Plenty, kindliness and art, according to the old Irish Triads, are the three welcomes of an alehouse. Filthy Queens by Christina Wade, the latest publication of boutique culinary publisher Nine Bean Rows, almost provides all three. Plenty: the book spans centuries and explores not only different people, but also entirely separate cultures (Gaelic, Viking, Anglo-Norman). Wade has previously authored The Devil is in the Draught Lines: 1,000 Years of Women in Britain’s Beer History (2024) and holds a PhD on this topic.
While deep scholarship is evident, kindliness is shown in the relaxed and accessible writing style. The title’s use of Filthy Queens is a play on a biased description of Dublin alewives in 1610 by Barnabe Rich, an English army captain. Although not overtly stated in the title, this publication principally explores and charts the oscillating roles of women in Ireland’s brewing history, from the legendary Lilywhite St Brigid to today’s Two Sisters Brewery in Kildare.
Storytelling is the art of the alehouse. Reminiscent of the movie Forrest Gump, the reader is taken through an array of historic moments in Ireland’s story, from the Iron Age to the coming of Christianity, and on to the arrival of the Vikings and the Anglo-Normans, colonisation, the Act of Union, Catholic emancipation, and continuing with the modernisation of the Industrial Revolution with the arrival of steam power for manufacturing and transportation. Beer or ale making (particularly by women) is the Forrest Gump character that unites them all.
Beer meets various famous characters including Cú Chulainn, St Brigid, Brian Ború, Henry VIII, Robert Peel and Daniel O’Connell. I did not know that the Liberator’s son purchased the Phoenix Brewery on James’s Street and produced a famous O’Connell’s Dublin Ale, changing its name from Phoenix to O’Connell Brewery for a time in the 1830s. This is one of the many interesting nuggets, along with a recipe for Scailtín – an Irish hot whiskey and beer cocktail, containing eggs and butter – that will delight the reader.
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Throughout this chronological journey, the quaffable liquid varies and changes in its ingredients, method of production and quality, and we are introduced to how hops and new styles, such as stout and porter, became popular.
We learn that it was a woman-led brewery on Townsend Street in Dublin that boasted the first production of India pale ale (IPA) in Ireland, in 1842: this is not a Dublin-centric history, however. Stories and sources emanate from the four corners of the island, including William Tighe’s Statistical Observations in Kilkenny, an 1811 culinary manuscript from Limerick, Bishop Synge’s 18th-century correspondence to his daughter from Roscommon and reports and advertisements from the Newry Telegraph, Belfast Newsletter and Cork Examiner. We meet historian Alfred Barnard, who in the 1890s visited and documented 10 Irish breweries, from Lady’s Well in Cork to the Ardee Street Brewery in Dublin, for his magnum opus The Notable Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland.
Detailed regulations for malt featured in the ancient Brehon Laws. The Brigiu (hostel owners) held the important role of dispensing beer until others in society later took on the practice of providing public hospitality. Early planters faced restrictions on selling ale to the Irish who did not live within the town walls, restrictions that were subsequently eased for economic reasons. Taxation was levied on brewers to maintain roads and to fortify city walls. Later legislation penalised the use of malt.
Excise duty on ale and beer, plus a rise in the consumption of whiskey, led to the dramatic decline in output in the 18th century. Further taxation pushed out the smaller producer, so that by the 19th century, the industry had been transformed into several large companies, one of which could produce 700,000 pints at a time. The role of women had vastly changed by this stage, yet we see some widows such as Eliza Alley, of IPA fame, listed in the various business directories.
Filthy Queens effectively stops at the dawn of the 20th century, which we are told is the subject of a separate book. While this volume provides plenty of interesting stories (some tangential), the fact that they only scratch the surface of this fascinating topic leaves the reader feeling slightly cheated, despite being provided with an accessible and comprehensive entry to Ireland’s beverage history. For the true triadic alehouse welcome, the fine art of “less but more” might be a higher form of kindliness.
Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire is a senior lecturer in the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology at Technological University Dublin
