Thursday 26 July 2018

Beer History : Lane & Co.'s Brewery, Cork - More Than Plain Porter...


So ... I'm not really sure what my fascination is with old Cork breweries, although I think the two excellent books on its most famous ones by Donol Ó Drisceoil and Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil have a lot to do with it, but it's also because I really like the city, its buildings, history and people. My biggest issue is that I don't get down there often enough...

I've previously tweeted these adverts from Lane & Co.'s brewery but felt they deserved a more permanent home on my blog to go along with my related posts about Lady's Well Brewery (Murphy's).

Lane's (along with Arnott's) was a competitor to Murphy's and Beamish & Crawford's breweries in Cork in the 1800s before it was sold to B & C in 1901, with Murphy's buying Arnotts the same year.

Both were closed...

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This first advertisement is from The Cork Examiner in 1843 and states that their extra stout was popular in London at this time and which is echoed at a later date by Barnard in his comments in 'The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland'. They also brewed a Porter, East India Pale XX and an Amber Ale - more evidence perhaps of early, elusive red ales in the country perhaps!



The next advert is from the same paper in 1894 and is promoting its Mild and Bitter, plus an early version of a tapped growler!

One of the points of this post is to show again that there was a greater variety of beers brewed in the country than many would expect, and certainly more than I suspected when I started down this brewing history road. It's worth mentioning that the Ó Drisceoil's also mention West India Stout, Double Stout, Bottling Stout, Mixing Stout, Single Stout, X and an XB being brewed in Lane's.

Obviously porter or its variants were by far the most popular style consumed up until relatively recently, but there were plent of other beer styles brewed...

Liam

(With thanks to my local library and Donol Ó Drisceoil and Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil's 'Beamish & Crawford: The History of an Irish Brewery'.)

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