Is Guinness Really Better in Ireland?

Dave's Guinness

I have to say that the answer is a whole-hearted yes.  I always thought people were being a bit precious when they said this.  But having found Guinness almost undrinkable in Australia, and then trying one in Dublin, mainly because you feel like you have to, I am now hooked.  Also knowing that it is guaranteed to be chilled has helped matters when drinking it in London.

The Man-O-War pub

Whilst in Dublin we visited a pub which was first established in 1595, it used to be a horse exchange post, which is really going back.  It makes me smile now to think of the pub which proudly proclaimed itself the oldest pub in Sydney. It was established in 1828, and is probably younger than our dodgy local around the corner, though to be honest, being in Hampstead it isn't all that dodgy.

Coming back to this pub, since they built the motorway bypassing it, there has been a dramatic fall-off in customers.  Which is a shame as the bartender was super friendly and let us pull our own drinks, though he did keep a close eye on us as we did it.

Dave pouring himself a drink

The bartender was telling us that Guinness has a very short shelf-life, I think he said something like 10 days, which kind of explains why it really isn't that great in Australia.  It's not bad in London, there seems to be a high enough turn-over in the stuff that it never really exceeds the 10 days by too much.

A couple of things to say about Guinness, since it does seem to be the national drink, Arthur Guinness was a very clever man, and if you look at the harp on the glass you'll see it's facing a particular way.  Well Arthur Guinness actually copyrighted that, which is impressive when you think about it, given that the harp is the national emblem of the country, but I suppose it became a country post the copyrighting.  This means that all images of the harp now have to be done the other way, if you look at a euro coin from Ireland, you'll see the harp on that, and it's facing the other way.  Even the harps in the Dublin castle were all facing the other way. 

Also the other is not to visit the Guinness Store-House in Dublin.  We didn't go as we were fairly vehemently sworn off it by one of the tour guides.  Apparently Guinness has been bought out by Diageo, a massive drinks company, and whilst the family is still a shareholder, they don't actually work at all in the company.  We were told that there's no longer any guided tour and that at 13 euros, it's an expensive free pint of Guinness.  Instead we went to the Jameson Distillery, which was enough of a tourist-fest for us.