery flavor due to the presence of a small amount of diacetyl. Overall, it has a full, malty flavor.
Last stop
The story of Irish brewing is a fascinating one; the Irish breweries may have been heavily influenced by their English counterparts but they were never dominated by them and they developed their own styles.
Guinness Brewing
Arthur Guinness opened his namesake brewery in Dublin in 1759, which produced mostly ales until the very end of the 18th century.
I should say something about Guinness’ brewing techniques here. Over the years they brewed a variety of products, many of which have disappeared, including porter, which they discontinued around 1972 as they slimmed down to Extra Stout and Foreign Extra Stout. Even so, Extra Stout comes in several forms, such as Guinness Draught, Guinness Original, and Guinness Extra Stout, and these may vary in strength depending upon where they are sold, usually in the range of 4.1–5.0% ABV. Foreign Extra Stout is mainly at 7.5% ABV, but this too can vary, and it is distinguished by having a sour component intentionally added.
The reason for this is historical, in that the beer always had a sour component due to the presence of wild yeast and/or bacteria in the brewery. This sourness could sometimes get out of hand, and Guinness carried out various blending experiments to control it. Ultimately, they came up with a better solution by preparing a concentrated flavoring extract whose acid level was controlled and which could be added to beer produced under more hygienic conditions to get the required flavor. The exact nature of this extract and its production process remain a closely guarded company secret. You cannot really do this at home obviously, though you could try acidifying the beer with up to 0.2% food grade lactic acid if you wish. I find you can make a pretty good foreign extra stout without any sour component, but that’s my taste!
One other development for the draught beer was the introduction of a special faucet to dispense the beer such that it would have a tight head formed of quite small bubbles. This was further improved by using a nitrogen/carbon dioxide gas mixture to dispense the beer, and of course by the introduction of the ‘widget’ to simulate nitro dispense in the bottle. Many now regard this tight head as an essential characteristic of draught stout.
Guinness has also used adjuncts, notably flaked barley and roasted barley. The reason for the first, added at 20–30% of the malt bill in order to provide good retention for that characteristic head. Roasted barley, perhaps first added on economic grounds, when added at about 10% of the grist proved to nicely accentuate the dryness of the beer without making it too harsh.
Early Irish Porter
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.063 FG = 1.016
IBU = 45 SRM = 34 ABV = 6.4%
A rich, well-hopped brown ale.
Ingredients
10 lbs. (4.5 kg) Maris Otter 2-row pale malt
3 lbs. (1.36 kg) Crisp brown malt (65 °L)
0.5 lb. (227 g) black malt (550 °L)
11.3 AAU East Kent Goldings pellets
(90 min.) (2.25 oz./64 g at 5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mash for 90 min. at 150–152 °F (66-67 °C) with 17 quarts. (16 L) of water; sparge to collect about 6.5 gallons (25 L). Bring to a boil and add Goldings hops; after 90 min, turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65–70 °F (18–21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of 1.5 quarts (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal.
Early Irish Porter
(5 gallons/19 L, partial mash)
OG = 1.063 FG = 1.016
IBU = 45 SRM = 34 ABV = 6.4%
Due to the high percentage of brown malt in the all-grain version, a one-to-one extract version of this recipe would be difficult to achieve. The specialty grains must be altered to obtain a reasonable flavor match.
Ingredients
7.5 lbs. (3.4 kg) amber liquid malt extract (20 °L)
0.5 lb. (227 g) pale 2-row malt
0.5 lb. (227 g) caramel malt (60 °L)
0.5 lb. (227 g) Crisp brown malt (65 °L)
0.5 lb. (227 g) black malt (550 °L)
12.5 AAU East Kent Goldings pellets
(60 min.) (2.5 oz./71 g at 5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Put all grains in a muslin bag and mash for 1 hr. with 4 qts. (4 L) of water at 150–152 °F (66–67 °C). Turn off heat, collect the liquid and rinse the bag with 4 qts. (4 L) of hot water. Collect the liquid from this, combine the two worts, and thoroughly stir in the extract until fully dissolved. Top off to 6 gallons (23 L). Bring to boil, add the Goldings hops and boil for 60 minutes. Turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65–70 °F (18–21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of 1.5 quarts (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal.
Irish Dry Stout
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.044 FG = 1.010
IBU = 34 SRM = 39 ABV = 4.4%
A dark, roasty, sessionable ale.
Ingredients
7.5 lbs. (3.4 kg) US 2-row pale malt
1 lb. (0.45 kg) flaked barley
0.5 lb. (227 g) Simpsons roasted barley (550 °L)
0.5 lb. (227 g) Crisp black malt (600 °L)
8.5 AAU US Fuggles pellets (90 min.)
(1.7 oz./48 g at 5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mash at 148–150 °F (64–66 °C) with 12 qts. (11.3 L) for 90 min.; sparge to collect about 6.5 gallons (25 L). Bring to a boil and add Fuggles hops. After 90 min, turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65–70 °F (18-21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of 1.5 quarts (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal. Ideally this should
be served with mixed gas through a stout faucet.
Irish Dry Stout
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.044 FG = 1.010
IBU = 34 SRM = 40 ABV = 4.4%
Ingredients
5.5 lb. (2.5 kg) amber liquid malt extract (20 oL)
0.5 lb. (227 g) Simpsons roasted barley (550 °L)
0.5 lb. (227 g) Crisp black malt (600 °L)
9 AAU US Fuggles pellets (60 min.)
(1.8 oz./51 g at 5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Put the grains in a muslin bag and steep for 20–30 minutes in 4 qts. (4 L) hot water at about 160 oF (71 oC). Collect the liquid and rinse the bag with 4 qts. (4 L) of hot water. Collect the liquid from this, combine the two worts and thoroughly stir in the extract until fully dissolved. Top off to 6 gallons (23 L). Bring to boil, add the Fuggles hops and boil for 60 minutes. Turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65–70 °F (18–21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of 1.5 quarts (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal. Ideally this should be served with mixed gas through a stout faucet.
Foreign Extra Stout
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.076 FG = 1.020
IBU = 75 SRM = 55 ABV = 7.7%
A hoppy dark ale with roasty flavors.
Ingredients
9 lbs. (4.1 kg) UK mild ale malt
5 lbs. (2.3 kg) Briess Munich malt
0.5 lb. (227 g) Belgian Special B malt (140 °L)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) Briess Blackprinz® malt (500 °L)
1 lb. (0.45 kg) roasted barley (300 °L)
20 AAU US Fuggles pellets (90 min.)
(4 oz./114 g at 5% alpha acid)
Wyeast 1187 (Ringwood Ale) or Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Several days ahead of brew day, make an appropriate size yeast starter or pitch two packs of yeast. Mash at 152 to 154 °F (67 to 68 °C) with 20 quarts (19 L) of water for 90 minutes; sparge to collect about 6.5 gallons (25 L). Bring to a boil and add Fuggles hops; after 90 min, turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65–70 °F (18–21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of two 1.5 quarts (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal.
Foreign Extra Stout II
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.072 FG = 1.018
IBU = 65 SRM = 48 ABV = 7.4%
Ingredients
7 lbs. (3.2 kg) amber liquid malt extract (20 °L)
1.75 lbs. (790 g) amber dried malt extract
0.5 lb. (227 g) Belgian Special B malt (140 °L)
1 lb. (454 g) Bairds roasted barley (550 °L)
18.5 AAU East Kent Goldings pellets
(60 min.) (3.7 oz./105 g at 5% alpha acid)
Wyeast 1187 (Ringwood Ale) or Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Several days ahead of brew day, make an appropriate size yeast starter or pitch two packs of yeast. Place grains in a muslin bag and steep them in 2 quarts (1.9 L) hot water at around 160 °F (71 °C). Collect the liquid and rinse the bag with 4 qts. (4 L) of hot water. Collect the liquid from this, combine the two worts and thoroughly stir in the extract until fully dissolved. Top off to 6 gallons (23 L). Bring to boil, add the Goldings hops and boil for 60 minutes. Turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65–70 °F (18–21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of two 1.5 quarts (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal.
Irish Red Ale
(5 gallons/19 L, all-grain)
OG = 1.042 FG = 1.010
IBU = 28 SRM = 10 ABV = 4.1%
A light-bodied amber-red ale with a caramel flavor.
Ingredients
8 lbs. (3.6 kg) 2-row pale malt
0.5 lb. (227 g) caramel malt (60 °L)
2 oz. (57 g) Fawcett pale chocolate malt (±200 °L)
7 AAU English Goldings hop pellets
(90 min.) (1.4 oz./40 g at 5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Mash for 90 min. at 152–154 °F (67-68 °C) with 12 quarts (11 L) of water; sparge to collect about 6.5 gallons (25 L). Bring to a boil and add Goldings hops; after 90 min, turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65-70 °F (18–21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of 1.5 quarts (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal.
Irish Red Ale
(5 gallons/19 L, extract with grains)
OG = 1.042 FG = 1.010
IBU = 28 SRM = 11 ABV = 4.1%
Ingredients
5.5 lbs. (2.5 kg) pale liquid malt extract
0.5 lb. (227 g) caramel malt (60 °L)
2 oz. (57 g) Fawcett pale chocolate malt (±200 °L)
7.5 AAU English Goldings hop pellets
(60 min.) (1.5 oz./42 g at 5% alpha acids)
Wyeast 1084 (Irish Ale) or White Labs WLP004 (Irish Ale) yeast
2⁄3 cup corn sugar (if priming)
Step by Step
Place grains in a muslin bag and steep them in 2 quarts (1.9 L) hot water at around 160 °F (71 °C). Collect the liquid and rinse the bag with 2 qts. (1.9 L) of hot water. Collect the liquid from this, combine the two worts and thoroughly stir in the extract until fully dissolved. Top off to 6 gallons (23 L). Bring to boil, add the Goldings hops and boil for 60 minutes. Turn off heat, siphon wort off trub, cool to 65–70 °F (18–21 °C) and pitch yeast, preferably as a yeast starter of 1.5 qts. (1.4 L) prepared 2–3 days in advance. Ferment 5–7 days, rack to secondary and keg or bottle as normal.
