Thursday 18 July 2024

A Shot of Beer History #1: The Real Baby Guinness ...

Did you know that prior to the invention of the mini cocktail composed of Baileys floating over Tia Maria in a shot glass called a Baby Guinness that there was a real version?

It was quite an English thing and didn't seem to make it back to Ireland, but it was Guinness stout in a third-of-a-pint bottle and was certainly an important size of serve if newspaper mentions are anything to go by. It was certainly around from the early 1900s to the 1960s, and possibly before and after. By the way, that same size of bottle was used here in Ireland for our relatively low alcohol barley-wine ...

Liam K


[Image from The Portsmouth Evening News from 2nd June 1956]

Please note, all written content and the research involved in publishing it here is my own unless otherwise stated and cannot be reproduced elsewhere without permission, full credit to its sources, and a link back to this post. Newspaper research was thanks to The British Newspaper Archive, who have kindly let me share the above image. DO NOT STEAL THIS CONTENT!

2 comments:

Rob Sterowski said...

Between the wars McEwan's of Edinburgh also tried to get people ordering a "Baby Mac", which was their strong ale in a nip bottle.

Liam said...

Nice, Baby Bass and other Babies existed around this period too ...