Who knew that all 5 senses were used when sampling the black stuff? Well there’s always been more to Guinness  than just a drink. It’s all about the story, the history, the folklore and the legend.

It’s hard to know what to believe when you hear about Guinness sometimes, but when touring the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin yesterday, this particular part of the story stood out to me! It’s all about using the 5 senses when sampling your pint of Guinness.

Watch the video below:

It’s the end of an era in Ireland. Guinness, whose best-known advertising campaign proclaimed that its stout “was good for you”, has scrapped the long-standing tradition of providing free drink to blood donors.

Diageo, its parent company, has decided to abandon the tradition of providing complimentary bottles of Guinness to the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS). “We felt this style and type of donation was not best suited to us now,” said Grainne Mackin, for Diageo. “Guinness has long stopped promoting the product as medicinal and we want to be in full alignment with our voluntary marketing code. It wasn’t driven by any commercial agenda.”

Paddy Bowler, the director of operations at the IBTS, said it considered offering a free Guinness to every donor by buying the drink itself, but decided against it. “The government is going to lower the blood alcohol limits for drivers,” he said. “So we didn’t feel it was appropriate to supply alcohol at the clinics any more, particularly those down the country.”

Instead, blood donors will be offered a cup of tea and a biscuit, or a non-alcoholic drink, along with small tokens such as a pens, key-rings or balloons for their children.

Guinness sales have been declining in Ireland by about 8% a year, so this move probably won’t help consumption!

Guinness are well known for their advertising but this commercial beat their previous records by scooping the award for best commercial on tv in 2006. I thought it was worth reliving the commercial again!

A Californian bar has poured what is sure to be confirmed as the world’s largest pint of Guinness.

A crowd of 400 people gathered in the Auld Dubliner Irish Bar’s patio in Tustin, California recently to watch the mammoth 900-lb. glass, made of shatter-resistant acrylic, being filled with 2,772 lbs. of beer. Though it has yet to be certified, the feat should earn the bar a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for world’s largest glass of beer.

Though it hasn’t been confirmed by the bar, rumor has it that it was ordered by a very thirsty Irishman who was willing to wait for it to be poured using the traditional 2-part pour….Impressive.

As any bartender in Ireland will tell you, there is nothing more annoying than a tourist not “getting” how the process of pouring a pint of Guinness works. Though it varies depending on the country it is served in, the correct way to serve Guinness in Ireland (and therefore the rest of the world seeing as everyone claims Irish ancestry) is the two-part pour:

• Use a clean normal size pint glass and tilt it to a 45 angle and fill to three quarters full.
• Allow the ‘surge’ to settle until there is a clear delineation between the head (which should be about inch, also known as a bishops collar due to it’s size when poured correctly and a light cream colour) at the top. A perfect pint should take 119.5 seconds to pour. Seriously. No joke.
• Now fill the glass to the top with a final quarter pint of Guinness.
• When pouring from a pump you can draw a lucky ‘shamrock’ shape in the top, although this takes practice and most Irish bartenders/purists would vomit at the thought of this..

Many is the time I had to call back the unsuspecting tourist who had taken their half poured pint so I could top it up and finish it properly. Guinness have always used the “waiting game” as a marketing tool and so their new beermat continues this tradition!

There’s a great Jameson Whiskey commercial airing in the US right now and in my opinion is one of the best they have come up with in quite a while. Puts them in the same league as the old Guinness commercials that were so loved!

Can’t see this video? Click here

While it’s always possible to find a reason to raise a glass, tomorrow Thursday September 24th is the 250th anniversary of the founding of Guinness! One of the most recognised brands in the world, Guinness is synonomous with Ireland and has been produced in Dublin since 1759. Here are 21 facts you might not have known about the “pint of plain”

(compliments of http://www.guinnessgearonline.com)

1. 2009 is the 250th Anniversary of Guinness.

2. St James Gate was not the original site for the brewery. Arthur Guinness began brewing beer in Leixlip, a town in County Kildare.

3. In 1759 he moved to an empty St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin, Ireland. A bigger brewery in a bigger city for bigger production of a great product!

4. The St. James’s Gate Brewery was leased for 9000 years at an annual fee of £45, or $65 USD! This lease INCLUDED fresh water rights. Imagine paying only $65 for rent for a year on anything, let alone a large brewery!! The fresh water rights caused problems with the Dublin Corporation, who wanted to charge a levy. This created quite a stir, and production was halted for a brief time while labourers blocked the water supply to the brewery. In the end, lucky for us, Guinness kept their fresh water rights as outlined in his lease.

5. Ten years later, in 1769, Guinness exported six and one half barrels of beer to England, their first exportation. This brought awareness of the product to a whole new market. As people emigrated to the new world, they would of course take their favorite brew with them. [...]