Guinness celebrates 250 years of stout brewing today. Some Guinness facts:
- Arthur Guinness set up his first brewery in Leixlip, Co Kildare, in 1756 after he was left a £100 inheritance by his godfather, Archbishop Arthur Price. He later handed the business to his brother and, in 1759, signed a 9,000 year lease on the St James’s Gate Brewery for an annual fee of £45.
- Poured at an angle of 45 degrees, it takes 119.5 seconds for the perfect pint to settle.
- In 1936 the first overseas Guinness brewery was opened in London, followed by four more by Nigeria, Malaysia, Cameroon, and Ghana.
- The Guinness company also produced the Guinness Book of Records, which originated in 1955 when a bar debate could not be settled with existing reference books.