America, Countries, Food & Wine, Ireland

How to pour the perfect pint of Guinness

And you’d expect the owner of the company at least to know how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness, but alas not.

Edward Guinness’s cack-handed tilt is, of course, not the only inaccuracy in The House of Guinness, but it is the most serious.

Eddie makes a set piece of showing Fenian firebrand Ellen how to pour the stout out of a bottle in the Stephen Knight Netflix series.

Using the whole theatre of the moment in a posh Dublin hotel.

Tilting in wrong direction

Every cloud: She’s gone early

To point out that patience is essential for the perfect Guinness.

And that the same ought to be applied to the fight for an Irish republic.

Only that he has the tilt all wrong and that the head is too thin.

Now, as with all matters, we always go the experts.

And in the absence of my Donegal hotelier grandpa or my four Irish publican uncles. I’ll settle on the next big thing.

The Guinness Storehouse at St James’s Gate in The Liberties, Dublin who advise.

The initial pour

Settling down: Just how it should be

Hold your glass at a 45-degree angle and aim the tap nozzle for the gold harp logo.

Pour until you reach the top of the harp, then stop.

Let it settle

Accessorise: With your own image

Set the Guinness down and let it rest, which is called the ‘surge and settle’ phase.

The darker stout slowly sinks under the creamy, white foam.

Top off the pint

What goes up: Gravity Bar

Settle your drink for about a minute beforeyou fill up the rest of the glass.

With the glass straight, fill until the foam forms a dome for the perfect Guinness head.

And all of which I learned first hand for myself in a little corner of Ireland.

They call Las Vegas and Rí Rá Irish Pub at The Shoppes at Mandalay Place.

Countries, Food & Wine, Ireland

The perfect pint at The Home of Guinness Experience

Now, some homework, you idlers, pouring the perfect pint at The Home of Guinness Experience in the home of our favourite stout, Dublin.

Well, of course, we have had the drinking part licked.

Since first we started frothing our upper lip some 45 years ago. 

Although we never tire of quenching our thirst.

And best of all in Guinness’s spiritual home which we did last week in Whelan’s in the Irish capital.

My perfect cousins

Gateway to heaven: Guinness at St James’s Gate

It is a recurring question, always pitched at those from Ireland and its diaspora…

Is the Guinness really better in Ireland?

I take my cue here from my cousins who run the family business Kennedy’s, now The Worskshop, next to Tara Street DART station, on the Liffey.

Who tell us that the Guinness needs to be kept in circulation.

Which is why bar Guinness is always better than its hotel equivalent.

All of which makes sense to us.

Pure genius

In with a stout: And a must-have selfie

Of course nowhere does the Guinness run more consistently than St James’s Gate in the Liberties.

Where the genius happens.

And where the Guinness Storehouse, the World’s Leading Beer Tour Visitor Experience, is introducing a new tour, the ‘Home of Guinness Experience’.

You’ll be part of a fully guided tour where you’ll discover and delve deeper.

Into the origins, history and innovation of Guinness throughout seven floors. 

All paired with a lesson at the Guinness Academy where visitors can learn the legendary six-step ritual.

By pouring their own pint, earning their very own certificate.

Before finishing up with a creamy pint overlooking the 360-degree views of the city.

Barack, the Queen, Bill’s pal and me

Pour it on: The perfect pourer

Now Guinness Storehouse is rightly proud that it has welcomed 25 million visitors through its doors since 2000.

Including the Queen and Prince Philip, Barack Obama and yours truly, as guest of Bill Clinton’s best pal, the former Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe

The perfect pint at the Home of Guinness Experience runs Monday-Thursday with time slots available at 11am or 1pm with a maximum of 12 people per tour. 

Running now until Wednesday 30th April, tickets priced at €48pp are live on the Guinness Storehouse website. Strictly over 18’s only.

Now whisper it but I’ve already initiated in the arts of Guinness pouring by said Kennedys at The Workshop.

And also the Perfect Pint Experience at Las Vegas Ri Ra.

When I was out there and managed to Strip the Light Fantastic.

 

 

Countries, Food & Wine, Ireland

The perfect Guinness

The perfect Guinness before you leave the country.

Everyone knows you can’t come to Ireland without sampling the Black Stuff.

And now Dublin Airport is setting it up so that any visitor who might have forgotten (difficult) can imbibe in Terminal 1.

Airport drinking

Craic on: Dublin Airport

DA will make you feel as if you’re in the next best thing to the St James’s Gate brewery.

They have created a snug that offers visuals of the views they would experience if they were in The Liberties (Guinness’s neighbourhood).

Of course Guinness has a range of drink and foods to enjoy too but it’s the ‘plain’, the stout which you’ll go for, so Sláinte.

Now the old saying goes that the best Guinnesses are in Ireland although they cloud it (never done in a Guinness) in mystery.

Drinking rituals

Here’s Johnny: With Rain in Johnny Fox’s, Co. Dublin

Now I love drinking rituals as much as the next guy.

And I have learned to fix my eyes on the person I’m drinking with when I say Prost in a German bierhouse.

And not question the size of the frothy head on my Urquell Pilsner in the Czech Republic.

Now you don’t have to go to Dublin to learn how to pour the perfect pint although it helps if your cousins run the Liffeyside institution the Workshop.

The global drink

Mac and Black: With former Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe at the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin

Just walk into any Irish bar around the world, and there are thousands from atop mountains to astride glaciers.

Whether Sean from Athenry will let you tamper with his taps though is a different matter.

One hostelry though where they’ll be glad to help, and in fact insist on it, is at Rí Rá Las Vegas inside The Shoppes at Mandalay Bay.

Glass Vegas

You could be in Ireland: Vegas

There they’ll give you the only ‘official’ Perfect Pint Experience class outside of Dublin.

Now I don’t want to give it away but there are six steps.

Follow them and you’ll not only get the perfect pint to swallow but also a photo, the glass and discount on the merch.

You can also dine in a pretty realistic recreation of an Irish snug… Vegas style.

Whether you’re fortunate to be in Ireland, passing through or want to escape for a while in an Irish bar somewhere in the world.

Nothing will taste as Irish as the Perfect Guinness.