Day 1: Kilkenny (Pulling pints)

After hurling, we had a more leisurely paced walk back to the pub where we had a new challenge!

This one was testing us on whether we could pull a perfect (or at least pretty good) pint of 3 different types of Irish beer: a lager (Harp), am ale (Smithwicks) and a stout (Guinness). 

We each got to practice on a half pint of the lager. Practice went well for us. To make the actual lager pour even more difficult, they peppered us with simple math problems while we were pouring in order to simulate the distractions a real bartender would have to endure from inquisitive customers.  We were implacable and poured well.  

So the next pint they made the pourer (me) wear a blindfold while their teammate (Russell) talked them through the process.  Let's just say that not all our beer went in the glass.  

Of course that could  have been due to the fact that a whole bunch of practice pints and competition pints had been poured by that point and were just there for the drinking. Russell and I did not abstain. 

The Guinness pour was the hardest of all. Then we were asked if we knew what it meant to “split the G”. We guessed correctly that it meant to drink the beer down to the middle of the G on the glass labeled Guinness. We weren't quite successful, but we made a pretty good try!

After a very full day, we went off to a local restaurant and had a good dinner. By the end, we were both sure we would quickly collapse into a good night's sleep.   Spoiler alert, we didn't.Read more