Most people know that large quantities of foreign wines were consumed in Dublin, particularly during the eighteenth century, but few are aware that another foreign liquor - Brunswick Mum - was a favourite drink in the Irish metropolis two hundred years ago. Advertisements of this beverage are frequent in the old Dublin newspapers, one of the oldest being that which occurs in the Dublin Gazette (1708), and runs as follows: "Right Brunswick Mum newly imported, is to be sold at Tom's Coffee House in Castle street, at 9s. the dozen without doors, and 10s. within." Mum was a kind of ale brewed from wheat in the Duchy of Brunswick, and largely imported into Ireland. During the brewing, the tops of fir and beech, betony, marjoram, pennyroyal, etc., were put into it . Pepys seems to have liked it. In his diary under the date, May 3, 1664, he records: "I went with Mr Norbury near hand to the Fleece, a mum-house in Leadenhall and there drank mum, and by-and-by broke up, it being about 11 o'clock at night."
The Irish Times, August 4th, 1930.