Walk into any public house in Ireland and it won't take you long to realize that Guinness is the most popular drink. Rows of tall glasses filled with that rich velvet-black liquid, generously topped with a creamy-white head, adds testimony to its unrivaled position. Though it is on sale in 120 other countries throughout the world, and is actually made in 31 of them, the correct place to drink a Guinness, as far as most Irish imbibers are concerned, is Ireland. Some reasons lending credence to this assumption include the softness of the water, the fact that it is Liffy water and only because Irish barmen have the art of "pulling" a good pint. The art includes "pulling" the pint in stages, thus allowing the creamy think head to form slowly. Arthur Guinness who founded the Brewery at St. James Gate in Dublin, bought a disused brewery in 1759 and started making traditional Irish ale. Shortly afterwards a new London- brewed drink made from roasted barley, appeared in Dublin. Arthur had a go at making this "porter", so called because of its popularity with the porters of Covent Garden (London) and Billingsgate, and by 1799 had switched all his production to porter. The first export shipment, bound for Britain, left the brewery in 1769 and by the 1820s Guinness was being drunk across the world.

The brewery can produce some 2.5 million pints of Guinness per day, with the aid of modern technology. But it still uses the same strain of yeast pioneered by Arthur Guinness. And the basic brewing process-involving roasted Irish-grown barley, which gives it the characteristic dark color, soft pure water, hops and yeast, has not been altered.

Since its creation, Guinness has promoted its wholesale image, which was summed up in the "Guinness is good for you" campaign, launched in 1929. Its benefits were praised by one of Wellington's officers, wounded at Waterloo, who wrote in his diary that Guinness had "contributed more than anything else to my recovery". By the mid-19th century, Guinness was being recommended to nursing mothers.