I swear to god if I type Guinness with only one N one more time I’m going to throw this blog into the next loch I see.
Sorry, just had to get that out. 😳
Sarah and I have done quite a few brewery tours and a plethora of wine tastings, so I walked in confident in my knowledge of what we were about to experience. Almost as confident as I am that I used “plethora” correctly just now.
Holy sh*t was I wrong.
You’re goddamn right it does. For the uninitiated, the Guinness Storeroom is a 7-story warehouse they bought across the street from their actual brewery which they turned into a Guinness museum. This was a wild experience. It would take me ages to annotate all the images so I’ll give you the gist instead and then just photo-dump a fraction of the photos I actually took.
The self-guided tour starts with an all-out immersive blitz of screens, sounds, wind and rain machines, water sculptures and so much more. It’s like walking through a 7-story art installation. Each floor is dedicated to a different aspect of the history, process, business, marketing, artistry… you name it.
At the end of the experience (at the top, you make your way up through the building) there are two bars each with a ~360 degree view of the city where they give you a Guinness and some insecurity about what you’ve done with your life. Along the way there are cafes, restaurants, and a few “add-ons” you can buy for having your face printed in the head of a Guinness and I think a private tasting where surely you’re taught to pick up notes of leprechaun sweat and 13th century pew wood, or something. We didn’t make it behind that velvet rope so your guess is as good as mine.
Alright, here’s the photo-💩 as promised. The first image, by the way, is a massive screen playing a looping video about how their beer is made (“field to froth”… I made that up, but Guinness, if you’re reading, you can have that).
One thing that struck me about this place, besides how impressive it was, is that someone took immense care to create immersive installations designed to put you INSIDE their art. There was a water installation where words and images were drawn by controlling the falling water, there were media enclosures with TVs, lights, and interactive features… and because everyone was filming everything, nobody would step INTO these pieces of art for fear of ruining someone else’s shot. It was really a shame that this was the line of decency people can still draw in the sand. 🤦♂️
Now, as evidenced above, I was among those heavily capturing the experience (you’re welcome) but I also took time to appreciate this art as it was intended. Needless to say, I’m the lone asshole in a lot of peoples’ camera rolls. *jazz hands*
[I took some footage of my own and when I have time to cut it together it will go here]
Oh, and I included that screenshot of my lock screen above because it was during our tour-ending Guinness that my AirTag notified us that our bags had landed in Dublin. It would be another 9 hours and a few phone calls before we had them in our possession, but the timing of that relief went beautifully with our first few sips – which tastes the same as it does in the states, by the way. It’s served cold, by the people who make it. And by every pub we visited.
Don’t believe everything you hear.
Up next. Tea! On a bus. With tiny sandwiches. 👉
