For me, St. James's Gate gives that incredible sense of place, that you're
walking in Arthur's footsteps, walking through the front gate where he walked
250 years ago. That still gives me goosebumps.
There's a huge amount of pride working here on site, a huge amount of history
going with us, a huge amount of brewers before us that we're carrying on
their legacy. Behind me are the old vat houses, it was
a very old technology, whistles were used, chains were used to move beer from a to b,
and everything existed in wooden vats. I'm probably last master brewer to
have worked in the ancient Victorian brewery and to have worked in the most modern brew
house. What hasn't changed in terms of the
mainstream product Guinness is you are looking at the same Guinness that you
looked at all the way back. We brew a variety of different ales,
largers and, of course, Guinness. So we brew Smithwicks, Harp, Hop House and a lot of
other innovation beers. We take raw barley in from the country, we
take it in and we put it into the roast house. We're looking for a specific colour,
PH balance, we're looking for a specific roast.
We then take that into our brewhouse, which is the start of the process, trying
to produce a sugary extract to give food to our famous Guinness yeast that has been
With us now for several hundred years. We ferment our beer, we add a
variety of hops and we mature our beer. My job here in Pilot Brewery is about
developing new beers for all of Diageo. You get to experiment and create new
beers nearly every day. There is an awful lot of science into how we brew. Well, I
think there's also an awful lot of creativity and craft in creating the
recipes. The main ingredients that we use has never changed from Arthur's time
to our time, it's still malt, water, hops, yeast.
What I love the most about what I do is actually seeing the heritage of the
brands coming to life and informing the future innovation and the next
generation of Guinness. We've got loads of brewing journals,
dating back to 1759, so we have actually looked at some of those recipes and
brought those back and just put a modern twist on those. There's always new
technologies coming through and that helps create better quality and more
consistent quality in beer. I talk about beer and I talk about beer
pouring, draft quality standards. There is a level of detail in the head height, the
millimetre head height, the exact gas pressure we need to push the beer, the
exact temperature we look for. It's worthwhile, it's important it makes a
difference to make sure that ultimately the pint that crosses the bar
is top-notch quality. Guinness is so much more than the
history of a black and white beer, it is bound up intangibly in the history of
Dublin City and of Ireland. I remember going to my granny's house and telling
her that I got a job in St. James's Gate, she'd lived in Dublin all her life and
when I told her, she hugged me and then she blessed herself. To her, that was the
pinnacle, that was the best job that you could get.
The culture here at St. James's Gate is like nowhere else
and it's really somewhere that has a very good spirit about it I think. It is
such a wonderful brand that carries such a wonderful heritage, but the really key
ingredient is the people. People in St. James's Gate create brand and they maintain
it and they build it. We're 256 years into a 9000 year lease.
We've got a lot more beer to make.