🍺

Let’s not kid ourselves. Guinness is the name of the game in Dublin. The drink of the Republic is everywhere. We visited the Guinness Brewery Storehouse.

When deciding where to go in Dublin, I really wanted to see the famous St. James Gate Brewery. And I did.

That’s the sum of the view of the brewery from the Storehouse, the public half-amusement park, half-immersive-ad experience. I’ve never been to a macrobrewery and the scale they must operate in blows my mind, but it makes sense that for all of the people that visit, they can’t really provide any meaningful access that wouldn’t impact production.

This is a Guinness Disneyland. Fully-immersive exhibits with every sight, sound, and smell perfectly crafted to fill your mind with nothing else beyond how incredibly specific and particular they are to make Guinness the best beer on the planet.

The original lease from the city to Arthur Guinness

They have an exhibit where you smell vapors of the different elements of beer, followed by a tasting session.

Two things made me laugh while at the Storehouse. First, the coffee shop. Second, I could order a Budweiser.

The Storehouse is one of the taller buildings in that part of Dublin—huge—on one floor, they had a workshop on how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. I must confess that I enjoyed it quite a bit.

A Guinness takes about a minute to settle.

It’s quite beautiful watching the pints slowly settle.

My group’s line of pints.

My perfect pint of Guiness

Of course, there’s plenty of drink there. They have a few different varieties and I ended up alone for a few minutes. I found my way to a bar inside that sold flights and eventually most of the meetup it seemed found me.

A friend and coworker, Ryan, shot some beautiful pictures while there as well.

Craft beer hasn’t escaped Dublin either. Galway Bay Brewery operates eleven different bars and brewpubs, of which we visited two. Their beers were pretty delicious and ran the entire range of styles. When you visit Dublin, you must try them.

Personally, I really enjoyed The Beer Market, a block down from Christchurch, that had good pub grub, Galway Bay Beers, and a fine selection of other beers too.

The Porterhouse, another brewery that also owns a few bars—is the only real way craft breweries found success in Dublin is by owner the establishments that serve?—had a great lineup and was another fun place to try beers.

While Dublin is a Guinness town, the brews from Galway Bay, The Porterhouse, and others available in Dublin were quite tasty.

Of course, there is more to Irish alcohol than beer. I’m not a whiskey drinker, but visited the Irish Whiskey Museum. It’s independent—not affiliated with any distillery—and presented a great historical tour of Irish whiskey, a fine selection during tasting, and we added on a very fun whiskey mixing class.

I fell in love with Dublin, even if only there for nine days, between the people, the culture, the sights, the walkability, the drinks, the churches. I look forward to creating a reason to go back.