# Rats in the Guinness Brewery **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 5, 2004, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669 "2004-03-05T07:29:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2004, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/21 "2004-03-06T16:45:50Z")
Tuna just doesn’t taste the same without dolphin in it! 😃 Guinness for breakfast…Ahhhhhhhhhh. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2004, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/22 "2004-03-06T23:26:26Z")
“Usually benign, but there.” Damn, I missed a perfect opportunity to use the term “nonetheless”. I’ve heard the OP’s rumor too, but I don’t remember which brew it was. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2004, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/23 "2004-03-07T02:10:19Z")
There is a tradition of putting meat in brews, particularly scrumpy I think. There’s recipes and mentions [here](http://www.devon-calling.com/food%20and%20drink/cider.htm) and [here](http://www.pbm.com/pipermail/hist-brewing/2003/003533.html). Legend had it that the brews went off better and tasted better if there was meat in it. I have read somewhere that this was thought to be because sometime the basic brewing ingredients lacked certain trace ingredients the yeast needed to go off properly. This tradition seems to be prett much debunked now. ---
**Author:** ![zapomel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/67e7ee/32.png) [@zapomel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zapomel)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2004, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/24 "2004-03-07T23:32:37Z")
“On a critical level as well, it can’t be taken as a Joyce-believed factual detail because it’s meant to set the stage for Bloom’s mistrust of modern food preparation and delivery systems and, symbolically, the shift from pastoral Ireland to industrialized (“Englishized”) Ireland.” Okay, adding to my sins… I can’t agree with you here. Bloom was not anti-English. Bloom believed in laying aside differences and old grievances, and felt that hatred and anti-anything was futile. Remember his debate with The Citizen. I’m not sure if that was being advanced as a factual record; I just assumed it was a good time to quote James Joyce. ANY time is a good time to quote James Joyce. By the way, just the other day, a woman in a restaurant was served a salad with a bit of someone’s thumb in it. I read about it online. Okay, going back to the OP, there’s a similar theme with maple syrup. John Kenneth Galbraith, in The Scotch, maintained that after modern sugaring techniques managed to clean up all the nasty bits of wildlife and dead wasps and so on, the maple syrup never tasted nearly so good. In fact, he claimed to prove this by getting a bunch of dead wasps and bark, and filtering his maple syrup through it all. He said that everyone liked it more than the clean stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2004, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/25 "2004-03-08T02:37:13Z")
> [@zapomel](#): > > Okay, adding to my sins… I can’t agree with you here. Bloom was not anti-English. Bloom believed in laying aside differences and old grievances, and felt that hatred and anti-anything was futile. Remember his debate with The Citizen. I _did_ say that that part of my statement was on a critical level, didn’t I? That is: The fact that Bloom was the one thinking at the time doesn’t mean he was thinking what I interpret. The lines work on (at least) two levels: one showing Bloom’s memory of an urban legend of the time being triggered and another advancing the theme of revulsion and nauseation (technique of the chapter: “peristaltic”) as I stated. Besides which, the idea of the overthrow of Irish culture by English has little to do (other than background) with the “old grievances” of occupation. At the time _Ulysses_ was written (and for some while before) there was an attempt to come up with Irish literature and Irish plays and Irish culture and whatnot, all essentially done in an English style but informed by some ancient Irish myths. There was no Irish art produced, but English art with an Irish accent, heavy on the notion of a pastoral past and its subjugation. This theme I point out in the chapter is at the same time a justification of the analogy between pastoral-industrial and Irish-English, and a mockery of it. And if you can’t read a passage on at least two levels, you’ve no business reading _Ulysses_. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2004, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/26 "2004-03-08T11:48:47Z")
[continued literary hijack] (Just from memory so I might misremember the exact wording) “To convert stout into water is a simple process, even a child could do it, although I don’t care for giving stout to children. Is it not a pity that the art of mankind has not yet achieved the ability to convert water into stout?” Flann O’Brian [/continued literary hijack] ---
**Author:** ![glas\_onion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9dc877/32.png) [@glas\_onion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glas_onion)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2004, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/27 "2004-03-08T15:03:15Z")
The Porter House Brewing make a stout with Oysters in it… ---
**Author:** ![zapomel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/67e7ee/32.png) [@zapomel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zapomel)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2004, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669/28 "2004-03-09T22:30:01Z")
“if you can’t read a passage on at least two levels, you’ve no business reading Ulysses.” Huh? I liked Ulysses. It’s a good book. That’s my business, Jack. And even if I chose to read it on two levels, they wouldn’t be yours, they’d be Joyce’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rats-in-the-guinness-brewery/232669.md?page=1)