History
The Caffrey brewing family first brewed beer in Dublin in the late seventeen hundreds, about thirty years after the Guinness brewery was founded. They too were sited on the River Liffey, a few hundred yards east of the Guinness site.
Caffrey’s Irish Ale was re-launched in 1994 and marketed as a beer which combined features from other types of beer: it could be served as cold as lager, its texture would be as smooth as stout, while its taste was that of an ale. Though launched with little advertising, it was priced at the top end of the market and was made available in over 7500 pubs. Sales of Caffrey's for the first year were higher than expected for a new product, at around 150 000 barrels in its first year. It was designed to appeal to "the ageing lager drinker...looking for a mature pint."
Coors Brewing Company acquired the US distribution rights to Caffrey's in December, 2001 when they purchased UK based Carling Brewers who owned the rights previously. Sometime in 2002, after Coors purchased Caffrey's from Interbrew, it ceased importation of the beer into the United States market. Coors decided that continued sale of Caffrey's in the US would interfere with the branding of Killian's as Coors's premier Irish brew. Many Irish bars around the US still have Caffrey's paraphernalia, but no longer sell the beer.
Coors's decision to sell Killian's over the nitrogen charged Caffrey's in the US market allowed Diageo, makers of Guinness, to gain market share with its Smithwick's brew in Irish bars throughout the US. Caffrey's is still available in the United Kingdom and Canada.
In 2011 Caffrey's sold around 35,000 barrels in the UK, down from 200,000 in 2002. This is possibly due to a quite cynical and deliberate tactic by Coors to suppress the availability of the ale and thus diminish its popularity in favour of other brands that it owns and wants to promote instead of Caffrey's.
Read more about this topic: Caffrey's Irish Ale
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