My goodness, My Guinness!
As I was watching the third mug of Guinness settle a few minutes ago, I was reminded of a passage from a book I once read – Last Night’s Fun by Ciaran Carson.
Referring to the passage of time during the settling of a glass of Guinness stout, Carson wrote:
Certainly, the time is different from the old days. Then, Guinness stout, or ‘Double X’, as it was known, was poured, or rather, pulled differently: you pulled the handle of the pump away from you for ‘high’ (the white stuff) and pulled it back towards you for ‘low’ (the black stuff). The contemporary pump gives high and low in one go. Old barmen say the art of pouring a good pint disappeared with the onset of these single-action, one gear pumps, the way they say an automatic overrides the subtleties of clutch and stick control: you’re not allowed to manage time.
I enjoy watching a pint settle. It’s why you should sit near the bar if you’re ordering a Guinness rather than pouring it yourself. Nowadays, the barperson pulls the newfangled lever and fills the glass to half empty and walks away. They grab someone else’s order and then come back and pull the rest. They set it down in front of you with a, “here you go.” And you watch the opposing movements. Bubbles falling while the level of blackbrown rises to meet the head.
From the bottle, Guinness is the only stout I can recall that doesn’t require caution in the pouring. Other stouts call for the diagonal tipping technique my brother taught me when I was 21, where the bottle leans at about 60° against the rim of the glass, likewise at 60°, lest the head end up on the table. With Guinness it’s a bottoms-up and watch the stuff settle without a care for wasting a drop. It never rises too high to overflow and flood the sides. This is contrary to the official pour – the two thirds fill during the glass tip and the one third straight fill for the perfect head. I’m not so careful but the pint never disappoints. You lose the art, but the taste is always there despite the abuse of convention.
Guinness takes me back to Scotland. It accompanies me to the Hogshead in Glasgow near the university where I got drunk one night. It takes me to Inverness to the pub where I sat for a few hours waiting for a train and nursing a few pints and writing a story in a Scots dialect ala Irvine Welsh. It reminds me of Aberdeen and waking my hostel roommates with Scottish drinking songs and locking myself out of the room on the way to the loo. That was eight years ago, also known as yesterday to me.
It takes me to Bailey’s Irish Pub in Birmingham, which apparently isn’t there anymore. Drinking Guinness with friends in the dark corner table (because one of those friends stole the light bulb from the hanging fixture and later microwaved it to show off) and listening to local bands play rock and Irish traditional music while I sat on a pool table writing bad poetry.
It takes me to Sam Bond’s Garage and taking the pint in a pickling jar glass served by a Mucha-esque girl with a Mucha painting tattooed on her arm and sitting outside in the courtyard with Sam, the resident cat named for the eponymous original owner of the garage. Or sitting inside on the rough wooden benches amongst children running between tables while the local musicians reel and jig familiar Irish tunes on a Sunday night.
