If you walk around Dublin for long enough, you’re going to see someone holding a bag from the gift shop at the Guinness Storehouse. It’s definitely one of those must-visit places for tourists.
Well, I’m a tourist. I like must-visit places. I also quite like Guinness, so yeah, it’s a no-brainer.
And the Guinness Storehouse is neat, but it’s hard not to compare it to my recent tour of the Glengoyne whisky distillery, in which we got to see every step in the actual production process.
The Guinness Storehouse is a slick multimedia experience that’s compelling to walk through — but it has very little to do with how the drink is actually made.
You get to see a bunch of historical equipment, and there’s a lot of talk about things like the perfect temperature to roast barley (232 degrees) and the number of nitrogen bubbles in every pint (30 million), but almost no insight on how Guinness is actually produced today. What machines do they use? What does the factory look like? Who knows! There are photos and videos of what the factory looked like decades ago, but pretty much nothing on how it looks now.
Still, it’s an enjoyable enough way to spend an hour or so, plus at the end you get to go up to the Gravity Bar (which is surrounded by windows offering amazing views of the city) and have a pint of the black stuff. Anything that ends with you drinking a glass of Guinness can’t be all bad.