490 THE BREWING INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 



changed ; now the smallest brewer who hopes to succeed has to 

 possess a knowledge of the principles involved in the daily routine 

 of his work, and the greater that knowledge is, the better, as 

 a rule, is the beer, for successful brewing depends very largely upon 

 an intimate acquaintance with the constituents used, an appreciation 

 of the result of any deviation from the normal, and an ability to seize the 

 psychological moment in each operation — qualities which are to be found 

 only in the scientific brewer. The truth is, brewing, like so many other im- 

 portant industries, has now passed from the empirical to the scientific stage. 

 This change was not effected at a leap, but has been necessarily of slow 

 growth. Much prejudice had to be overcome, and for a long time the inter- 

 vention of science was regarded with considerable distrust. Now all this 

 has changed ; the benefits which science is able to confer are generally 

 recognised and appreciated, and where science was formerly repulsed, she is 

 now welcomed with open arms. 



The Irish brewing trade is in many ways different from the English brew- 

 ing trade, and a few distinctive features of the Irish trade may be noted here. 

 Th S pr' 1 -^^ already indicated it is mainly porter that is brewed 



_, . . .. » in Ireland, though several firms are steadily obtaining 



Characteristics ot ^ reputation for high-class ales; but, perhaps, the 

 iribii brewing. most striking characteristic of Irish brewing is the 

 remarkable purity of all classes of Irish beer. Most English brewers use a 

 considerable proportion of sugar in some form other than that contained in 

 malt. Thus, in the year ending 30th September, 1901, the brewers of the 

 United Kingdom in producing some 37,000,000 barrels of beer used over 

 56,000,000 bushels of malt, 165,127 bushels of unmalted corn, 1,323,754 

 cwts of rice grits, flaked maize, and similar preparations, and 2,858,91 1 cwts. 

 of sugar, glucose, saccharum, etc. Whilst the Irish breweries made about 

 8.0 per cent, of the total amount of beer, they used nearly ii.o per cent, of 

 the total amount of malt, but only forty bushels of raw grain, less than 0.5 

 per cent, of the maize and such preparations, and about 0.3 per cent, of 

 the sugar substitutes. The small proportion of sugar used in Irish breweries 

 is shown by the fact that for every quarter of malt used in each country, 

 42.6 lbs. of sugar were used for brewing in England, 20.5 lbs. in Scotland, 

 and but 1.4 lbs. in Ireland. There can be little doubt that Irish beer owes 

 much of the high character which it bears to its purity, arising from the 

 almost exclusive use of malt. Beers of saccharine and sugary nature, not 

 produced from pure malt sugar, can hardly be described as nutritive, and it 

 is to the absence of malt substitutes, such as are largely used in England, 

 that Irish brewers owe their freedom from disturbances such as that recently 

 caused by the arsenic scare in Manchester. Other interesting features of 

 the Irish brewing trade are the absence of brewing for household consump- 

 tion only, and the hereditary nature of the brewing trade in Ireland which 

 has been already commented upon. 



There are several reasons why, despite the excellence of their manufac- 

 ture, Irish brewers have more difl&culty than English 

 How the Irish brewers in making their business pay. Not only is 

 Brewer is the population small, but, owing to the fact that 



handicapped. whiskey is more commonly drunk in Ireland than in 

 England, the consumption of beer per head is far less, 

 and owing to the sparse population, brewers' agents have to travel long 

 distances, and small supplies of beer have to be sent to distant parts of 



