Guinness double pour is just a marketing ploy, says bar owner
WHEN it comes to a pint of the “black stuff”, no bartender worth their salt would dare risk foregoing the sacred ritual of the double pour.
Most Guinness aficionados would feel well within their rights to hand back their drink and ask for another, demanding respect for the all-important resting time of 60 to 80 seconds.
Even Guinness itself says: “Good things come to those who wait.”
However, a bar owner has claimed there is no need for the Irish stout to be poured in two stages – to two thirds of the glass and then the final third – and that it does not affect its quality or taste.
Nate Brown, an Irish bartender and the owner of Paloma Café, Soda & Friends and Nebula cocktail bars in London, says the double pour is simply a marketing ploy by Guinness.
“This isn’t done for the beer’s sake; it was practice in the Guinness brewery to speed up serving the masses at home time – the brand has always had the savviest of marketing departments,” he wrote in the FT Magazine. It is an assertion that has ruffled feathers among publicans. Oisin Rogers, the co-owner of the Devonshire in Soho, which says it offers a “perfect” pint of Guinness, said the idea that the two-stage pour is unnecessary is “absolute horses---”.
“It’s impossible to get a correctly presented pint of Guinness in one pour because the meniscus is negative. Therefore [it’s] a dimple rather than a dome,” he wrote in response on X, formerly Twitter, adding that it also affects the texture and leads to a “far inferior drink”. Diageo, Guinness’s parent com- pany, agrees, saying the two-stage pour is required to get the right consistency and height in the head, as well as the dome synonymous with any decent pint of the stout.
It denies the double pour is a marketing ploy, and says it has no plans to encourage publicans to scrap the ritual to allow for quicker service.
Despite his claim, Mr Brown still abides by the two-stage pour when serving Guinness in his London bars.
“It’s what our guests want,” he said. “If we were to serve all the patrons that come through a single pour they’d raise an eyebrow at you. But if I was just pouring a pint for myself, I wouldn’t bother with the two steps.”
Like any London bar or pub owner, Mr Brown has reason to worry about serving his customers an inadequate pint. Those deemed below par risk ending up on the popular Instagram page S--- London Guinness, with the venue named and shamed and the bubbling pint ridiculed by its 250,000 predominantly Irish followers.
Can the perfect Guinness be found on this side of the Irish Sea? Many happy hours have been wasted in the hunt for the quintessential pint. The ideal way of pouring the Dublin brew – in two stages, then slam the glass on the counter and watch it settle – has become a matter of dogma. Now spoilsports inform us that this ritual makes no difference, although Guinness keenly defends the tradition. But it is a mass-produced product coming out homogenised from the brewery. A publican can surely do little to improve it, although ruining it via bad storage is a much more attainable proposition. But must we lose our cherished myths? Taste is not purely a matter of science. The rites that go along with imbibing a much loved tipple elevate, indeed transform, the experience. Even Krug is not the same if downed from some humdrum vessel.