THE BREWING INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 481 



The brewery buildings proper cover some five acres of ground, and while 

 overcrowding has been carefully avoided, the establishment is remarkable 

 for great compactness and ease of intercommunication between the different 

 departments. Numerous extensions have been carried out in recent years 

 under the supervision of Mr. J. St. P. Macardle, one of the firm, who is an 

 engineer by profession, and who has invented a number of labour-saving 

 appliances. His cask washing patents have now been adopted by practically 

 all the leading brewers in the country, including Messrs. Arthur Guinness, 

 Son and Co. The fermenting room is some 500 feet long, and contains six 

 fermenting vessels, of a capacity of 500 barrels each, ten fermenting vessels 

 of a capacity of 200 barrels each, and eight skimming squares, while alongside 

 the fermenting room is the vat house, similar in extent, which contains twenty 

 large storing pieces where the products of the mash tun are matured before 

 being sent on to the racking store. Close to the hop store, erected to hold 

 some 500 pockets, and constructed so as to keep this valuable and expensive 

 article as cool as possible, is the racking store, and alongside the cask washing 

 shed is the cooperage and fitting shop where a large number of coopers axe 

 constantly employed, as the firm import the wood and make their 

 own casks. The progressive character of the firm is shown by the instal- 

 lation of an Acetylene Gas plant, which lights the whole premises and is 

 undoubtedly the largest of the kind in Ireland, while another advance in the 

 direction of scientific methods is the utilisation of a machine (constructed on 

 Mr. J. St. P. Macardle's plans) for the supply of pure sterilised air to the 

 refrigerator and fermenting departments. Being situated in the heart of 

 one of the best barley-growing districts in Ireland, the firm buy their barley 

 direct from the farmers, and store it in the malt houses in Cambricville, and 

 in the branch corn warehouses and makings at Anne-street and Dublin- 

 street, but as they are not able to make sufficient malt to meet the require- 

 ments of the brewery, plans are now being made for extensive alterations 

 and enlargements to the DubHn-street makings. 



Owing to the increase in the volume of trade, horses and carts became 

 such a very serious item of expenditure, that the firm arranged with the 

 Great Northern Railway to run a special siding into the brewery, and narrow 

 gauge lines now thread their way through every portion of the premises. 

 The firm have a similar arrangement at their stores in Queenshridge, Belfast. 

 While spending large sums on the improvement of the brewery, and new 

 machinery, etc., Messrs. Macardle, Moore & Co. were very fortunate in secur- 

 ing, in the town of Dundalk, many of the best licensed properties, and now 

 that competition is so keen, these properties are of course an asset the value 

 of which it would be hard to estimate, and an interest in many licensed houses 

 in the adjoining counties, as well as in Belfast, has been secured. They have 

 from a very early period done an extensive military trade, there being 

 scarcely a garrison town in Ireland, which at one time or other they have 

 not supplied, while they have sent their brew to the troops so far as Gib- 

 raltar. The firm held the entire Curragh contract for two years, and at 

 present hold the Dublin contract for the sole supply of porter and stout. 

 No better idea can be given of the resources of the firm than the ease with 

 which they carried out the contract given to them for the sole supply of the 

 10,000 troops called together for the Irish mihtary manoeuvres in 1899, in 

 the Abbeyleix district of Queen's County. This entailed sending their 

 casks over the lines of three railway companies, and necessitated the 

 employment of over sixty horses and drays. The Army and Navy Gazette^ 



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