Sorry to Say, The Irish Like Lager
A truthful depiction of an Irish bar. Notice all the lager?
When one thinks of Ireland, it's usually a pastoral scene that springs to mind. Endless expanses of beautiful green, stretching for mile after mile. Verdant primeval forests dripping with Moss and an air of Celtic mystery. Stone monoliths left behind by druids from ages so long gone no one even remembers them. Ireland is awash with stereotypes, dreams, and magic. Underpinning all of that, and feeding those perceptions, are the two beverages for which Ireland is most well known: whiskey and beer.
The imagined perfect Irish drinking session of a shot of Jameson and/or a pint of Guinness is what everyone from everywhere else in the world imagines that every Irish person is consuming all the time. This is sorry to say, simply not the case. The truth is this: The Irish Like Lager, and it’s the most popular beer style on the island, and it’s not particularly close.
Like this
While Ireland has an extremely long drinking history, most of the beer and whiskey produced on the island is meant to be shipped elsewhere. Those millions of pints of Guinness are, in their majority, typically drunk on foreign shores. The millions of liters of whiskey, carefully aged in used bourbon barrels and then slapped with differing labels like Jameson, Redbreast, Middleton, and other hallowed Irish whiskey distilling names, by and large are consumed overseas.
This doesn't mean that Irish people don't drink these things or that they don’t have their fans and popularity, but they are not what most Irish people are actually drinking. The stereotype shattering truth of any Irish bar that must be faced, is that the most popular beverage on tap is usually Heineken Lager. Which must seem like heresy to any Guinness diehard, and rightly so. Funny enough, a large part of the current popularity that Heineken enjoys in the market, is due to decades of effort Guinness put forth in making lager popular. Which sounds like another contradiction.
First let’s talk about Guinness. Guinness is probably one of the three or four best beers in the entire world (source: the Author), and their consistency in making it is unparalleled. A beautiful, black, near perfectly consistent and absolutely wonderful product that can be had from the depths of Southeast Asia all the way to the pubs and bars of NYC. Guinness is a minor miracle, and the company should be further lauded because they were one of the first major corporations in the world to offer housing and health insurance for their employees during the early days of the company in the 1800s! So why are all the Irish people drinking lager then? How did this even happen?
Ireland's history with Stout and Porter brewing is well known. Although originating in England (whom the Irish have no shortage of very bitter history with) Porter brewing caught on with the Irish in a major way and eventually grew to become one of their largest export products. Guinness is still revered worldwide, with important local rivals Beamish and Murphy's producing competitors that taste near-equally excellent. It is through the combined efforts of Guinness and Murphy's that we eventually get to Ireland becoming a lager nation, but it takes a few steps to get there
Just like Brian Boru liked it.
The first lager brewery in Ireland was Darty in Dublin, founded in 1891 and then out of business by 1896. Regal from Kells was next, and they lasted from 1937 to 1954. From then the next major lager brewery itself in Ireland was and is... Guinness! Harp Lager began being produced by Guinness in 1959 as a response to the popularity of imported German lager, and has remained an extremely popular Irish lager ever since.
The Ladies Well Brewery
The swinging 70’s is when Lager Brewing in Ireland truly took hold of the market, in a way that it has not relinquished since. To get the full story, one has to go back over 120 years to when James J Murphy and his brothers sold their first business, the legendary Midleton distillery (now owned by Irish Distillers Limited) to found the Ladies Well Brewery in Cork City. Murphy's Irish stout has been produced continuously since then and is still one of their most popular products. But by the 1970s things had changed, and sales were in serious decline. With the brewery under threat of going under, Heineken stepped in to help. Heineken invested in the brewery with the intention of reviving it as the production Center for Heineken Lager in Ireland.
Ireland’s favorite beer
Heineken was launched in the market in 1978, and became 10% of the draught Lager market in its first year. By 1983 Murphy's was wholly owned by Heineken, and by 1989 Heineken had become the top selling lager in Ireland, which they still are. Our Ladies Well brewery celebrated its 160th anniversary in 2016, and it's still where near 98% of Heineken lager sold in Ireland is brewed. So one can say that Ireland has a deep and rich lager brewing history that goes back decades and is tied to the most resolutely and authentically Irish brewing traditions
The question must be asked, what drove this shift to lager drinking among the greater Irish populace, and amongst drinkers in the UK in general? After all, cask ale is thought of as the stereotypical workingman’s draught for England, Scotland, and Ireland. So what changed? The answer to that, again, lies with Guinness and technological advances that they had made by the 1960s.
The big change that happened in the UK and Irish beer markets was the advancement in draught technology, or as we like to refer to it here in the US, draft beer. Prior to this time. Most beer was served in cask, carbonated with live yeast cultures, served at basement temperatures (50-60F), and pulled up through a draught line by raw bartender muscle.
The introduction of canned CO2 and refrigeration systems changed the entire tenor of drinking in the British Isles. The introduction of modern draft technology allowed everyone to have a cold, crisp, refreshing lager anytime they wanted it. Guinness and Harp led the way with this (this was during the same time period they introduced nitrogenated Guinness), and the result was Lager exploding in sales in the 60s and 70s. Heineken at this point had 20% of the Lager market in England and Wales, all of it imported. They were looking for a way to have an impact in Ireland directly.
The collapse of the market for Porter sales and the opportunity to invest in Murphy's gave Heineken the chance they finally needed. They swiftly moved production of Heineken to the Our Ladies Well Brewery, which had long since been renamed the Murphy’s brewery. Sales grew rapidly, and by 1989 they were the largest brewery on the island, not just the largest lager brewery. As crazy as it may sound to say it, Irish Heineken lager is as Irish as an Irish beer gets at this point.
Spoiler: Everyone in there is drinking Lager.
So there you have it, the Lager takeover of the Irish beer market is tied into the industrial advancement of the modern age. The demand for drought Lager was always there (the same as everywhere else in the world), but it was advancing technology that truly gave Lager a chance to thrive and shine in Ireland, and the results today are market domination. So the next time Saint Patrick's Day rolls around, if you want to drink something that's truly Irish, your best bet is to have a Heineken, and then maybe a shot of Jameson as well. Don't get too upset, the pattern is clear, all over the world everyone loves crisp, refreshing, golden Lager beer. And Ireland is no different. Slainte!
