My Goodness My Guinness
As the brewery at St James’s Gate prepares for Christmas, our intrepid reporter gets an exclusive look behind the scenes
THIS week Guinness Storehouse – one of the country’s most popular attractions – unveiled a sparkling Christmas visitors experience to mark the festive season. But as the queues began forming for the ‘Welcome Home’ exhibition, which runs until January 6, the Irish Mail on Sunday was given a special behind-the-scenes tour of the working brewery at St James’s Gate, the world’s oldest and most famous.
The new visitor experience includes a state-of-the-art projection-mapped Christmas tree in the atrium that measures 16 metres, a film inspired by the iconic surge of a Guinness pint, and large-scale prints created exclusively for the Home of Guinness.
But the real magic happens behind the cloak of the slick new visitor centre, as I discovered during a special tour of the modern Guinness brewery, which is offlimits to tourists.
Accompanied by beer sommelier and brewing expert Ian Colgan, I don my goggles and high-vis before entering the fabled Guinness tunnels, designed by the architect who conceived the London Underground. They bring us right to the heart of the huge brewing operation.
The first thing that strikes you is the sheer size of the beer vats. They’re absolutely enormous; a full kilometre in circumference and with the capacity to brew more than a million pints.
The original brewing vats are still here too, undergoing restoration. It was from here a piece of wood containing bacteria was used to replicate the original yeast strain from the first batches of stout made at the brewery.
Different vats contain different stouts; there’s the original Guinness, the alcohol-free version and the foreign ‘Extra’ variety. The alcohol-free version is just as expensive to make as its boozy counterpart, Ian explains, if not dearer.
Foreign Extra – a fair deal stronger at 7.5% ABV and much more bitter – is brewed primarily for export, especially to Nigeria where the stout is hugely popular.
I ask Ian why Guinness doesn’t taste as good in my native England, but he insists it tastes the same wherever it is drunk. Perhaps, my guide jokingly suggests, it’s because the English are bad craic: it’s not the beer, it’s the company.
I soberly decide not to take offence and we continue to Brewhouse 4, the most modern of the buildings, operating since 2014, where Ian tells me that, despite the technology, the brewing process hasn’t changed since the time of the ancient Egyptians.
Guinness staff used to receive two pints a day as part of their wage, before the site went ‘dry’. But this policy hasn’t been scrapped – Guinness operatives can still get their pints; it just has to be off-site.
Four ingredients go into a pint – barley, hops, yeast and water. The water, my guide stresses, must come from the Wicklow mountains (this, apparently, is what makes Guinness so smooth). The pipes that carry the water from the mountains are still visible, labelled ‘Well’. The yeast must be from the original strain to be
The first thing that strikes you is the sheer size of the beer vats
branded as Guinness – it’s the very DNA of the stout.
I’m told there’s a safe in the managing director’s office that contains the priceless Guinness yeast. In the event of a disaster, the brewery could be back up and running in the space of just two hours.
Train tracks criss-cross the yards between the old brewhouses. When horses and carriages were still used to transport barrels of stout, the factory constructed train tracks to the River Liffey in front of the old brewery. Beer trains took the barrels directly to barges on the river, before being shipped to Britain and beyond.
Guinness has been brewed at St James’s Gate since 1759, but the draught stout as we know it was only created in 1959. Ian points out the ‘experimental centre’, where draught Guinness was invented 200 years after the brewery was founded. Nitrogen was added by experimental brewer Michael Ash, giving the liquid the impression of being creamy and smooth. The tiny bubbles of nitrogen rise to the top of the glass, giving the pint its ‘surge’, and creating the head.
Here I receive the best bit of
advice; how to properly drink the stuff. A pint of Guinness should never be sipped.
Rather, a sizeable gulp should be taken.
To sip is to take a mouthful of nitrogen; so the ideal glug should get through to the black, or as my guide corrects, the ‘ruby-red’ stuff and leave a creamy moustache behind.
I’ve been told many times that it’s a cardinal sin to drink a pint of Guinness before it’s fully settled. But I’m told this is just another myth. Apparently, there’s no need to wait – it makes no difference to the taste or consistency.
Then came a masterclass in how to pour the perfect pint.
According to my guide, my pour is as good as that of any Dublin barman. After a long day looking at the history and science behind the black, sorry – ruby-red stuff – I soon discover my glug is as good as a hardened Guinness drinker’s.