On the last day of December 1759 a determined young man named Arthur Guinness rode through the gate of an old, dilapidated ill-equipped brewery sited on a small strip of land on Dublin's James's Street. He had just signed a lease on the property for 9,000 years at £45 per annum. His friends shook their heads in disbelief.

In 1825 Guinness Stout was available abroad, and by 1838, Guinness' St. James's Gate Brewery was the largest in Ireland. In 1881, the annual production of Guinness brewed had surpassed one million barrels a year and by 1914, St. James's Gate was the world's largest brewery.

Today, Arthur Guinness would have been proud of St. James's Gate. No longer the largest (although still the largest Stout brewery) it is certainly one of the most modern breweries. Guinness is now also brewed in 35 countries around the world, but all these overseas brews must contain a flavoured extract brewed here at St. James's Gate. So the very special brewing skills of Arthur's brewery, remain at the heart of every one of the 10 million glasses of Guinness enjoyed every day across the world.

Sprecher Brewing Co. was founded in 1985 by RANDAL SPRECHER, formerly a brewing supervisor at Pabst Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From 1985 to 1994, the brewery was located at 730 W. Oregon Street in Milwaukee's Walker's Point area. Through the first ten years the company grew steadily as more and more people found out about Sprecher's high quality beers and sodas. Finally, the company had outgrown its original facility and began looking for a new location to continue its growth.

Mr. George Ehret, from the very beginning, aimed at the brewing of a beer as nearly like the best quality of Munich lager as the difference between our water and that of the river Isar would admit. How well he succeeded in this may be inferred from the popularity which his beer attained in a few years. As has been said, he began brewing immediately after the completion of his plant. At the beginning of January, 1867, the first brew was stored in the cellars; in March of the same year his wagons, freighted not only with kegs, but also, metaphorically speaking, with all his expectations and anxieties, left his yards for the first time to serve his new customers. Five years after that date he sold 33,512 barrels; seven years later, 74,497 barrels, and in 1874 he produced and sold 101,050 barrels -- a quantity which twenty-eight years ago was manufactured by but very few of the largest establishments. This growth was then all the more remarkable, because Mr. Ehret's operations had suddenly been checked for a considerable time on account of a fire which, on the 19th of September, I870, destroyed the greater part of his brewery, including books and papers. It is owing to this fact that we are unable to give the quantities of beer brewed during the four years preceding the fire.

The amount of beer produced and sold by the Hell Gate Brewery in the year 1874 amounted to 101,050 barrels; in 1880, the production amounted to 220,096 barrels, an increase in six years of over one hundred per cent. Ten years after, in the year 1890, the production amounted to 412,851 barrels, making another increase of almost one hundred per cent for the decade. In the year 1900, the production was 601,000 barrels, showing an increase of about forty-six per cent. This is a record to be proud of, and one that has seldom been equaled in the history of brewing.

Shortly after he arrived in Milwaukee, Frederick Miller paid $8,000 for the Plank-Road Brewery -- a five-year -- old brewery started by Frederick Charles Best and abandoned in 1854. Miller became a brewery owner in an era when beer sold for about $5 per barrel in the Milwaukee area and for three to five cents a glass at the city's taverns. The Plank-Road Brewery -- now the Milwaukee Brewery -- was several miles west of Milwaukee in the Menomonee Valley. It proved ideal for its nearness to a good water source and to raw materials grown on surrounding farms