Through a glass DARKLY
We’ve known its virtues for years but Guinness has recently become the UK’s top-selling beer? England-based writer Simon Mills reveals how he became an expert – helped by a smartly written guide to our best-loved export
The high point of my Guinness-drinking pleasure occurred at the highest pub in Ireland. I was halfway up the Wicklow Gap near Dublin, taking part in an amateur Etape du Tour road bike event, the day before the official start of the 1998 Tour de France. The day was hot, the road rising and the competition keen, but the temptation of a cool pint proved too much to bear.
At Johnnie Fox’s pub I watched it being drawn, in ritualistic manner, from two barrels; a high one first, half-filling the glass with a thick, ambrosial cream. Then a tantalisingly long wait as the whip settled into a white foam dome, defying the laws of logic and surface tension. Now the brackishly calm liquid of the drink was added from a second barrel.
Patience paid off. Ebony and ivory in harmonious liquid form. I enjoyed it with a slow reverence. The bike race was long lost, but the day had been won.
Ever since that moment, my penchant for Guinness has been wholly predicated on geography, this fussy purist only drinking it when in Ireland. After a few frankly amateurish experiences in London pubs, I prefer to take the dark stuff exclusively on its home territory or not at all. The problem is, they just don’t know how to pour it anywhere else. A popular Instagram account, @shitlondondguinness, seems to endorse the theory, its 248K followers posting myriad images of headless pints like grimly tall black coffees and doom-laden milkshakes; too much swirl, not enough dome. Comments are hilarious: ‘What in Christ’s name is this?’; ‘Someone should get 25 to life for pouring that’.
Given that, in 2023, Guinness became officially the UK’s most popular pint – one in every nine pulled, at an average price of £4.14 (€4.86) – an intervention was called for. It arrived in the form of a book, A Beautiful Pint, by Ian Ryan, originator of the aforementioned pint-shaming social-media channel.
Tracking ‘one man’s search for the perfect pint of
Guinness’, it is forensic and uncompromising: the Guinness Nitrosurge, a gizmo that clips on to a can to re-create the two-part-pour at home, is ‘impressive’; but adding blackcurrant cordial to make a Guinness and black is dismissed as ‘heathen behaviour’.
On the subject of that which ruins the black stuff, dirty beer lines are a big culprit, explains Ryan. The tubes connecting keg to pump need washing weekly to stop the build-up of bacteria and yeast that lead to a bitter taste. (Guinness lines require more cleaning than most due to malty heft and ‘complex flavour’.)
Big heads are another problem – Guinness gas settings should be at 70 per cent nitrogen (enough to give creamy head) and 30 per cent CO₂. Heads should be 12mm-18mm, the sweet spot being 15mm. And yes, there is an official Guinness measuring gauge available to publicans – of course there is.
Guinness must be served in tulip-shaped glasses only, the wider top and narrower base promoting ‘nucleation of the nitrogen bubbles’, helping to give Guinness its ‘distinctive head’; squeaky-clean too, as dirt and marks on glasses encourage bubbles, engendering an over or undersized head.
Guinness glasses shouldn’t be washed with food plates/cutlery as oil and debris end up sticking to them. A proper wash requires ‘scalding’ water, a hand-dry with a tea towel then a final rinse and a drip-dry.
That Harp logo on the glass? It’s not just decoration. For the best pour, a bartender should hold the glass on the bottom with pointer finger on the harp, aiming the spout directly at the harp at a 45-degree angle.
Pour until the glass is threequarters full – to the top of the harp logo.
Then, according to Guinness, which has made the black stuff in Dublin since 1729 (Arthur Guinness having signed a 9,000year lease at the famous St James’s Gate Brewery), the pint must rest for exactly 119.5 seconds.
A Guinness glass even tells a story once it has been drained. Like the rings of a tree trunk, the lacing – the patterns of foam inside – shows how many sips the person took during their moment of dark delirium…
ADDING CORDIAL TO MAKE A GUINNESS AND BLACK IS DISMISSED AS ‘HEATHEN BEHAVIOUR’