My first taste of beer was from a sip of Guinness at a pub in Birmingham, England. I was 19 years old and legal to drink in the U.K., and I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. The bitter taste of the beer was enough to squelch any desire for more than that one sip, and it was several years before I began to develop a taste for any sort of alcohol.

Even after I began drinking beer, I still did not care for the taste of Guinness. At first it was too strong, but then as I began my current love affair with Pacific Northwest-style hoppy ales, the flavor of Guinness seemed to weaken in comparison. "Why would I want to drink that?" I would say to my friends, "It tastes too watered down." Eventually, I came to the conclusion that most of what makes Guinness so special in the U.S. is the "Irishness" — the appeal of something exotic. After reading Bill Yenne's book on the history of the company, I have discovered that my uninformed opinion was not too far off the mark.

The founder, Arthur Guinness, used the inheritance from his godfather to purchase a Dublin brewery in 1759, where he brewed the popular English-style porter. His brewery was much like any other of the time, with one advantage being that it was near a body of water which allowed for easier transport of raw materials and finished product. Over time, the beers produced by the brewery grew in popularity, both nationally and internationally. With the aid of a few inventions that made the unique qualities of the beer more consistent, and also some very effective marketing campaigns, that little brewery has grown to become one of the largest beverage corporations in the world, second only to perhaps Coca-Cola.

The story of Guinness, from the perspective of a beer lover, is absolutely fascinating until the early-1960s, and this is evidenced by the amount of words Yenne devotes to the first two hundred years of the brewery's history. For instance, I knew that Guinness beer in the U.K., or Ireland in particular, is different from Guinness beer elsewhere, but I didn't know the history of why until I read this book. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and the variations that made the exported brew what it is were necessitated by the difficulties of global exportation in a pre-industrial world.

Necessity also is what prompted the creation of the nitrogenation process that happens in the special metal kegs used by the brewery, as well as the widget found in bottles and cans of Guinness Draught. Much like he does elsewhere in the book, Yenne explains both of these inventions, as well as the pressures that caused them to come into being, in a way that is understandable to the layperson. Part of what makes a Guinness Draught what it is comes from the creation of the frothy head, and without the aforementioned processes and tools, it would be difficult to create the proper head every time a pint is drawn or poured.