is a brewery operating in Cork City, Ireland, from 1792 to 2009, best known for its Beamish stout. In 1792 Protestant butter merchants William Beamish and William Crawford purchased a brewery at Cramer’s Lane in Cork City; it had been in production since 1641. The new venture, dubbed the Cork Porter Brewery, focused on the production of porter. Porter, predominantly imported from London breweries, accounted for 25% of the Irish beer market at the time. Beamish & Crawford brewed 12,000 UK barrels of beer in its first year. In 1795 Dublin MP Henry Grattan had the excise tax on beer in Ireland rescinded, ushering in a new period of growth for Irish brewers. By 1807 production at the Cork Porter Brewery had topped 100,000 barrels. Beamish & Crawford remained the largest brewery in Ireland until it was surpassed by Guinness in 1833.

Beamish & Crawford’s signature half-timber Counting House was built in the 1920s and is a Cork landmark. The company was sold to Canada’s Carling O’Keefe in 1961. In 1987 Australia’s Fosters purchased the Carling O’Keefe group, and in 1995 Beamish was sold to Scottish & Newcastle. Scottish & Newcastle was acquired by Heineken in 2008, and the company closed the Beamish Brewery in May 2009. Beamish stout is now produced at Heineken Ireland, formerly Murphy’s Brewery in Cork City, on the north side of the city. Annual production of Beamish stout currently totals around 150,000 hl. Beamish stout is a classic example of the Cork-style stout, with chocolate malt flavor more dominant than the roast barley favored by Dublin brewers. It is also notable for its floral hop aroma.