When in Ireland it is mandatory to drink a Guinness, and if you’re in Dublin then you might as well do it at the Guinness Storehouse, a large tourist attraction located downtown.

I love the idea of businesses capitalizing on their popularity and offering tours. Throughout the years Susan and I have toured everything from the Jelly Belly factory to the VAT-19 headquarters. We’ve been to the Spam Museum and Susan recently went to the Pez Museum and the one thing all of these places have in common is that none of them serve beer. So, one point (and pint) for Guinness.

The Guinness Storehouse experience is a self-guided tour through a multi-story building. Many of the exhibits had motion and moving parts, which made things interesting. Not far from the beginning of the tour was this waterfall which we thought was mildly interesting… until words began to form!

Another neat part of the tour was the aroma room. The room was entirely white and reminded us of the Wonkavision room from Willy Wonka. Four tubes pumped out different aromas involved in the brewing of Guinness beer. After taking a long sniff of each tube we each received a complimentary (and tiny) glass of Guinness. We were given explicit instructions on how to best sample and enjoy the product.

Another interesting part of the tour was seeing all the vintage and previous Guinness mascots used in advertising and commercials. I must say, I don’t remember seeing this bicycle-riding fish before.

From there we headed to the pub on the fourth floor, where something interesting was about to happen. As we walked in and handed over a pair of tickets Susan had purchased, a photographer took our picture in front of a white background. A few minutes later we were in line to pick up a pint of Guinness and we watched our beers go into a 3D printer. Moments later they emerged… with our picture on top of the beers! How cool is that? On the first few sips the pictures remained intact but a few minutes later the pictures began to distort with results that were as disturbing as they were entertaining. Nothing lasts forever.

Our tour concluded with a trip to the Gravity Bar, located on the top flood of the Guinness Storehouse. The club has floor to ceiling glass walls that offer a 360 degree view of Dublin. Included in our admission were tickets for even more free beers but by then we were full and the club was loud and we remembered we were old so we gave our tickets to a couple younger visitors and called it a day.

These types of tours always feel a little touristy and gimmicky, but we don’t care (especially when beer is involved). All of the displays at the Guinness Storehouse were top notch and while like many of those types of tours I doubt I Would ever do it a second time, it was interesting and fun to do it once.