‘Always order your Guinness first in the round,’ Aaron begins ‘when you get it, let it settle before your first sip – half the pleasure is in the patience.’ He’s pouring a pint at Homeboy, his bar in Nine Elms where he and his business partner Ciarán Smith serve some of the best Guinness in London. These words of wisdom were first bestowed on him by his father Liam Wall. ‘If you drink it in less than three sips, you’re a pig. If you drink it in more than seven, you don’t deserve it and if you take so long to drink it the head goes yellow, then we’ll take it off you.’ This is how a well-served pint of Guinness makes people feel. More-so than any other beer, it carries a sentimental connection.
The well-served part is important, because not all pints are created equal. Even if you’re not a regular drinker of the black stuff yourself, you will have heard the faithful discussing the merits of one pubs pints over another. The good news for anyone who regularly imbibes is that London is home to a robust and competitive Guinness culture.
Start asking people where you can score the best pint in town, you’ll find the same few names keep coming up. The Auld Shillelagh on Church Street in Stoke Newington is sure to get a mention, as is Sheephaven Bay in Camden. There’s also The Coach and Horses in Covent Garden, which offers an incongruously good pint on the touristy row it shares with a Bella Pasta and a Café Rouge. People will argue fiercely for their favourite venue, but for this particular Guinness drinker’s money, you’ll struggle to do much better than Homeboy and The Guinea just off Berkley Square.
The reputation of Landlord Oisín Rogers’ pints is a point of great pride. ‘To be honest with you, I’ve been working on it for years,’ he says. ‘Since they stopped brewing Guinness in London in 2005 and started bringing it over from Dublin, I’ve always specialised in having the best I can. What you’re getting here at the Guinea is, I think, the best in London.’
When you’re served a pint at the Guinea, your bartender will execute the ritualistic two-part-pour. The first step creates the uniform, creamy head which is left to develop for a time as it rests on the bar. The second pour pushes this layer of cream upward to where it stands proudly convex above the top of the glass. ‘We put it under huge pressure,’ Oisín tells us. ‘The scientists reckon there’s 300-million bubbles in there. If you look at the pints that aren’t settled yet, the bubbles are gradually making their way to the top. You’re trying to make a head that’s got solidity. The second pour, floats that to the top – it makes something really special.’
When the pints are handed over there are no stray bubbles on the interior of the glass, no ‘crying’ streaks of foam running down onto the bar. They do not taste bitter or sharp, nor too heavy or thin. Rather they have a perfectly silky texture and fine balance of roasty malt and dark chocolate flavours – alongside subtle fermentary notes of fruit and coffee beans. Once they are finished, which will happen quickly, a thick layer of foam is left inside the glass.
While a lot of stock is put into how a Guinness looks, you don’t need a degree in stout studies with a minor in Irish literature to know a good one when you taste it. But what exactly does it take to turn out competition level pints?
‘First of all, the beer’s got to be really fresh, everything’s got to be really clean, the staff needs to know exactly what they’re doing in terms of the pour. But there’s probably about ten other little secrets – the mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide is very important, the storage temperature’s very important.
‘The fact that it has inherent yeast in it when it’s delivered means it has to be left to settle. So, if you look at your pint and hold it up to the light, you’ll see you get a ruby clarity that shows you that it’s not got any suspended yeast in there. One of the biggest issues with flavour, is that when the lines get a bit dirt and you get yeast build-up in there it actually taints the beer. Ours is spotless.’
Here we find the great appeal of a bar that deals in good Guinness. If your stout arrives as it should be, then it’s an assurance that everything in the ecosystem of that pub is in perfect balance. It means that beer is flowing freely through the lines, a sure indication of healthy trade and regular customers. It means that the glasses are perfectly clean and that the cellar is well maintained. It means that the staff have the training and the experience to pull it off as well as the inclination to treat the pint with respect. It’s rather like making a Martini in this respect – anyone can learn how to do it, but it takes a lot of elements working harmony to do it really well.
‘I love talking to my father about Guinness,’ says Aaron Wall, ‘because he’ll tell me that it tastes nothing like it did when he was a young-fella and the idea of getting a good pint somewhere and not somewhere else was a real concern because it took a lot more craft and skill from the bartender.’ Just like the staff at the Guinea the team at Homeboy are at pains to make their pints as good as they can possibly be.
‘When our Guinness tech comes in, we sit down and have long, long conversations about how we can tweak it to make it better. I can’t go into it because I don’t want to go letting away my secrets. But we start having a conversation and it gets really nerdy and we’re talking about making tiny adjustments.’
What about the common mistakes people make?
‘Not cleaning the line, not pouring it properly. Never polish a Guinness glass either – if you ever see mist on the inside of a Guinness glass, those are nucleation points, it’s gas clinging to particles from the polish cloth or traces of oils, fats, or proteins. It shouldn’t affect flavour, I’ll be honest, but I can’t stand it.’
This level of attention to detail is testament to the broader significance of Guinness – that emotional resonance that it has over other dry stouts and really over all other beers. In 2020, when lockdowns across the world saw pubs shuttered and taps left dry the internet saw a collective outcry of grief for the pint. Instagram accounts like @theGuinnessGuru and @ShitLondonGuinness – along with its antimatter inverse @BeautifulPints – articulated perfectly what was missing. You can charge a can with nitrogen and fit it with a widget to simulate the draft pour, but you cannot replicate the setting in which its enjoyed or the ritual that surrounds it. Good pints may make a good pub, but it takes a great pub to serve great pints.
‘Now the Guinea has a great pint,’ Aaron says freely. ‘But again, that’s the room as well – you can imagine the people who’ve drunk in there, the Irish ex-pats who’ve been through over the years. To feel that history in a room sometimes is part of it.’ The ritual nature of the pint of Guinness, and the shibboleth of knowing good from bad, is as much a matter of culture as it is of flavour.
‘As soon as I could get back to Ireland after COVID and all the lockdowns, my father picked me up from Dublin airport and I said we’re going to the Gravediggers.’ The John Kavanagh pub on the corner of Glasnevin Cemetery is known affectionately as such as a nod to its historical clientele. ‘Now the Gravediggers is the best pint of Guinness in the world, one-hundred-percent – I bow to those lads. And we went in there and I was like a kid in a candy shop. There’s other elements that make a great pint of Guinness, there’s that emotional thing, the room you’re in matters. The Gravediggers just has history, Mulligan’s on Poolbeg street, the Stag’s head, these places have history. There are different elements that make it feel special.’
For members of the Irish diaspora – even those whose credentials are limited to small branches of the family tree – this connection cannot be understated. ‘Therein lies the truth of what it means to be Irish,’ says Aaron ‘A good pint of Guinness can bring people together and strike up conversation.’ To sit in a taproom anywhere in the world and chat about the pint certainly beats talking about the weather. The discussion of quality or whether the beer has travelled well, communicates perfectly among people that they are of a group and a heritage. Even if nobody in your family has ever set foot in Ireland, engaging with Guinness culture offers this kind of conviviality and a sense of belonging.
Back to Oisín: ‘I really think this is true for Irish people in particular but also for everybody. There really is an awful lot to talk about from the history, to the advertising, to the theatre of the poor and the drinking of the actual product. This is now backed up by massive social media stuff, including the Sh•t London Guinness phenomenon, which in my opinion has improved the quality of pints across the city, probably by more than 50 per cent.’
In a 2020 episode of his podcast, writer and musician Blindboy devotes a full 90 minutes to a discussion of this phenomenon. The result is nothing less than a full exploration of the semeiotics of Guinness that should prove fascinating whether you’re a fan or not. He notes the somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone of the discourse around ‘sh•t pints’ and the careful cultivation of the brand by its owner, the multi-national drinks behemoth Diageo. But what Blindboy implies – and I am inclined to agree – is that while Guinness culture may have its contrivances, this does not diminish its significance.
We Londoners can be thankful that our Guinness game is getting stronger all the time. Any of the venues listed above will take care of you on the big day but there are plenty of other places in town that know how to execute the two-part-pour. Make no mistake, this guide is not meant to inspire anyone to take swipes a bartender for not tilting their glass ‘properly’ or some-such. If the search for London’s best has shown anything, it’s that there are many good pints, but the best one is the one you enjoy with others.
This article was written for my uncle Frank Duggan who passed away last week at 91 years of age. As a younger man he was a worker at the Guinness brewery in Dublin and he always knew the value of a good pint.
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