By Sam Schube | Photography by Gabby Jones for WSJ
When work gets especially busy for Ryan Wagner, he goes to the bar.
As the head of beer quality for Guinness in the U.S., it's his job to make sure that bartenders have everything they need to deliver drinkers a perfect pint of the brand's signature stout. In the weeks leading up to St. Patrick's Day -- which doubles as a national Guinness-drinking bonanza -- he makes as many as a dozen visits a day to ask: "How's it pouring?"
He'll often buy a round to conduct a firsthand test, and does his best to finish whatever he orders. "If you're going to sit there and talk to them for 30 minutes, have a pint!" he says.
Served well, Guinness is an uncommonly handsome beer, with an instantly recognizable foamy beige head that sits atop the company's harp-logoed "tulip" glass. But according to Wagner, 40, pouring a photogenic pint is a matter of both art and science. Leading a training session at a Wall Street bar ahead of the holiday, he filled two pints -- one neat and tidy, the other messier, shedding "Irish tears" of foam down its side.
"Here's my question, friends: Which one are you ordering a second of?" he asked the group of a half-dozen employees. "This is the difference between selling three beers versus just the one."
At a time when Americans are cutting back on booze, Guinness is booming. Last year, the company saw the greatest year-over-year volume growth among brands that sold more than a million cases, according to NielsenIQ data. Social media is flooded with photos of drinkers "splitting the G," or taking a gulp that lands the foam of their beer in the middle of the Guinness logo. Finding the best pint in a given city has become a digital scavenger hunt.
For Wagner, growing the number of perfect pints is a full-time occupation -- and one he's taken to enthusiastically.
"He's the two N's in the middle of" Guinness, joked his colleague Eoghain Clavin, who works between sales and marketing in the U.S.
Wagner's job exists in part because of Guinness stout's particular chemical composition. Where the typical beer is bubbly thanks to carbon dioxide, Guinness adds nitrogen to the mix, which gives the beer its smoother, creamier texture.
Serving it correctly requires specialized tap equipment -- "We're a pain in the butt," Wagner joked -- and a "two-part pour" that Guinness says yields the best final product. That means a bartender fills the glass most of the way, sets it down for about 90 seconds to allow the nitrogen bubbles to settle, and then finally tops it off. The whole process, Wagner said, should take exactly 119.5 seconds.
Guinness, owned by the beverage conglomerate Diageo, is no less exacting about other elements of service. Bartenders are encouraged to use official Guinness glassware. The foam head atop a beer should measure 18 to 22 millimeters. Kegs are to be stored at 38 degrees Fahrenheit, and pints served between 40 and 43 degrees. Wagner carries a purple cooking thermometer -- the kind with the long pointy needle that you might use to check on your steak -- to check for optimal chill.
If Wagner's job seems to require an unusual combination of skills -- mastery of fluid dynamics, comfort with public speaking, strong pint tolerance -- he comes by them honestly. He studied musical theater in college, and juggled performing roles with bartending gigs. He spent a decade working as the public address announcer for his hometown Baltimore Orioles. (The team dismissed him ahead of the 2021 season.) He began working with Guinness as an ambassador in 2017, took on a national role in 2020 and added head of beer quality to his title last summer.
On St. Patrick's Day, he and the Guinness team rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, making the short walk from their downtown offices with a troupe of Fire Department bagpipers in tow.
"It's hard to put in perspective just how much this day means to us," Wagner said. A spokesperson for Guinness said March is traditionally the company's best sales month of the year.
Wagner estimates he spends 75% of his time on the road in the name of beer quality, planning trips to different cities in collaboration with Guinness's local and national sales and marketing teams.
Last month, he got a tip about an unusual pint from an unlikely source: Laura Merritt, president of Diageo Beer Company North America, who passed along a social-media post from a Brooklyn bar called Queue Beer boasting a pint of Guinness poured using a side-pull faucet more commonly used for Czech beers.
"They were like, What the hell is this?" Wagner said. ("In a positive way," he clarified. "Like, Hey, this is new, this is different, why don't we know about this?")
Wagner happened to be in New York when he received the message, so he got in touch with the bartender, Shane Monteiro, who co-owns Queue Beer with his brother and dad, to set up a visit. Some 48 hours after Monteiro posted about his novel Guinness, Wagner was in his bar for a troubleshooting session.
"I didn't even know Guinness did that," Monteiro said.
They spent less than an hour troubleshooting the pour. "We had a lot of fun just going back and forth, with me making minor adjustments," Monteiro said. It was less like getting his hand slapped by the teacher than working toward a shared goal. After three or four test pints, they felt they'd dialed it in.
Wagner said he wouldn't recommend that every bar try the technique, but he was happy to see Monteiro's experimentation paying off.
"He's pouring a great pint out there," he said.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 18, 2026 20:03 ET (00:03 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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