For the young medical student, Kelly, in Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds "a pint of plain is your only man" and it seems this sentiment is shared by a large number of Irish drinkers. Stout (Guinness, Murphys, Beamish) continues to boast the largest share of the Irish beer market followed by big names among the lagers such as Budweiser, Heineken and Carlsberg. Irish people consume around a billion pints of beer a year.
Beer has long been the dominant drink in Ireland (accounting for around 60 per cent of the alcoholic beverages market) and it has enjoyed annual growth of between 2 and 4 per cent for the past number of years.
But there are signs of a slowdown. The beer market will remain flat this year and the industry is putting it down to changing consumer tastes.
"The consumption of beer has slipped back in the last few years due to the particular dynamics of the alcoholic beverage market," says Mr Pat Barry, director of corporate affairs at Guinness Ireland. "There has been a steady growth in the consumption of wine and cider and new ready-to-drink products such as Smirnoff Ice have also come on the market."
Sales of table wine have gone up 160 per cent in the last 10 years and now account for just under 12 per cent of the market, although the Wine Development Board points out that Irish wine consumption is still the lowest in Europe. Consumption of cider has gone up from roughly 3.8 per cent in 1994 to around 8 per cent now and consumption of spirits has been rising by around 4 per cent per annum with sales of vodka particularly buoyant.
It appears consumers are no longer as closely tied to a particular drink and this is driving multinational companies such as Guinness to bring the different strands of their businesses closer together. "Consumers don't differentiate between beer and other drinks the way they used to and this is affecting how we organise our business. We are now integrating our operations on a global basis," says Mr Barry.
This is reflected in the fact that, for the past three years, Guinness has been part of a much bigger entity called Diageo which was formed when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan. Gilbeys (famous for its creation of Baileys Irish Cream liqueur) is the Irish arm of Grand Metropolitan. In addition to its beer and spirits interests, Diageo is also involved in the food sector for now through its subsidiary Burger King.
This notion of global integration brings up what has become a recurrent theme in this series of articles: consolidation. Car manufacture, the insurance industry and the food sector have all been subject to the forces of consolidation and the alcoholic beverages industry is no exception.
"The consolidation now happening in other industries has already taken place within the brewing industry," says Mr Paddy Jordan of the Irish Brewer's Association. "We now have seven brewing plants controlled by three groups. Guinness has five plants, Heineken (which is linked to Murphys) has one and Beamish & Crawford, which is part of Scottish & Newcastle, also has one. There is a relentless move towards bigger, stronger and more viable operations."
Nor is the consolidation confined to brewing. Irish Distillers, which produces leading name spirits such as Powers, Jameson and Cork Dry Gin, has been part of the large French group Pernod Ricard since 1986.
Apart from producing their own beers, the large brewers also manufacture beers under licence and act as distributors. Beamish produces Carling Black Label while Guinness produces Carlsberg and Budweiser, distributes the Belgian beer Stella Artois and makes two ciders: Hudson Blue and Cashels.
"Guinness is the icon of Ireland and a key product, but we have broadened its drinking possibilities by extending the range with can and bottled draught Guinness and Guinness Extra Cold," says Mr Barry. "We make Hudson Blue cider for the Irish market, while Cashels is sold into Irish pubs around Europe."
But while new products can be a company's life blood, there is never a guarantee that they will succeed. Even with the might of a company such as Guinness behind it, Breo (the new wheat beer from Guinness) is being withdrawn because it failed to secure enough market share.
The Irish alcoholic beverages market may be dominated by multinationals, but there still appears to be room for smaller players. Boru is a new Irish-made vodka introduced just over two years ago. The company employs 25 people and exports to 25 countries. Boru recently won the 2000 Marketer of the Year award organised by Marketing magazine in association with BFK.
The last five years have also seen an explosion of micro breweries and there are more than a dozen with brewing licences. Their market share is tiny - Mr Jordan estimates it at less then 1 per cent - but Mr Kieran Finnerty, managing director of the Dublin Brewing Company is not complaining.
"In most European countries, the market for craft beers is 5-7 per cent and we felt there was an opportunity for us to do something similar in Ireland," he says. "Dublin and Ireland are famous for brewing beer, but we have one brewery in Dublin and the industry's output is very limited. Munich is also famous as a brewing city. It has 17 breweries.
"The main interest in our products is coming from off-licences, which can buy a few cases and see how it goes. Our typical customers are people aged 25-40 with discerning tastes - the same sort of consumers who want speciality cheeses. Young beer drinkers are not our target market."
The Dublin Brewing Company employs 12 people and Mr Finnerty estimates the start-up costs at around £2 million, all of which came from private investment. The company was founded in 1996 and its beers are now selling in seven European markets and in Canada.
In addition to brewing its own beers, it imports from around the world, for example, the Chinese beer, Tsingtao, and the Indian beer, Cobra, which it sells to ethnic restaurants.
"A lot of restaurants now have beer licences, which has given our business a serious boost," says Mr Finnerty. "The market for exotic beers is very small but it's growing and we don't see any reason why it shouldn't reach similar levels to the rest of Europe."
