Ok, so this is rather delayed, as i left Dublin 2 weeks ago already, but it deserves mentioning.
Booze. Booze is the lifeblood of the Irish peoples. It has kept them content living on a rocky mossy dreary island, surrounded by cold water, for nearly 7 thousand years. Ask almost anyone in the states what they associate with the Irish, and i guarantee more than half them will answer "getting drunk". Some may also say "freckles" or "getting drunk and fighting"..... but you get my point. Now i myself am not much of a drinker, but when i do drink, my beer of choice is Guinness (another answer you may get when i you ask what people associate with Ireland). With my love of Guinness's delicious almost chewy beer, i simply could not live with myself if ii didn't make a trek out to the Guinness brewery/storehouse..... So i gathered up some hooligans, and off we went!
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| Pictured : Hooligans |
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Now before I discuss the actual brewery, i want to point out that i had worked the night shift prior to going, and so i was already on about 25 hours without sleep at this point, as was Phillip, the gentleman pictured on the left above (you can click on the pics to make them bigger if you didn't know). So though it doesn't really show in the pics, we were both essentially delirious. Anyways, we bought our tickets and entered the land of Guinness, a land we loved. We were greeted almost instantly with a sight that anyone who has ever been to an average college dorm has seen many times....
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| Ive seen bigger.... |
As our path through this museum of rich brown flavor continued, we saw all sorts of amazing stuff. There were things that filled us with awe...
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| THE ACTUAL GUINNESS HARP!? |
There were things that filled us with with... racism...
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| Another golden idea would have been an Asian lifting a giant sack of rice saying "ME SO STRONGIE!" |
Then there was some things we just didn't understand at all......
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| Ya, there was a plaque explaining, but we thought it was more fun NOT to read it.... |
We continued learning about the origins of this exotic liquid bread as we passed through a room full of all the wonderful ingredients, including hops, barley, purified water, and yeast. That's right, Guinness is alive....
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| Cactuar felt oddly at home amidst a desert of barley... |
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Upon reaching the highest floors of the building, we came across a small bar room with several guinness taps... a chance to master the perfect pour... we immediately signed up. For your own pouring information, here are the secret steps.
1. Open tap all the way and pour against the side of the 45 degree tilted glass, straightening the glass as you go and stopping the pour as the Guinness reaches the harp on the Guinness brand pint glass.
2. Let rest until the bubbles settle to the top and the drink has a dark amber hue.
3. PUSH in the tap, pouring ungassed Guinness into the glass until its just poking over the brim.
The finished result should look something like this...
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| A perfect pour, as poured by a perfect me. |
After celebrating the making of such wonderful art by drinking the hell out of it, we continued up to the top floor, which (surprise), was another bar. The view was quite nice though.
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| Dublin is pretty flat. |
Of course, like all great journeys, ours ended in a gift shop... much money was spent, and many curious items were gawked at...
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| Seriously, blow this pic up and take a look... |
Now that were were slightly drunk off of samples and perfect pours (on an empty stomach and zero sleep), we decided to walk to the Jameson Distillery, cuz shit, why not? In retrospect, a decent map may have been handy...
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| This church was beautiful, but we passed it like 3 times... |
Eventually though, we asked some old toothless weirdo how to get there, and sure enough we'd passed it by, having missed the dark and scary alley that leads to...
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| Seriously, this shit is hidden in a tiny scary nook. |
We sat down for a nice overpriced meal and then took the tour. I have a lot less to say about this particular tour, because A. it was a led tour, and B. i was basically dead to the world at this point. After narrowly escaping falling asleep during the intro film (Phil was not so lucky), we wandered around station to station being led by a charming old Irish drunk, who made fun of the Scottish the whole way, until we made it to the end of the tour where a few select people got to taste test Jameson vs jack Daniels and johnny walker. I was offered the chance, but figured that 3 shots of whiskey was not in my best interest at the moment, but had a whiskey and cranberry as everyone was given at least 1 drink. Phil did partake of the 3 drink contest, and he was noticeably feeling it. After the drunkmaking was done, we wandered to a (surprise again!) gift shop, where we all got poorer.
That was the end of our sleepless day of booze history, and it was a lot of fun. I will leave you with this, a picture of Cactuar base jumping into a waterfall of purified Guinness water.
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| Even cacti need water sometimes |
