Shakespeare's is your only man

- Give it a name, Citizen, says Joe.

- Wine of the country, says he.

- Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.

- Three pints, Terry, says Joe.

TERRY, the long suffering barman in Barney Kiernan's, had no doubt as meant. In Dublin, in Bloom's day and now, an unadorned request for a pint is taken to mean a pint of black porter or stout from St James's Gate. It wasn't always thus: there were once 65 breweries on the banks of the Liffey, and this delightful, beautifully illustrated little book tells the story of how Guinness gained its present predominance.

It all started, oddly enough, when one Nathaniel Chivers, a London brewer of porter, taught the first Uncle Arthur how it should be done. Nowadays, 10 million pints of Guinness are drunk throughout the world; a sobering thought. The author is familiar with our excellent southern stouts also - Beamish and Murphy have survived difficult times, and their history is no less fascinating than that of their great Dublin rival.

Protz was editor, for many years, of the indispensable Good Beer Guide (GBG); he and his fellow quaffers in the Campaign for Real Ale changed the course of brewing history, fighting for the return of traditionally produced ales, porters and stouts, the real thing having all but disappeared under a tidal wave of the dreaded Watneys Red Barrel and other fizzy abominations.

For beer fanciers, the GBG was always essential company for any trip across the Irish Sea. It's good to see that Protz's crusading spirit is intact; he finishes the account of our own dear stouts by bemoaning their wretchedly cold serving temperature, an affront to the discerning palate. In contrast, he gleefully - describes The Porter House, the new - brew pub in Dublin's Parliament Street, and the Biddy Early Brewery in Clare, which produce their tasty stouts on the premises. Perhaps small is becoming beautiful again.

Porter originated in London and is thought to be named after its keenest early devotees, the thirsty street market porters. Enthusiasm was so great for the brews that 10 London brewers made stout for the Russian market. Particularly notable was Barclay's Imperial Russian Stout, which was certainly a beer that travelled, journeying from London to Danzig and then via the Baltic States into Imperial Russia itself. An 1869 assignment was found on the sea bed in 1974 (by Norwegian driers) but wasn't really drinkable.

Better results were achieved when a strain of yeast was cultured from an 1825 porter consignment shipwrecked in the English channel; the yeast is still used today in the lovely Flag Porter produced by Elgoods in Cambridgeshire. Many other successful efforts to re-create flavoursome brews of the past are described in affectionate detail - oysters you might expect, but coriander and liquorice?

The author's intensive but pleasurable research has unearthed stouts from many lands. African Guinness is nearly twice as strong as our own and is regarded, oddly, as an aphrodisiac. There is an Asahi stout in Japan, which has a pungent aroma due to skilled brewing rather than chemicals. The US, moreover, which has visited such tasteless mass marketed beers on our innocent youth, has some 800 craft breweries which produce their own innovative porters. An alluring example is the remarkable Smoked Porter of Alaska where the dark malts are smoked over alder wood for three days.

The author brings this palate - and educated isn't the word for it - to bear on all of the porters he describes. Like Michael Jackson (of Beer Hunter fame), Protz can put into words the sensory experience of sampling a top class brew. A pint of Shakespeare's Stout, brewed by Rogue Ales of Newport, Oregon, throws "a dense orange brown foam, a smooth chocolate aroma with a creamy note from the oats, burnt currants and bitter hops in the mouth and a deep finish dominated by hops, dark fruit, roasted grain and silky oats." Your only man...

Tom Moriarty is an Irish Times staff journalist.