TOPIC:

It wasn't completely random, I was thinking of the photos you linked me to for the brewery there. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> Would be great to see any old ads and stuff. Really need to get this lost breweries on the move again <!-- s:( --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!-- s:( -->

Would anyone take a stab at whenever the "golden age" of Irish breweries would have been, i.e. roughly what decade would there have been the most breweries, and how many would there have been?

95 breweries in 1850.
36 breweries in 1900, the highest of the last century.*


*according to Ron Pattison's calculations here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="www.europeanbeerguide.net/irlbrew.htm">www.europeanbeerguide.net/irlbrew.htm

The number of breweries is going to be closely connected to the number of people, so I would say that the peak was probably in the 1840s. It seems to have been the 1860s that Guinness, under Benjamin Lee, really began to flex its corporate muscle and start shafting the opposition. The Dublin brewers had a cosy price-fixing arrangement in place, led by Guinness who were making much bigger profits on it than anyone else. Maunders left the cartel in 1868, followed by others, and Guinness just put them out of business one-by-one.

In the country it seems to be more of an offer-you-can't-refuse situation: Guinness offered breweries financial security and an easy life as bottlers of Guinness.

We have 160 breweries mapped from around the 1830s, most with physical marks on the map, and some referenced in publications around that period (for which a dot in the town was added, coded to represent it was from documentary evidence).

&amp;quot;Barry M&amp;quot;:8wwpo248 wrote: We have 160 breweries mapped from around the 1830s, most with physical marks on the map[/quote:8wwpo248]But some of those wouldn't have been commercial, would they?

Also, in the trade directories I've looked at there are lots of "barm breweries" listed, and they wouldn't have been making beer.