This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to London
Last year, it was revealed that Guinness had usurped Carling as the UK’s favourite pint. In certain London circles, the uptake has been extremely visible. Guinness has become more than just a beer: it’s now a personality trait.
In January, Nuno Teles, the GB managing director of Guinness’ parent company, Diageo, said that net sales of Guinness in the UK had grown by 24 per cent, bolstering a nine per cent increase in six-month sales of Diageo brands in the UK. Teles put this down to a “broadening [of] its consumer base”. Having investigated this phenomenon over the past month or so, I think he’s right.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Londoners have started obnoxiously debating what makes a good Guinness and the best Guinness pubs, and attempting to “Split the G” — an infuriatingly ubiquitous drinking game in which people try to land the pint’s meniscus exactly on the arm of the “G” on a branded glass.
Part of its hipsterfication and appeal is that Guinness encapsulates a desired sense of Irishness. The Irish passport — albeit in a strictly stereotypical sense — denotes a number of revered traits in the minds of customs officers around the world: good craic, anti-imperialist bravery and a quasi-spiritual capacity for storytelling, among other things. But the drink’s surging popularity is also about “Guinnessness”: how it makes people feel and a desire to go back to basics.
When Guinness was founded in 1759, the brand was associated with loyalism and anti-Catholic penal laws. Founder Arthur Guinness was accused of being a British spy before the 1798 rebellion, and in 1913, one of his descendants gifted the Ulster Volunteer Force £10,000 (about £1mn today) to repress legislative independence. The company reportedly debated rebranding as a British drink during the 1980s so as not to be associated with the IRA.
Despite this, via many contributions to the civic improvements of Dublin, Guinness eventually became a potent symbol of Irish nationhood. Diageo took it even further when it bought the brand in the ’90s. It deployed a marketing strategy called “the Irish pub concept” that helped operators and investors open some 2,000 Irish pubs in Europe — with Guinness on tap — expanding to 53 countries, including Iraq and the Faroe Islands.
“Whether we like it or not, [Guinness is] a part of our national identity,” an Irish Londoner, whose cousin works as a Guinness brewer, wrote to me on social media. Which is “understandable, considering that, for centuries, our only symbolic exports were poverty and a culture of martyred resistance”, he said. “Guinness provided the new nationalism, a positive cultural export and we doubled down on it.”
Nationalism aside, what was previously regarded as an old man’s drink has become fashionable. Years ago, the stout’s spiritual mascot was someone like Irish playwright John B Keane, who would joyously expound on the cream of a pint. Today, the personification of Guinness, in London at least, is more likely to be 40 years younger, carry tote bags and pursue a career in graphic design.
It’s unclear exactly how the current Guinness trend started, but some point to the rise of the Instagram account @shitlondonguinness, which laments badly dispensed “black custard” within the M25 and hit such a raw nerve that it now has more than 250,000 followers and a shop where you can buy expensive beanies. Another popular account, @Real_housewives_ of_clapton, which somehow manages to mock London hipster culture and gentrification while simultaneously celebrating it, recently adopted Guinness as a kind of totem.
There is, it seems, a form of buried bourgeois class fetishism at play here: Guinness, along with other signifiers, allows middle-class Londoners to absorb perceptions of working-class culture while simultaneously pricing it out and avoiding the accompanying economic insecurities. This all comes packaged in the tacit belief that class politics is primarily aesthetic by nature, which, of course, it isn’t.
Drinking Guinness also represents a turn away from the craft ales and microbreweries that have become so dominant in recent decades, while still allowing for an outrageous degree of pedantry. Social media is awash with self-styled Guinness connoisseurs earnestly rating pints, pours and pubs. Many swear by the fact that Guinness tastes better in Ireland — fair enough. But, in the UK, provided the pint is poured correctly, at the appropriate temperature (3-8C, according to Diageo), distributed in the right glass and doesn’t sit in the pipes all day, there’s not much separating them.
So what, then, makes a good Guinness pub? I didn’t want this to be a list of the best London Guinness based on taste (though that certainly features), but rather a few examples of how it is sold in the capital and what comes along with it. Often the drink is inextricably tied to a sense of Irishness, but that, too, changes. With this in mind, the following list is about Guinnessness, not just Guinness.
Cock Tavern (Somers Town)
23 Phoenix Road, London NW1 1HB
-
Good for: Genuine community pub experience. Anti-fascist film seminars
-
Not so good for: Being a vocal Rangers fan
-
Pint of Guinness: £5
Somers Town, a neighbourhood hidden out the back end of St Pancras station, was home to Charles Dickens for a while and features heavily in his books. Since the mid 19th century, it’s also hosted a sizeable Irish population.
The Cock Tavern, run by a remarkable woman named Sheila Gavigan, is unquestionably an Irish pub. Celtic clovers adorn the walls, a Sligo flag hangs from the ceiling, green-clad rugby fans amass for the Six Nations, Travellers gather for functions and anti-fascists hire the place out for film screenings.
According to Gavigan, customers were 80 per cent Irish until about four years ago. Recently, a lot of the elderly Guinness-drinking regulars have died and tributes to their memory punctuate the decor. Though “Guinness is now one of our best-sellers”, she says. “Years ago, a few kegs would do it for a week but we’re going through a lot now. The younger generation is drinking Guinness too, not just the older Irish.” Looking around, you can see what she means. The Guinness drinkers here are mostly young people. The stout itself is how you’d expect it: in the correct glass with a good pour — no complaints. “It’s the new trend,” she says of the Guinness fad. “Even young women come in and order a pint of Guinness.”
The Auld Shillelagh (Stoke Newington)
105 Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16 0UD
-
Good for: Drinking seven pints and dancing to S Club Seven
-
Not so good for: Enjoying personal space
-
Pint of Guinness: £6
Nestled in the centre of Stoke Newington sits The Auld Shillelagh, a narrow establishment once listed in The Irish Times as one of the best Irish pubs in the world outside of Ireland. Among the 50 or so customers crammed inside there’s one gin and tonic, one lager and the rest is all Guinness.
“Are we going insane?” my photographer asks aloud as we try yet another pint to discern whether the Guinness here is better than the previous entry, despite it looking and tasting exactly the same. (A common myth about Guinness is that the thickness of the drink prevents bingeing — that you can only have one or two — but its lack of bubbles also helps drinkers keep it down without feeling bloated, so go figure.) The Auld Shillelagh ensures the quality of its Guinness via a “short line” from keg to tap, which is common in Ireland.
There is a profound departure between this place and the Cock Tavern, not in the quality of the drinks but in their competing visions of Irishness. Whereas both are outwardly Irish pubs, The Auld Shillelagh, with its live sessions, dark-wood panelling and Celtic typography feels more like it’s been reconstituted from the outside in. Another major difference is the customers. The Cock Tavern had a fairly mixed crowd, whereas most people here are under 30: a specific type of waged hipster clientele with beards, hand tattoos and the occasional expensive monotones by Margaret Howell.
Jamie McCabe, who has run the pub for a year, attributes Guinness’s recent uptick to the fact that people couldn’t drink it on draught during Covid and Gen Z’s drive to be “as obscure as possible”. McCabe is pleased by its popularity but finds some accompanying traits annoying. “If I hear anyone saying ‘Split the G’ or doing this,” he says, mimicking someone testing to see if the dome of the cream rises above the edge of the glass when tilted, “I immediately think, ‘Prick’.”
The Devonshire (Soho)
17 Denman Street, London W1D 7HW
-
Good for: Drinking Guinness
-
Not so good for: Sitting down and drinking Guinness. It’s exceptionally busy
-
Pint of Guinness: £6.90
In the basement of The Devonshire, beside a tangle of pipes, the pub’s co-landlord Oisin Rogers explains the chemistry behind the perfect Guinness. “The gas mix we use is different,” he says. “Usually it’s 70/30 nitrogen to C02 — we blend ours to 82/18, which gives a creamier, smaller bubble.” Since The Devonshire opened in 2023, the Soho pub has become one of London’s most popular venues and synonymous with Guinness. It sold more than 20,000 pints of it during the week of St Patrick’s Day.
The Guinness here is very creamy. Whether it’s noticeably better than the previous entries, who knows, but Rogers does have an undeniable expert charisma. Outside, the after-work central London crowd are almost exclusively enjoying black beverages. Rogers says they get “everyone” in here, but today it’s mostly media types and people who probably play golf together (lots of goose down).
Rogers says Guinness has improved since he first moved to London from Dublin 35 years ago. “It had a shit head and I hated selling it for years,” he says. “It wasn’t until they moved the brewery away from Park Royal [in 2005] that I thought this could be better.” Rogers puts Guinness’s success down to a political neutrality linked to its Irishness, “which in itself is pretty bland and unthreatening and fun”.
However, The Devonshire actively tries to avoid using “a pastiche” of Irishness to sell Guinness. According to Rogers, it’s not an Irish pub, “it’s a British pub with an Irish accent”. After a while, Rogers leaves to sort out a VIP guest, which he initially thought might be a royal but turns out to be a senior US official.
The Cow (Notting Hill)
89 WESTBOURNE PARK ROAD, LONDON W2 5QH
The Westway feels like it could be anywhere at night. Wide imposing road, no shops, goes somewhere, possibly nowhere. Then, exiting off Hampden Street Footbridge — one of the most filmic walkways in London — you suddenly arrive at Victorian terraced houses the colour of wedding cakes, and, nestled among them, The Cow, complete with a 15ft tricolour flying outside. (The flags are rotated regularly.)
Inside, amid a jumble of dark-wood, signage, murals and mirrored-surfaces, visitors drink dark pints and chew on seafood. This place feels like it’s been open forever but it only goes back to 1995. By then, Notting Hill had moved into a new era, notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman had been dead for decades and his properties down the road had long since changed hands. However, restaurateur Tom Conran (son of the late British designer Terence Conran) was in time for something else: the rise of the now hegemonic gastropub. Guinness isn’t known for its food pairings, but the staff here disagree, and we order the “Cow Fish Stew” and banoffee pie. (“What’s a Cow Fish?” I ask, answered with a weary sigh.)
The Guinness here is good and food is excellent too, if typically west London in its price bracket. It isn’t long before we’re interrupted. A young Canadian woman, seemingly on a date, leans over, the cream of her pint about halfway down the glass. Having lived in the UK for six years, she has some wisdom she’d like to impart. “I can’t even go on a date any more without someone ordering a Guinness, and they always try to Split the G . . . we’re not five years old, just drink your drink!”
I ask why she thinks so many people are drinking it. “Because someone told them to! It’s not that they like it, it’s just that someone told them to drink it,” she says. “London is a very trendy place. If someone tells you to like something, you’ll like it.”
Skehans (Nunhead)
1 Kitto Road, London SE14 5TW
-
Good for: Chatting with Pat the bouncer
-
Not so good for: Listening to “good” music
-
Pint of Guinness: £5
Skehans is simply a very good pub in Nunhead, south London, that sells Guinness — it’s not dominated by it like the other entries. Like The Auld Shillelagh, it draws a younger crowd, although the cheaper rental market and proximity to Goldsmiths university means Skehans likely hoovers up more student loans than yuppie wages. A band is playing a delightfully arrhythmic REM cover as we arrive.
Skehan’s manager is not your typical pub landlord — he’s more of a European bar guy. Having helmed a branch of the infamous chain nightclub Tiger Tiger (abandon hope all ye who enter here), Adil Murati says that Skehans feels like a holiday. Guinness is Skehans’ best-selling pint, and Murati is somewhat baffled by its hipsterfication, but puts it down to a sense of tradition.
One thing Skehans does have over other London pubs is Pat Hines, its chatty Irish-Caribbean bouncer, who is seemingly perennially nursing a cold pint of Guinness.
“Guinness makes you feel Irish.” he says, smiling. “The drink is part of that, it’s a custom . . . the drink stands for a lot.” Before we leave, he posits a final theory regarding its popularity. “When you get stopped by the police, they can’t smell it on the breath,” he says, laughing. “There are people that come here who tell their wives they’re teetotal.” Guinness may be undetectable, but Guinnessness certainly isn’t. And with that we move, almost mechanically, towards a highly detectable smell — a kebab.
Tell us about your favourite place in London for a Guinness in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter
Cities with the FT
FT Globetrotter, our insider guides to some of the world’s greatest cities, offers expert advice on eating and drinking, exercise, art and culture — and much more
Find us in London, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong, Miami, Toronto, Madrid, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Zürich, Milan and Vancouver