Ninety seconds on Guinness Storehouse
By the end of the climb you are drinking a pint in a circular glass room seven floors up, with Dublin on every side and, on a clear day, the mountains to the south.
The document under glass on the ground floor is the original lease on the St James's Gate brewery, signed for 9,000 years. The Storehouse fills part of that old brewery. It is a museum of the company and its stout with a short lesson in brewing, not a tour of a working brewhouse.
The ingredients come first. The barley in the ground-floor display is real grain, set out beside the hops, yeast and water that make the stout. The brewing water comes from the Wicklow Mountains, south of the city.
On the second floor stands a large hand-carved pint covered in scenes from the company's history. Stop and look at the carvings up close before you move on to the advertising and tasting floors above.
The building ends in the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor, which only ticket holders can enter.
Pick up your audio guide at the start, then begin at the lease on the ground floor and work your way upward. The floors run in order: the ingredients, the craft of brewing, then advertising and tasting.
The tour is self-guided, so you set the pace on each floor and move up by lift or ramp. The circular Gravity Bar on the top floor is the last stop, glazed all the way round.
There you redeem the drink included in the standard ticket: a pint of Guinness, Guinness 0.0 or a soft drink. It is one drink only, and you leave the bar once you have finished it, so take your time over the view while you drink.
No guide is needed, and none is included: the audio guide from the start carries you through the floors. For more than the standard pint, the Guinness Academy upgrade teaches you to pour your own and sends you home with a certificate.
If beer holds little interest for you and your time in Dublin is short, the Storehouse is the easiest stop to skip.
Book online before you go. The price changes by day and time, and a ticket cannot be refunded once bought.
Weekend afternoons can be busy and loud. Reception keeps sensory kits with earplugs and a visual guide to the building, and the Gravity Bar admits four wheelchair users at a time.
Bring a coat you are happy to carry, because the storage desk holds luggage but not coats or jackets. Real barley fills the ground-floor display, so if gluten bothers you, ask for a mask at the info desk on the lower ground floor.
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