There has been a national shortage of draught Guinness. It\u2019s hard to believe that a vast multinational such as Diageo could have let this happen, especially over the Christmas\/New Year holiday, and given that sales have recently been increasing. My local was restricted to one keg a week and some pubs resorted to issuing \u2018ration cards\u2019. Demand was such that according to the Guardian, in December, a lorry loaded with 400 50-litre kegs (equivalent to around 35,000 pints) was stolen from a logistics hub in Northamptonshire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The capacity issue, if that is what it was, was exacerbated by the closure of the port of Holyhead following damage to its piers inflicted by Storm Darragh in early December. It was not due to reopen until 15 January at the earliest. There are alternative routes but these quickly became overcrowded. Diageo said, \u201cOver the past month we have seen exceptional consumer demand for Guinness in Great Britain. We have maximised supply, and we are working proactively with our customers to manage the distribution to trade as efficiently as possible<\/em>.\u201d Originally, they promised to maintain a full supply across the island of Ireland but they backtracked on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the increase in demand comes, I am told, from Guinness becoming the favoured drink of a generation that, curiously, I have also been told has turned its back on alcohol. Apparently, \u2018Generation Z\u2019 particularly enjoy a \u2018Skimmed Guinness\u2019 which is a \u2018half and half\u2019 mix of the normal product and Guinness 0.0%, which is becoming more widely available on draught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is, I think, a good opportunity to take a look at the phenomenon that is the \u2018black stuff\u2019, to which cask beer drinkers often resort when nothing better is available. Coincidentally, over Christmas, the BBC repeated a programme called \u2018Inside the Factory\u2019, a documentary about the St James\u2019s Gate brewery. From this I learned that the brewing plant is just ten years old and produces 20 million litres of stout per day. Hops are not grown commercially in Ireland, so Guinness source their hops from Worcestershire, including from Stocks Farm, owned by well known hop advocates Richard and Ali Capper. The hop varieties include Target. The 7.5% ABV Foreign Extra Stout is now also brewed at St James\u2019s Gate, as well as in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Jamaica among other countries, usually under licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It the light of the crisis, lots of \u2018interesting\u2019 information has appeared on social media, little of which bears repeating. I was surprised at the number of people who did not know that, since the sad closure of the Park Royal brewery in 2005, all Guinness in the UK been supplied from Ireland. For the full story of Park Royal, see Christine Cryne\u2019s excellent article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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