What is Good?: Guinness

Guinness Storehouse

During a recent trip to Ireland I visited the Guinness Storehouse, where you can learn about everything from the ingredients right through to advertising for Guinness. I felt I learnt a lot walking around it, and certainly enjoyed the free pint of Guinness when I got to the top.

Once I'd paid to go in I was greeted with this awesome statue.

Before I started exploring, I was given a map to follow to find each of the sections although I wouldn't necessarily need it anyway because unless I was to insist on going in the lift, it's pretty much one long trail taking you through all the areas.

Ingredients

The first section is (obviously) ingredients. There are 4 that go into making Guinness - water, barley, hops and yeast.

The first ingredient I came to is Barley. '100 000 tons of Irish grown barley are used every year in making Guinness'. There was a huge Malting Pit full of the stuff to see and touch as you walked around it, with videos playing in the middle showing the process of it growing.

As I was walking around the Storehouse, all along the way was little facts across the walls and on the floors. There was one as you walked around the Malting Pit reading: 'The word beer is thought to originate from the anglo saxon word Baere meaning barley'.

'Guinness is brewed using a combination of malted, unmalted and roasted barley'. Before barley can be used within the brewing process, if first needs to have the starches in it broken down, which is done by malting.

'Barley provides the basic raw ingredient for fermentation, contributing to the balanced flavour and uniqueness of Guinness beer. The roasted barley gives Guinness beer its characteristic deep ruby red colour'.

Here is another fact appearing on the walls around the Malting Pit, one which was made earlier stating: 'At St. James's Gate brewery, Guinness use 100 000 tonnes of Irish grown barley per year'.

The next ingredient I came to as I walked from the barley section was Hops. Whilst walking, there is a voiceover with someone explaining a little about it, and tells you to take in deep breaths to smell the essence of it. The smell was quite distinctive, but I couldn't describe it.

The last ingredient section I came to was water - consisting of a huge waterfall, where people have thrown in loose change which will then go on to be donated to the 'Water of Life' programme, as stated along the front of the water section.