Uncover Guinness’ Essential Ingredients as You’ve Never Seen Them Before
Step into a sensory experience like no other and uncover the story of Guinness through your senses. Your journey into the home of Guinness begins at the recently relaunched ingredients floor waiting to take you up close and personal with the essential components that go into every Guinness brew.
Since Arthur Guinness began brewing, he realised one essential truth that raised his beer above the many other brewers in Dublin during the time: quality ingredients make for quality stout. Understanding Guinness means understanding what goes into each and every pint. Guinness, like your tour of the Storehouse, begins with four raw and natural ingredients sourced to the highest quality. To get a true understanding of where the ingredients come from and the stories behind each one, step into the relaunched the ingredients floor at the Guinness Storehouse where you’ll be transported through a narrative inspired by each one.
Your visit begins by walking through a large tunnel where you’ll undergo a sensory reset to prepare for the journey that awaits. Lay your eyes upon a huge screen exhibiting a mini preview of the story that’s to come and get ready to delve into a total sensorial experience of the four key elements that make up each and every pint of Guinness.
Barley
Your journey into Guinness’ raw ingredients begins with the basic ingredient for fermentation which contributes to Guinness’ balanced flavour and inexhaustible uniqueness. Selecting quality barley is vital and that’s why a dedicated buyer monitors the harvest and selects only the best to be transported to St. James’s Gate.
On the Ingredients Floor, you’ll experience firsthand the ideal conditions in which our barley thrives. You’ll be transported into a lush field of golden barley, ripe for harvest and be immersed in the dramatic and ever-changing weather that the grain endures before it’s selected.
Water
A quality water source is essential for brewing a high-quality stout. In fact, Arthur Guinness founded his brewery at St. James’ gate because of its excellent water supply and his original lease on the building included special water rights in Dublin. To this day, only the highest quality water is used to brew Guinness which comes directly from the Wicklow mountains - a soft water with a low mineral content.
You’ll get a feeling for its importance in the brewing process as you gaze at the vast curtain of water encircling the next space of the Ingredients Floor standing 14 metres tall. Gaze at the stories printed in the water as you contemplate its significance in each glass.
Hops
Hops are the key ingredient to a flavourful beer and you’ll get a taste of its dominance in the brewing process as you enter a vast, cavernous space where hops stretch up as far as the eye can see, encircling and reflecting around you. It’s only fitting as Guinness contains a higher hops content than most other beers or lagers allowing it to be shipped all over the world.
Yeast
Last but certainly not least you’ll discover the fourth key ingredient upstairs. In a deliberately deceptive space, you’ll uncover the wonder of yeast as the room changes from light filled nature into a modern-day lab. The magic of this last ingredient is what transforms the sugars and nutrients in barley into alcohol. The mystical aura you’ll discover in this room is only apt as it’s rumoured that the yeast used in Guinness is directly descended from Arthur Guinness’ original strain.
Discover the relaunched ingredients floor at the Guinness Storehouse for yourself.