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Brewed in 50 countries and consumed in 150, Guinness Stout has become a global commodity. Although associated with Irish pubs and diasporic populations, it has also become popular in former British colonies of Africa and Southeast Asia. This article adopts a mobility studies perspective to show how Guinness built its global appeal, first through trade and settlement in the British empire during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and subsequently by navigating the upheavals of decolonization and economic integration in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Transfers of brewing technology and marketing techniques were essential for the company’s success in postcolonial markets. In particular, this article shows that metropolitan exporters could work with colonial subjects to subvert imperial policies. Such alliances were not entirely unexpected, for with its headquarters in a former British colony, Guinness was ideally situated to blend the global and the local, just as the company had successfully bridged the bloody divide of Irish independence, remaining as beloved in Belfast, loyalist heartland of Northern Ireland, as in Dublin, capital of the Irish Republic.

The global spread of lager beers such as Heineken, Budweiser, Sapporo and Corona offers a seemingly classic case of cultural imperialism displacing local beverages including Japanese sake, Bolivian chicha, and African sorghum beer. Empire indeed launched beer to global status, beginning with British brewers shipping ale and porter to provision imperial agents around the world, although by the turn of the twentieth century, the crisp, clean taste of German lager had largely displaced heavier British brews from colonial markets. Lager beer also came to be seen as a civilizing taste in comparison with strongly flavored indigenous drinks, attracting many local consumers, despite imperial prohibitions against native consumption of European alcohol. Ultimately, Europe's export brewers lost out to migrant brewers, who transplanted barley and hops, installed refrigerated machinery, and freed settler colonists and Native consumers alike from their reliance on beer from the metropolis, thereby demonstrating the limits of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]