Good Things Are Brewing at Guinness

Great day out for the team yesterday at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery Experience in London.

Many years and £73 million in the making, this venue is off to a great start with a lovely team, great food from Company of Cooks, a fun atmosphere (even in mid-January) and buckets of potential. And it's not all just about a pint (though it’s a very good one), the experience brings Guinness’s brewing heritage into a modern, experimental setting, with small-batch beers, guided tours and tastings, and so much more. Guinness (and Diageo) marketing at its best, as you would expect.

What we really loved was seeing some of the operational detail behind the scenes, such as:

🍺 How the team take the science that goes into pouring the perfect pint (from gas mixing through to advanced ozone dishwash technology) to another level.

 🍺 The clever use of heat recovery. After all, brewing is an exothermic process, generating heat that can be captured and reused elsewhere, turning a by-product of brewing into something genuinely useful.

 🍺 The attention to detail throughout, from naming, to menu engineering, to the design (toucans everywhere!) and all the way through to the uniforms. Honestly, check out the gift shop and security teams…

🍺 And lastly, whilst the Guinness itself is not brewed on site, the brewery is producing a small range of craft beers that will only be available there - another draw for beer lovers.

Huge thanks to Dee Wilkinson and Sarah Prentice for the warm welcome and for sharing some trade secrets. We can’t wait to visit again and see the site in full swing.