Diageo’s Opening Brewery Bar to the Public!
St. James’s Gate is where it all begins for the lovers of the greatest stout in the world. Diageo is world famous for developing new beers and other alcoholic beverages. Beer has to be worked on and experimented with before the right combination is made, becomes the new talk of town and makes it to everyone’s favourite pub. The microbrewery in Diageo is the place where it all happens and the very talented brewers there run the place like their own Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory (though for adults!). While they draw inspiration from the Guinness archives and older recipes, they also believe strongly in innovation and with their resources why not?
Diageo employs chemical engineers that know their “black stuff”. One of the brewers at Diageo, Peter Simpson, said in an article to The Irish Times: “There are two different ways we approach innovation. The first is where we go off ourselves and experiment with recipes and look back through the archives and come up with a recipe from scratch. This is partly what happened with West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. On other occasions the marketing team will come to us with some pointers as to what they want in a new product.”
The microbrewery is situated within the Guinness Brewery site and a proposal for planning permission for the development at the microbrewery building has been put forward. The lands are situated to the south of James’ Gate and bounded by St. James’s Church to the west, James’s Street on the north and existing brewery areas. The microbrewery building spans across 2,800 sq.m and 5 floors on the lower floor level.
The changes that are to be made to the upper ground floor level the current home of the present tasting area that covers 225 sq.m and this will be changed into a public bar area and associated ancillary facilities, as well as changes to the outer and inner building attached to this part of the building. The changes inside will incorporate a new lift, inclusion of a smoking area with cover, refurbishing of the toilets and the interior of the tasting area. Outside bicycle spaces for visitors entering the new proposed entrance from St. James’s Street for pedestrians are planned. The painters are already very busy at work and have started painting the walls and restoring the Gate. Once the upgrading is done, the bar will be open two days a week for visitors to experience the microbrewery’s surroundings.
Last year 2014, two new porters, Dublin Porter and West Indies Porter, were developed in the microbrewery and took the brewers only 6 months to succeed. But sometimes it can take them as long as three years to get a good beer on the market.
Guinness celebrated their 250th anniversary of signing the lease at St. James’s Gate Brewery in 2009 and Diageo has made a €168 million investment in the St James’s Gate Brewery which will consolidate all brewing by Diageo in Ireland at Victoria Quay, St James’s Gate. On completion, St. James’s Gate will be one of the most technologically advanced, environmentally sustainable breweries in the world. This is one of the largest construction projects to take place in Dublin in recent years, and has created 300 construction jobs.
We will keep you updated once the very secretive project nears its ending, but for the moment all we know is that the public will have access twice a week to the microbrewery bar and this should be a fair treat for beer fanatics!