I attended the Sport and Discrimination conference today. It was being held on the Dublin City University campus. Today I saw presentations on Olympians who suffered abuse over social media. The authors of this study examined the accounts of 1,917 Olympians from the Paris Games and found 809 instances that were verified as abusive, and 128 of those were escalated for “additional action.” I saw another great study about the diversity (or lack of) in European sports administration and sports media. There was another fascinating presentation about athlete activism, the discussion and findings of which I am sure will work their way into a future class. I took many notes.

I also took this photo out of one of the classroom windows when the day’s presentations were done.

This was a two-day conference, and it was paired with the IACS conference. The timing worked out for both groups, and there’s a fair amount of crossover in the scholars and the scholarship. I registered for, and enjoyed attending the sessions in Sport and Discrimination today, but I’m presenting twice in the next conference. One of them is a piece I’ve worked on with my lovely bride. She is also the rock star that is the executive director of the organization, so she’s running the thing. The International Association for Communication and Sport’s summit began unofficially tonight, with a mixer.

We took a trip, in two buses, almost 200 people, to the Guinness brewery or museum, or both. It wasn’t clear to me. It’s a tourist attraction, basically, opened at the turn of the century. This is not the sort of trip I would take, but everyone seemed excited about the prospect, and I heard a few people saying this one thing off of their trip’s checklist, and there we were, having dinner. (Which was small and light, but incredibly tasty.) Before dinner, we got a tour.

But before the journey began we saw the actual original lease, which is mounted in the floor.

It is dated 1750, and Arthur Guinness agreed to pay £45 per year for 9,000 years. Eventually this becomes the largest brewery in the country, and then in the world. Today it is remains the largest brewer of stout. But in between the company purchased the property, so this is just an artifact at this point, and many of the buildings in the area. Making the drink was an intensive process. They had their own power plant.

Today, the museum is a well curated walked display. A lot of polished things to see, not a lot of places to linger, which is good for a walking tour. You’ll pass this cool display.

The characters are made of falling …

Water is a big deal here. Beer has the four ingredients and you can’t make it without water. We learned that once it took 11 pints of water to make one pint of Guinness. At some point that came to sound ridiculous. Our guide told us the process is nwo down to three pints of water to make one pint of the stout. They are targeting a 1:1 relationship in the near future.

You can see some of the old equipment. This mill dates to 1906 and the Ganz people, based in Budapest, made their first mills. The last mill they bought was acquired in 1916. Inside it, malt, roast and barley were milled and dropped into a kieve below. From there, it was mixed with water and sent to the second stages of the brewing process.

Here’s a side view of the mill, because moving parts are interesting and not at all a workplace hazard.

You don’t want to be the brew man getting your sleeve or tie snatched up in this machinery.

Nearby was the triple ram pump of 1958. The sign tells us that it circulated yeast through the coolers and other vessels in the storehouse.

Behind it you see the rest of the gear. Steam kept the stainless steel cylinders, valves, pistons and chambers clean.
All of this was made by David Brown & Sons. By that time I believe it was the son. The firm is still in operation, and they’re works are all over the UK, fancy buildings, tractors in fields, you name it.

Steele’s masher was created by a man named William Steele, and it mixed milled barley and water together. This one which dates back to 1880 or so, worked in brewhouse 1, which no longer exists. Not sure when that was razed.

The sign says this is “Manway door from No. 3 copper, Park Royal Brewery. This copper lid was installed in the Guinness Park Royal Brewery on opening in 1936.” The door was made by Robert Morton & Company, in Burton on Trent, which was founded in 1840, but was acquired by another concern in 2023.

They do professional taste testing for quality control every morning, hence this clock. Apparently this is a serious part of the business. You are doing the work at 10 a.m., but you can’t have eaten anything or drank certain things, you can’t have showered beforehand, and so on. You wonder how much of that is necessary and how much is historically traditional

Here’s their first advertisement. You can tell because the ad copy itself says so. It’s from a 1929 national newspaper.

And that was both their first ad, and the first one displayed in a tidy little section. Our tour guide seemed to suggest that not all of the advertisements were grounded in truth.

But it is a toucan, and toucans are always a marketing win.

Whereas this one also seems farfetched.

What you don’t see enough of in advertising are seals. (Or sea lions. Let’s not quibble the art.) Gilroy knew it.

Gilroy was John Thomas Young Gilroy. He was studying at Durham University when the Great War took him from the books and sent him into the Royal Field Artillery. After the war he went back to school at the Royal College of Art in London. He later taught there and another arts school. By 1925 he was in advertising, and that’s how he came to Guinness, his style features in a lot of the mid-century English advertising, though. He also created cover designs for the Radio Times, painted portraits and national propaganda during WW2.

It’s not clear how much time he spent in farm country though, this is all wrong.

He knew something about professionals, though. But, from our perspective decades hence, this reads different.

Opening time means you’ve had a bad day, or have a big problem. Go home, toucan, you’re already drunk.

Everyone seemed to think the highlight of the Guinness experience was the opportunity to learn how to pour a proper Guinness. There’s a process. Fortunately, they offered a good teacher. Hilariously, all of the professors found this to be intimidating.

You take a bunch of people who like to learn and feel the need to perform at a high level and then ask them to do it in public, and in front of one another … it gets stressful, I guess. That guy talked everyone through it, though. You hold the glass just so, 45-degree angle, and pour until the black liquid reaches the golden harp. Then you put it on the part and let the chemistry do it’s part. Bubbles of nitrogen rise and that forms the iconic head of the drink. After that’s done it’s work then you go back to the spout and top it off. Despite their nerves, people were getting it right. They earned themselves a fancy certificate. I’m sure some of them will be displayed in offices soon.

OK, now I have to go finish up my notes for tomorrow’s presentation.