Drinking to Learn

Leave it to Guinness to be brilliant. 

The Guinness Storehouse at St. James's Gate in Dublin is the best designed museum I've ever been in. How can that be? Let me walk you through it...

Floor One > Enter into the center of a 7 foot tall glass pint glass. Admire the lease Arthur Guinness signed for the building in 1795 – 49 pounds/year for 9000 years. Learn about the four main ingredients of beer, in easy to understand blurbs and beautiful graphics. And, oh yeah, a waterfall. 

Meet Arthur Guinness via a Harry Potter style gallery where all the portraits come to life and talk to you, and tell you what a great guy Arthur was. Did you know, he was the first employer to offer paid time- off?

Floor Two > The Machinery. This is where the you learn the brewing process. There's a lot of information here. But I like the barrel-making process the best.

Floor Three > Learn to Drink it. Walk down a Willy Wonka-esque hallway, all dark and glowy, before being thrown into a pure-white, sensory-deprivation room, where you are able to smell the beer's ingredients. Enjoy a tiny pint glass shot of Guinness as they teach you the proper way to drink and appreciate Guinness.
Floor Four > Advertising! Guinness has a history of brilliant advertising. Here you can become a part of it.

Floor Five > Become a Bartender. Pour your own Guinness in the proper fashion. Become a certified apprentice.

Floor Seven > Take your freshly poured Guinness to the seventh floor's Gravity Bar where there are 360 views over the city of Dublin.

Bottom line >I learned so much. AND I got "free" beer.