Beamish and Murphy’s: Ireland’s Lesser-Known — but No Less Beloved — Stouts

No beer is as synonymous with Irish culture as Guinness. Walk into any respectable Irish pub in the world, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the almighty stout will be on tap. Every St. Patrick’s Day, roughly 13 million pints of the stuff are consumed globally. And the Guinness Brewery in Dublin ranks right up there with the Blarney Stone and the Cliffs of Moher as one of the top tourist attractions on the Emerald Isle.

But just like how we enjoy a plethora of macro lagers in the U.S., there are other tasty stouts that make up the Irish brewing landscape — notably, Beamish and Murphy’s. As is the case with Guinness, these stouts are rich, crowd-pleasing, charged with nitrogen, and relatively low in alcohol. While they haven’t accrued much fame outside their homeland, they’re staples in certain parts of Ireland, and by many accounts, both brews give Guinness a run for its money.

Beamish

The Beamish story began just over 30 years after the founding of Guinness. In 1792, butter merchants William Beamish and William Crawford took over an old porter brewery in Cork, Ireland, renamed it Beamish & Crawford, and established the Beamish stout brand.

Aside from getting into the beer game after Guinness did, Beamish & Crawford entered the market at a great time for the Irish brewing industry. Three years after its founding, politician and member of the Irish Parliament Henry Grattan removed an excise tax on beer, allowing the market to flourish in the early 1800s. According to “The Oxford Companion to Beer,” Beamish & Crawford had become the largest brewery in Ireland by 1807, with annual production surpassing 100,000 barrels. This remained the case until 1833 when Guinness took the lead.

Nonetheless, Beamish chugged along, remaining popular in its home city of Cork, and even going on to make a small splash in the U.S. in 1950. The beer ultimately developed enough fame to catch the attention of Canadian brewery conglomerate Carling O’Keefe, which scooped up Beamish in 1961. However, the brand never quite perfected the art of marketing like Guinness did.

Beamish ownership changed hands in 1995 when U.K. brewery Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) purchased the brand. Thirteen years later, Heineken International acquired S&N, and unfortunately made quick work to both close down the original Beamish brewery and pull the stout from all international markets in 2009 to allegedly focus on domestic growth.

Ever since, Beamish has been produced at Heineken’s Cork brewing facility (formerly known as the Lady’s Well Brewery), and it’s apparently near-impossible to find outside the city’s limits. Nevertheless, it has a strong presence at pubs throughout Cork, and many locals claim that nothing tops a “creamy Beamy.” The beer is also available in cans with widgets à la Guinness Draught.

The aforementioned “Oxford Companion” claims that “Beamish stout is a classic example of the Cork-style stout, with chocolate malt flavor more dominant than the roast barley favored by Dublin brewers.” Some, including stout fan and social media influencer Prime Mutton, have raved about the stout’s coffee-forward profile and subtle smokiness.

Murphy’s

Rounding out the last of the Big Three is another Cork classic: Murphy’s Irish Stout. After working at a Cork-based distillery, James J. Murphy and his four brothers purchased a few buildings on the grounds of a local hospital in 1854 and established the Murphy’s Brewery, a.k.a. the Lady’s Well Brewery, due to its proximity to a supposedly holy water source formerly used as a place of worship. Two years later, the Murphy brothers founded James J. Murphy & Co. and began brewing.

By 1861, the brewery was producing almost 43,000 barrels annually. Although these looked like rookie numbers to the likes of Guinness and Beamish, the brewery was quickly becoming a major player in the Irish beer scene. According to the “Oxford Companion,” “in its heyday, the brewery was a major competitor to Guinness and produced Murphy’s porter, XX stout, and a blend of the two, called Single stout.”

Over the next 60 years, the brewery grew steadily with virtually no advertising — save for an 1893 endorsement by German bodybuilder Eugen Sandow that inspired a series of Guinness ads in the 1930s. There were a few hiccups during that 60-year period, including the Lady’s Well Brewery flood of 1913 and the infamous Burning of Cork in 1920, but James J. Murphy & Co. prevailed. In 1921, the company opened a bottling plant and began packaging its stout. And in 1924, it embraced print advertising for the first time.

Oddly, the ads did little to boost the brewery’s bottom line. Over the following few decades, sales slowed so much that the company’s total beer production in 1971 was less than a third of its output in 1861. Murphy’s declared bankruptcy in 1982, and got bought out by Heineken International — just like Beamish — the following year, at which point the Cork brewery was renamed Heineken Brewery Ireland Ltd.

In Heineken’s hands, Murphy’s bounced back. The stout hit international markets in 1985, it eventually transitioned its packaging into widgetized can format, and a few television ads helped to boost its popularity in various countries.

As the ‘90s Murphy’s ads suggest, the brew doesn’t have the same bitterness as its competitors. A 2007 review of the beer published in Syracuse University’s Daily Orange student newspaper called it “a distant relative of chocolate milk” and “the lightest and sweetest of the three major Irish dry stouts — Guinness, Murphy’s, and Beamish.” And according to the brand itself, Murphy’s has notes of toffee and coffee with almost no detectable bitterness of carbonation. Luckily, the beer is widely available in cans and on tap at many locations across the U.S., so stout aficionados can easily taste it alongside a creamy pint of Guinness. However, for those who want to taste the Big Three all in one sitting, it’s a trip to Cork or bust.

*Image retrieved from Victor Moussa via stock.adobe.com

The article Beamish and Murphy’s: Ireland’s Lesser-Known — but No Less Beloved — Stouts appeared first on VinePair.