Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
News from behind the bar: Guinness is back, and the hot young crowds of London have swapped their waxed mustaches for milky ones. Gone are the days of fretting over blocks of ice and balanced ferments. I’ve put down my martini shaker and picked up the pint glass.
As someone who runs a handful of cocktail bars, this is not entirely good news. But as an Irish barman in London, it’s hard to be mad at it. There’s pride in seeing my punters wanting to join the tribe. Guinness, with its ubiquity, recognisable appearance and easy drinking, is a logical fetish for the social-drinking clique. Adios tequila! A two-tone pint has become the safe choice, a wink and a nod that says, “I’m cool, unbothered, one of the gang.”
With this new wave of Guinness appreciation has come an even more interesting phenomenon: the subjective hierarchy of pubs serving “the best Guinness in town”. The newly opened Devonshire Arms in Piccadilly, for example, has built its ridiculously hyped reputation on this claim. Its devotees’ social feeds are awash with snaps of milky-black beautiful pints.
It’s surprising that this doesn’t raise a few eyebrows. You’d be worried if medicine from one doctor was deemed “better” than the same stuff from another. It’s not like a martini. There’s little craft in pulling the beer lever. Yet landlords and ladies live in fear of appearing on the Instagram account @shitlondonguiness: a digital wall of shame where inadequate pints are judged without context. With Guinness relentlessly increasing its share of sales in pubs, and pubs struggling, being tagged as a bad pint puller could be fatal.
What holy light has shone on the chose few who are famed for serving good Guinness? How exactly do they sculpt such beauty in beer? In short, they do very bloody little. All Guinness kegs are exactly the same when they arrive at the pubs. It’s all made in the same place, with corporate scrutiny for consistency. The magic, to the extent that there is any, creeps in somewhere between keg and glass.
There are some basic rules. A cold cellar is a good place to start, but more important is the distance from cellar to pump. It must be as short as possible. Clean the beer lines regularly. Use the nitrogen-heavy gas mix, leave the CO2 for your lager. Don’t use detergent to clean your glasses, you want that milky residue to cling to the inside of a finished pint. In Ireland, we call this the schtick.
Ready to pour? At this point, it becomes more about ritual. Pour the beer in two stages, even if you can’t explain why. (This isn’t done for the beer’s sake; it was practice in the Guinness brewery to speed up serving the masses at home time — the brand has always had the savviest of marketing departments.) Then, with a keenness bordering on aggression, slam that settling pint on the counter. Make sure your guests can watch the sacred dance that follows: frothy white micro-bubbles falling faintly, cascading into the darkness.
After that, there’s only one thing left to do: a blag. Get the word out that your Guinness is the best. Make friends with the journals, the editors, the influencers. Say it loud: “This is the best Guinness in town.” And, to be fair, it ain’t wrong. Because the more the Guinness flows, the less time it spends in beer lines, and the creamier it’ll be. More Guinness equals better Guinness. Prophecy: fulfilled.
Nate Brown is the owner of Paloma Café, Soda & Friends and Nebula
Follow @FTMag to find out about our latest stories first
