Inside the Real House of Guinness: 7 Surprising Facts

Although known for his eponymous stout, Guinness initially produced ales at his Dublin brewery. By the 1770s, a new type of beer that originated in London a half-century earlier arrived across the Irish Sea—porter. “It earned its name because the people who drank it before it became fashionable were porters, working-class people who worked on the docks,” Yenne says.

The addition of roasted barley in the brewing process infused porter with its distinctive dark coloring and rich flavor. Guinness produced strong porters, first called “stout porters” and then just “stout.” In 1799, Guinness stopped brewing ales to focus exclusively on his increasingly popular porter.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, physicians prescribed Guinness as a cure-all for everything from anxiety and anemia to boils and insomnia, thanks to its caloric and iron content. Doctors even recommended it to pregnant women and nursing mothers as a lactation aid. Guinness supplied hospitals with free bottles of “invalid stout,” which contained extra sugars and alcohol, and live yeast to treat skin complaints and migraines. The brewer’s famous advertising slogans—“Guinness is good for you” and “Guinness for strength”—touted the stout’s medicinal powers. The brand solicited doctor testimonials as late as the 1960s, and the beer’s health benefits are still debated.

In the 1950s, Guinness made a literal splash with a bold marketing campaign unlikely to be repeated. The brainchild of Guinness Exports managing director A.W. Fawcett, the 1954 Guinness “Bottle Drop” scattered 50,000 souvenir half-pint bottles around the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. Each bottle contained information about Guinness and a tightly rolled message with a detachable slip for lucky finders to mail back with the date and place of discovery.

To celebrate its 1959 bicentennial and promote its North American business, the brewer hurled an additional 150,000 custom bottles into the North Atlantic Ocean. Each bottle contained a gold-foil label, instructions on turning the bottle into a table lamp and a full-color tongue-in-cheek certificate “from the office of King Neptune.”

The publicity stunt worked. Bottles washed ashore from Canada’s Coates Island to Mundrabilla in Western Australia, sparking headlines around the world. The messages in a bottle continue to surface—including one dredged up by Hurricane Fiona in Newfoundland in 2022.

In 1951, Guinness managing director Sir Hugh Beaver found himself in the Irish countryside locked in a debate with a fellow hunter: Was the golden plover or red grouse the fastest game bird? Without an authoritative source at hand to settle the dispute, the argument stretched into the night until the Guinness executive had the brainstorm to print a reference book to settle barroom arguments.

“Now, you’d just get out your phone and look up the answer on Wikipedia, but back in those days, you couldn't,” Yenne says. “So, that’s why they started The Guinness Book of Records.” To bring the project to life, Guinness enlisted as co-founders identical twin trivia mavens Ross and Norris McWhirter, who famously memorized every record in the book. In 1954, the brewery printed 1,000 copies as free giveaways for pubs in Ireland and Great Britain. The book proved so popular that it went on sale in 1955 and topped British best-seller lists by Christmas.

Since then, more than 140 million copies of subsequent editions have been sold worldwide. The annual book of oddities and trivia set a record of its own, becoming the biggest-selling copyrighted book in history. (The 1989 edition finally answered Beaver’s question: The red grouse is quicker.)

As the Guinness brand spread around the world, the company sought a signature look to distinguish its bottles from competitors and protect against inferior imitators. In 1862, it created a label bearing the signature of Arthur Guinness and the image of an ancient musical instrument that represented Irish culture and heritage—the harp.

Based on the medieval Brian Boru harp, the oldest of its kind in Ireland, the Guinness emblem depicts the instrument facing to the right and was trademarked in 1876. After being established in 1922, the Irish Free State adopted the harp as the new country’s symbol but reversed the image to face left to avoid infringing on the Guinness trademark, according to the brewer. Over time, Guinness itself became one of Ireland’s most recognizable symbols—perhaps more than the harp itself.

As Guinness exports surged in the 19th century, so did worries about the beer’s consistency after long ocean crossings. Beginning in the 1890s, a Guinness quality control team sailed the globe to ensure every pint met the company’s exacting standards.

From Brazil to China to Australia, the quality-control agents took meticulous notes on storage and temperature, inspected the beer’s bottling, sampled the competition and kept a watchful eye for trademark infringement by counterfeit bottlers. After finding 70 establishments serving Guinness Extra Stout on his 1911 trip to Boston, agent Arthur Shand reported: “I am pleased to say that it was a treat to see the condition in which the Stout is drawn, all from ice-boxes at a temperature which made the article extremely palatable.”

British Empire outposts—including Africa—were natural targets for Guinness exports as the brewer expanded. The company’s first recorded shipment to Africa landed in Sierra Leone in 1827. Between 1939 and 1961, overseas trade of Guinness soared twelvefold, with Nigeria accounting for half of the exports.

In 1963, Guinness opened its first brand-new brewery outside the British Isles in Nigeria, where bottles of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout remain ubiquitous. Made with local maize or sorghum, this stout version is nearly twice as strong as Guinness Draught, with more sugar and a frothier head. After the United Kingdom, Nigeria is the second-largest consumer of Guinness, and another African country, Cameroon, ranks fifth.