Portal:Beer/Selected person/7
Arthur Guinness
B. 24 September 1725 – d. 23 January 1803
Arthur Guinness was an Irish brewer and the founder of the Guinness Brewery business and family. The Guinness family, though Protestants, claimed descent from the Magennis Gaelic Catholic clan of County Down in the 1600s, but recent DNA evidence instead suggests descent from the McCartans, another County Down clan. His father was land steward for the Archbishop of Cashel, Dr. Arthur Price, and may have brewed beer for the other workers on the estate. In his will, Dr. Price left £100 each to the Guinnesses.
Arthur leased a brewery in Leixlip in 1755, brewing ale. Five years later he left his younger brother in charge of that enterprise and moved on to another in St. James' Gate, Dublin, at the end of 1759. By 1767 he was the master of the Dublin Corporation of Brewers. His first actual sales of porter were listed on tax (excise) data from 1778, and it seems that other Dublin brewers had experimented in brewing porter beer from the 1760s. His major achievement was in expanding his brewery in 1797–99. Thereafter he brewed only porter and employed members of the Purser family who had brewed porter in London from the 1770s. The Pursers became partners in the brewery for most of the 1800s. By his death in 1803 the annual brewery output was over 20,000 barrels. (Full article...)