Beamish and Crawford
Beamish and Crawford is an Irish brewery .
It was founded in Cork in 1792 by William Beamish and William Crawford. It has been owned by the Heineken Group since 2008 .
history
The two founders, Beamish and Crawford, bought an existing brewery in 1792, which was expanded significantly over the following years. The location on Corker's South Main Street had been home to a brewery since at least 1650 (according to some sources possibly since around 1500). At the time of the closure in March 2009, the Beamish & Crawford headquarters was the oldest brewery site in Ireland where production was still going on.
Beamish & Crawford has changed hands several times over the years - in 1962 the brewery was taken over by the Canadian company Carling-O'Keefe Ltd and sold to Scottish and Newcastle in 1995 . In 2008 Scottish and Newcastle was in turn taken over by the Dutch Heineken Group and the Danish Carlsberg Brewery . Scottish and Newcastle's UK and Irish operations will operate after being acquired by Heineken. The Irish competition authority gave the green light in October 2008 for Beamish & Crawford to be incorporated into the Heineken Group. In December of the same year, Heineken announced that it would close the headquarters of the Beamish and Crawford brewery in March 2009 and instead continue production of the beers produced there in the Corker Lady's Well brewery, which already produces Murphy's and Heineken , among others . The closure marked the end of Ireland's oldest operating brewery location and resulted in the loss of 120 jobs. According to Heineken, around 40 former Beamish & Crawford employees were taken over.
Even after the takeover by Heineken, Beamish & Crawford is the only brewery to advertise aggressively in the Irish market with lower prices than the competition. In April 2009, the price per pint of Beamish Stout or Foster's lager tapped was sometimes more than one euro below the prices for other types of beer and stout .
Products
Beamish & Crawford's main product is the Beamish Stout. It tastes a little stronger than the other two well-known Irish stouts Guinness and Murphy’s . The latter also comes from Cork. There is also the less common variant Beamish Red - a sweet ale based on the Murphy's Irish Red and Kilkenny brands .
In addition to its own products, a number of international beer brands are brewed and sold. These include Foster's , Miller and Kronenbourg 1664 .