Stout’s spiritual home

 

 

Perched on a slender stool in the wood-lined, stained glass nook of the Davy Byrnes, one of Dublin’s most storied old pubs, I’m asked by a twinkle-eyed bartender what I’d like to drink. Scanning the chatty patrons clustered around me in a bar that James Joyce regarded as a second home, it’s obvious what the tipple of choice is here. Although Guinness has never been my favorite poison, I succumb to peer pressure and order a pint of the black gold.

 

Expecting the worst, I take a deep swig of the creamy, bitter draught. Then I take another. After the third rapid-fire slug, I realize that a road to Damascus revelation has taken place – or maybe the old claim that Guinness tastes better in Ireland is actually true. Finally understanding what Dublin poet Brendan Behan was alluding to when he described himself as a “A drinker with a writing problem,” I make plans for a pilgrimage to the heart of the matter. Next stop: the Guinness Brewery.

 

Occupying dozens of towering gray-brick warehouses in Dublin’s cobblestone St. James’s Gate area, the plant was founded here on the banks of the River Liffey by Arthur Guinness in 1759. Cannily negotiating a cheap but ambitious 9,000-year lease, he gradually expanded the complex to become Ireland’s biggest brewery. While an estimated 10 million glasses of Guinness are now supped in 150 countries every day, production remains rooted to the hearty stout’s spiritual home.

 

With the thick, clammy aroma of barley hanging in the air, I head towards the site’s Guinness Storehouse. A giant visitor center occupying an old fermentation building, it’s been retrofitted with a central glass atrium, polished granite floors and crisscrossing escalators arching overhead. Eschewing the standard tour-and-sample experience that’s common to most brewery visits, the seven-floor Storehouse is a multimedia gallery, museum, restaurant and bar complex.

 

The dusty jars of barley and hops usually brandished on brewery tours are replaced here with a moodily-lit desert of raked grain filling a whole room, as well as 50-foot-high vines stretching up the walls inside glass cabinets. Old equipment has been re-fitted with touch screens illuminating the brewery’s colorful history and its complicated processes. Retired vats have also been cleaned-up, cut open and transformed into mini movie theatres. I learn that stout is a full-bodied version of porter – a dark beer popular in the 18th century – and that stacks of up to 250,000 wooden barrels once stood outside, a visual wonder regarded as Dublin’s version of the pyramids.

 

With my appetite duly whetted, I stumble upon the first-floor Tasting Laboratory, where white-coated staff serve-up miniscule glasses of the frothy ambrosia direct from the keg production line. Drawn like bees to honey, the packed crowd in this room is shown how to savour the subtle flavours apparent in every beer. Trapped at the back, I don’t catch any of the tasting tips but I am able to extend my arm through the melee to extract a second glass from the sample table.

 

Recalling how Guinness was for years marketed as an iron-rich health drink, the second-floor gallery showcases a kaleidoscope of old advertising campaigns spearheaded by artist John Gilroy. His whimsical cartoons, akin to the jokey naivety of saucy seaside postcards, depict a menagerie of crocodiles, giraffes and the ever-popular toucan outwitting their zookeepers to enjoy a pint for themselves. The once-ubiquitous slogans reflect a similar innocence, ranging from “Guinness is good for you” to “My goodness, my Guinness” and “Have a Guinness when you’re tired.”

 

Perhaps swayed by these old adverts, and following a late lunch of pork and leek sausages at the fifth-floor restaurant, I head to what for many is the Storehouse’s main attraction. Perched like a flying saucer eight feet above the building’s old roof, Gravity Bar is Dublin’s highest pub. Unlike most brewery tours, where samples are usually served in a room with a fake-pub feel, Gravity has the convivial aura of a real bar. A circular, wood-floored room with dozens of sofas surrounding a busy central counter, it’s humming with conversation on my visit.

 

But while the pints of Guinness – Storehouse entry includes one free drink and sodas and juices available if you’d rather stay completely sober – are welcome, it’s the vistas here that make this watering hole special. Encased by 360-degree, floor-to-ceiling windows, the bar has spectacular views across Dublin’s crenulated Georgian rooftops. It’s the perfect place to raise a glass and give the traditional “Sláinte” toast to what may be Ireland’s greatest liquid asset.

 

If you go: