Guinness Storehouse

Touring the Guinness "factory" museum

My goodness, my Guinness! Bottles line the shelves at the Guinness Storehouse gift shop.

Arthur GuinnessIn 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on a 50-acre site at the St. James's Gate, in what were then Dublin's western outskirts, and he built a brewery on the site.

In the 1770s, Arthur perfected a formula using roasted barley to produce a rich, black variant on porter called stout. He called it, simply, "Guinness," and a legend was born.

By the middle of the 19th century, the brewery founded by Arthur Guiness had become the largest in the world.

The Guinness tour

You can't get into the plant itself anymore, but there's an entertaining audio-visual display in a converted warehouse on the grounds, with features on Guinness's long and clever advertising history, the culinary science of beer making, and the lost art of the cooper (barrel-maker).

Though spread a bit thinly over a ridiculously sprawling seven floors of exhibits (I supposed all that room helps them absorb the tour bus crowds), along the way you do get to learn all sorts of pointlessly interesting facts and figures, among them:

Tons and tons of Irish barley go into Guinness.

• The St. James's Gate Brewery uses 100,000 tonnes of Irish grown barley per year, approximately 15% of which is roasted.
• The gaseous mixture in Gunniess is actually only 20% carbon dioxide, the rest is nitrogen.
• The largest wooden vats at the plant could hold 90,000 gallons of beer, or 720,000 pints each.
• It takes precisely 119.5 seconds to pour and serve a pint of Guinness properly. (I suspect it actually take around two minutes, but 119.5 seconds sound much more pseudo-scientific.)
• The Guiness plant in Dublin produces three million pints every day, destined for the Irish, U.K., European, and U.S. markets.
• Hops plants can grown 15 feet and used to be tended by men in stilts.
• Guinness is stored at 9º C, but poured and served at 6ºC.
• The yeast to start each batch of Guinness has been transfered from the previous batch uninterrupted since the 19th century. (In case of emergency, there's a backup vial of this venerable starter yeast kept in the director's safe.)

The Guinness yeast stays safely in a safe. Also, you learn why the bubbles in Guinness fall down instead of up. (Yep. It's true. Think for a moment about watching a glass of Guinness: The white fizz doesn't bubble up; it cascades gently down. Ask the bartender at the half-pint sampling station about halfway through the visit and he'll explain it to you.)

Free beer

The Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse. The highlight of the tour, of course, is the chance to drink beer. Thsi is done in Gravity Room pub, a sky-scraping round room with glass walls, brilliant views over the city and surrounding bay and mountains, where your ticket entitles you to one free pint of the famed brew—just one, though.

One pint comes with your ticket, and you can't buy a second round for love or money, no matter how much you flatter the bartenders (and you'll hear much begging, cajoling, and wheedling going on).

Learn to pull the perfect pint

Your intrepid author learns to pull a perfect pint at the Guinness Storehouse.Another option for your free drinks ticket is to take the irish bartending lesson. There's a pull-your-own bar on your way up through the museum where you can learn to pull the perfect pint—and then drink the results of your lesson. A bit cheesy, yes, but it's actually kinda fun.

Just keep in mind that the wait for this experience can be 20 minutes or more, as they conduct the lessons in small groups (and the lessons themslves take abother 15-20 minutes, since everyone gets a go and it take two sessions at the tap to finish off a proper pint).

Tips

• Planning your time at the Guinness Storehouse: Surprisingly, a run through the place takes at least an hour—it would probably take only 25 minutes, but the thing is spread out over seven floors. How long you linger in the Gravity Room sipping your Guinness and enjoying the views is up to you. Add another 30 mintues or so if you want to learn to pull your own pint. Add another 10-15 minutes of waiting in line to get tickets (or book ahead to skip this part). Note that it also takes a solid 15 minutes to walk here from Christ Church (through a dull area, so a bus might be worthwhile).

The actual Guinness factory surrounds the Guiness Storehouse in Dublin.
• Save time and money by booking tickets for the Guinness Storehouse ahead: Buy your tickets ahead of time via our partner Viator.com and you can skip the lines (which, even on a slow day with short lines, can easily waste 15 minutes or more of your precious vacation time). What's more, the pre-booked tickets actually cost slightly less (about €1.20) than you'd pay if you waited until you got there. Win-win.
• Dublin Pass: You can get into the Guinness Storehouse for free using the Dublin Pass.
• Tours: Take a tour that includes a stop at the Guinness Storehouse with our partners at Viator.com:
  • Dublin City Hop-on Hop-off Tour (no site entry)