Family travel is always fun, but all kinds of new cultural opportunities open up once the kids reach legal drinking age. When we toured Ireland with two of our grown boys, we could all partake in the full spectrum of life in Ireland, including learning to pour a perfect pint of Guinness beer.
During the first week of our trip up the Atlantic Way, we’d have dinner in a different pub each night. The pubs are the community hubs of every little town, bustling with people just stopping in for a pint, or a meal, or for the local musicians. We all developed a new love for Guinness–a dark, creamy stout with a nitro froth like a malted barley milkshake.
Just by the black, opaque appearance, I expect Guinness to be a heavy beer. It does fill you up! But it’s no more calories than other beers, and in fact the alcohol percentage is just over 4% (compared to PNW microbrews which often range over 6%, that’s a light beer!) It’s the deeply roasted barley that produces the coffee color and the complex flavor, and the nitro carbonation that charges the lathery foam head.
We wrapped up our visit with a few days in Dublin, and were excited to tour the Guinness Storehouse. I was expecting a low-key brewery tour, with a pint at the end, and was honestly shocked at the masses of people funneled through three floors of Guinness trivia–lots about marketing through the years, and very little about how it’s made (which does not happen there, btw.) The best part is the Guinness Academy, where you learn to pour a perfect Guinness pint.
Three keys to a good pour: hold the glass at a 45 degree angle and pour til the beer reaches the lip of the glass. Put down the glass and while it settles, think about how delicious it’s going to taste. Step three: slowly fill it the rest of the way, and you should finish with a half-inch or so of creamy foam to the top of the glass. It’s really not hard, but practice makes perfect.