The Guinness Connoisseur Experience at St James’s Gate, Dublin

Taste four Guinness variants at a private fourth-floor bar with a trained connoisseur, then pull your own pint above the Dublin skyline.

A Private Bar on the Fourth Floor

St James’s Gate has never stopped brewing since 1759, the year Arthur Guinness put his name to a 9,000-year lease, and that lease survives to this day. Put up in 1904 to house fermentation, the Storehouse welcomed its first visitors in 2000; its seven floors climb to a glass-walled bar where the whole city surrounds you.

Floor four has a character of its own. Tucked away from the main flow, a private bar awaits, with a trained Guinness connoisseur behind the counter and four variants ready to taste in turn. The Connoisseur Experience takes about 90 minutes and focuses on what sets each one apart, from ingredients and process to temperature, pour and finish, giving Guinness the same serious attention a sommelier gives wine. You’ll never see a pint the same way again.

The World’s Largest Brewery, Once

Few Irish exports are better known: Guinness is made in 49 countries and drunk in over 150. The pint most people know abroad, drawn from the tap in two stages under a creamy head, was designed for draught in the 1950s, and it isn’t the same beer as the bottled Foreign Extra Stout that has been shipped overseas since the 1700s.

The brewery has occupied the same corner of the Liberties since that first four-acre lease. By the early 1900s it sprawled across 26 hectares, the largest brewery on earth, running its own railway, cooperage and power plant and even its own firefighters; at its peak it supplied one pint in every ten drunk in Britain. The Storehouse’s seven levels explore the four ingredients, every step from barley to glass, the brand’s story and worldwide reach, and an archive of some of the last century’s most celebrated advertising, from the toucan to Jonathan Glazer’s 1999 surfer film. Arthur Guinness has a floor to himself, and the seventh-floor Gravity Bar looks out over all of Dublin, from the Wicklow Mountains to Dublin Bay.

Away from the Crowds

The standard Storehouse visit is self-guided, and on a typical busy day the floors are packed and there’s a line at the Gravity Bar: informative and polished, but shared with hundreds of others. The Connoisseur Experience runs separately, through its own entrance into a fourth-floor bar sized for a handful of guests, not a crowd. Your host is a specialist, not an all-round guide, and the session revolves around tasting and talk, finishing with the double pour that gives Draught its silky texture and finish. It’s a great afternoon for a group of friends or a couple.

Four Glasses, Then Your Own Pint

The bar is set apart from the main route, low-key by design so the focus stays on the glass. The four tastings come in order. Draught is the familiar one, served at 3°C, its bubbles tumbling slowly downward until it settles dark beneath a pale, creamy collar. Original is the first bottled recipe, stronger, drier and more bitter, and nearly two centuries older than draught. Foreign Extra Stout, made strong so it would last the long journey by sea, is still brewed to its original specification, roasted and almost chocolatey. Brewers Project is the experimental range, small batches in styles beyond traditional Guinness.

Your connoisseur introduces each before it arrives, stays with you throughout and pitches the conversation to the room. At the end, you pour your own pint under instruction, then head up to the Gravity Bar for a full pint, included, with Dublin spread out below. Your Out Of Office LGBTQ+ travel specialist can build it into a Dublin stay at a welcoming hotel.