It's 2019, in London. In any pub you visit, the Guinness tap stands barren. Cold. Dusty. A rarely visited tipple in these lands, serving only the hardiest stout drinkers and Irish immigrants. They say it doesn’t travel well and, debate aside, one thing’s for sure: if it’s not flowing, it’s not good.
But by early 2023, Guinness was officially Britain’s most popular pint. By late 2024, Diageo announced a national shortage, unable to keep up with demand. Pubs across London pinned up handwritten signs: “Guinness for regulars only”. It had become a privilege to be allowed to pay £6.30 for a pint of plain. Guinness has become London’s most popular pint. How did we get here?
I cringe when people call me a Guinness expert. I’ve never worked behind a bar in my life, usually found on the opposite side, which makes the whole thing feel a bit like stolen valour. Still, I’ve run two of the largest Guinness-focused social accounts in the world, @shitlondonguinness and @beautifulpints, for six years now, and I’ve watched its rise happen in real time. And, of course, I’m fond of a drop myself.
I think lockdown played a big part in creating that first influx of new Guinness drinkers. People were spending seven days a week locked in their £1,000 a month mouldy box room, staring into a laptop screen full of Zoom quizzes and fantasising about better times – a gathering of friends, a place of warmth, a shared human experience – at the pub. On social media, pictures of pints of Guinness standing proudly atop aged-oak bartops were going viral regularly while the masses discussed the umpteenth ways you could try, and fail, to pour a can of Guinness like the real thing.
Stout benefits from being the most visually appealing alcoholic drink. There’s a beauty to it. And while these pictures of perfectly poured pints crowded Instagram feeds, people began plotting where to seek them out IRL once lockdown ended.
Pints of Guinness have since become a roundtable talking point. Where’s the best pub for a pint? People debate the pour – should it be in one, two, or three parts? Did they let it settle long enough? Is the glass right? Is that too much or too little head? How’s the taste, creamy? Does it cling? Can we see if we can split the G? You can see how anyone in the vicinity of these conversations would suddenly want to swap their lager for a Guinness instead.
Even if you’re not privy to these conversations, the rise of Guinness content creators like myself, The Guinness Guru, Prime Mutton, etc, means that you’ve only got to spend a short while on social media to witness a debate happening online too. Any outsider, watching hundreds of thousands of people evaluate a drink with forensic detail, would start to wonder what they’re missing out on.
Another element I attribute to Guinness's surge in popularity is the rise in Irish success stories. These days, we’re front and centre in popular culture. Paul Mescal, Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan, Saoirse Ronan, CMAT, Fontaines DC – the list goes on. And with Guinness closely associated with Irishness, for better or worse, it’s become the must-have accessory for people to pair with a whippet or sausage-dog in a Clapton pub garden.
Guinness isn’t the only brand benefiting from the popularity, with Heineken ramping up the availability of Cork stouts Murphys and Beamish in the capital – Beamish having previously exited the UK market a decade ago. Stout is having its moment.
My Guinness-centric social media accounts that I originally thought of as passion projects have since turned into fully fledged career opportunities. Diageo has embraced Guiness content creators – over the past few years, I’ve made a cameo in a St Patrick’s Day advertisement, helped promote new product launches, and (my favourite) joined the Guinness Quality Control Team to help pubs around London prepare for the reopening post-lockdown, meaning I was lucky enough to drink some of the first pints of plain poured in London for many moons.
The Diageo team closely monitors my account to see which pubs are being featured and pays them a visit to help improve their quality. You also see them doing a massive amount of clothing collaborations with ‘cool’ brands, certainly trying to embrace their newfound status.
The opening of the London Guinness Storehouse is a big statement of intent from the brand, an investment in the capital and certainly a response to its new status as the city’s most popular pint. The Dublin one, Ireland’s most visited tourist attraction, is a piece of marketing genius – the city is a kind of pint-based pseudo-Disneyland already, and the Storehouse is its own version of Cinderella’s castle. The brand is boldly marking London as a go-to city for Guinness, rivalling Dublin. A statement that would have felt absolutely alien six years ago, when I started a social media account showcasing just how bad each pint of Guinness I ordered was.
Will it continue its trajectory, or will there be a new hyperfixation on the horizon? Who knows. For now, at least, I’m just glad most pubs have finally stopped serving me shit ones.