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40 free Guinness trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Guinness is a beer that comes with its own mythology: a lease measured in millennia, a harp that had to be drawn backwards, a plastic ball in every can, and a pour you are supposed to time. Most of the legend is true, some of it is marketing, and the gap between the two is where the best questions live. This quiz covers the stout and the brand rather than the record book: Arthur Guinness's early deals, the family that became Ireland's richest, the science behind the creamy head, the ad campaigns that became folk art, the export stout that conquered Africa, and the modern company that owns it all. It suits a pub table, a St Patrick's Day party or a night in with anyone who has ever waited for a pint to settle.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Guinness pours black, yet the brewer officially describes its colour as a very dark shade of what?
Ruby red
Guinness is officially a very dark ruby red, a colour that comes from roasting a portion of the barley before brewing.
Q 02In Guinness's 1999 ad 'Surfer', voted the best commercial of all time in a 2000 UK poll, waves turn into which animals?
White horses
The crashing breakers become white horses, an image lifted from Walter Crane's 1893 painting 'Neptune's Horses'.
Q 03Guinness plc merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to create which London-based drinks giant?
Diageo
Diageo's name, coined by branding agency Wolff Olins, joins the Latin dies (day) with the Greek root geo (earth).
Q 04Which royal's death in 1861 led a Brooks's Club bartender to invent the Black Velvet, stout mixed with champagne?
Prince Albert
The Black Velvet mourned Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, on the notion that even the champagne should be in mourning.
Q 05How much beer did Arthur Guinness ship to England on 19 May 1769, the brewery's very first export?
6.5 barrels
The first export was just 6.5 barrels; by 1914 the brewery was turning out 2.652 million barrels a year.
Q 06On Arthur's Day in 2009, drinkers were asked to toast Guinness's founder at what time, echoing the founding year?
17:59
The toast was at 17:59 for 1759, the year Arthur Guinness signed his lease; Arthur's Day ran for five years before its last outing in 2013.
Q 07Which bird, drawn by John Gilroy for the S.H. Benson agency, became the most famous animal on Guinness posters?
The toucan
Gilroy's toucan became as much a symbol of Guinness as the harp, and in 2006 the brewery even named a beer, Toucan Brew, after it.
Q 08In 2018 Guinness opened its first American brewery in 64 years in which city?
Baltimore
The Baltimore, Maryland site brewed Guinness Blonde lager and experimental beers rather than the classic stout; its main plant closed in 2023, and the previous US brewery had shut in 1954.
Q 09Why does Arthur Guinness's 9,000-year lease on St. James's Gate no longer bind anyone today?
The brewery bought the site outright
The brewery bought the site outright as it grew far beyond the original four acres, so the lease is simply no longer in effect.
Q 10Before Dublin, Arthur Guinness ran his first brewery from 1755 in which County Kildare town on the River Liffey?
Leixlip
Leixlip was a three-storey brewery running from the street to the Liffey, bought with money left to Arthur by his godfather.
Q 11Arthur Guinness's godfather and namesake Arthur Price, whose 1752 will helped fund him, held which church office?
Archbishop of Cashel
Price became Archbishop of Cashel in 1744, one of the Church of Ireland's most prestigious posts, and had employed both Arthur and his father.
Q 12Which grandson of the original Arthur adopted the harp as the St. James's Gate brewery's emblem in 1862?
Benjamin Lee Guinness
Benjamin Lee Guinness chose the harp, which was registered as a trademark in 1876 soon after Britain's first trademark act.
Q 13What distinguishes the trademarked Guinness harp from the harp on Ireland's coat of arms?
It faces the opposite way
Q 21Guinness's 1986 takeover of which Scotch whisky group led to the share-rigging trial of the 'Guinness Four'?
Distillers
Distillers was far bigger than Guinness, so executives secretly propped up the Guinness share price during the £4 billion bid, a scheme exposed by Ivan Boesky's plea bargain.
Q 22Which mathematician turned brewer devised the nitrogen dispense system that became Draught Guinness in 1959?
Michael Ash
Michael Ash's 'Easy Serve' project put nitrogen into the pour, and he is credited as the inventor of nitro beer.
Q 23Guinness's own name for the floating widget introduced in 1997, which fixed cans overflowing when warm, is what?
Smoothifier
It faces the opposite way: the Guinness harp faces right, so the Irish state registered its harp facing left to stay clear of the brewery's trademark.
Q 14When Guinness floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1886, what distinction did St. James's Gate hold?
Largest brewery in the world
St. James's Gate was the largest brewery in the world by 1886, with an output of 1.2 million barrels a year, having been Ireland's largest since 1838.
Q 15Edward Cecil Guinness, Ireland's richest man after floating two-thirds of the firm in 1886, retired at what age?
40
He retired a multi-millionaire at 40, having raised £6 million from the float, and later gave much of it away to housing charities in London and Dublin.
Q 16Which Hampstead mansion did Edward Cecil Guinness leave to the nation with his paintings as the 'Iveagh Bequest'?
Kenwood House
Kenwood House, on the edge of Hampstead Heath, became a public museum for his collection after his death in 1927.
Q 17Iveagh House, the Guinness mansion given to the Irish state in 1939, is now home to which government department?
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs moved into Iveagh House after Rupert Guinness, Lord Iveagh, handed the 1736 building to the state in 1939.
Q 18Lord Ardilaun of the brewing family bought, landscaped and gave which central Dublin park to the public in 1880?
St Stephen's Green
St Stephen's Green reopened on 27 July 1880, and a grateful city put up a statue of Ardilaun that still stands across from the Royal College of Surgeons.
Q 19Which brewing heir did Diana Mitford marry in 1929, seven years before she wed fascist leader Oswald Mosley?
Bryan Guinness
Bryan Guinness, later the 2nd Baron Moyne, lost her to Mosley; she was known as Diana Guinness until she married Mosley in secret in Berlin in 1936.
Q 20Walter Guinness, Lord Moyne, Britain's minister in the Middle East, was assassinated by Lehi in 1944 in which city?
Cairo
Moyne was shot in Cairo on 6 November 1944 by the Zionist group Lehi, a killing that shocked Palestine and the wider world.
The Smoothifier is a hollow plastic ball that replaced the original 1989 disc widget, which worked only if the can was served cold.
Q 24Guinness's 1969 research into canned draught stout, patented by two St. James's Gate brewers, was code-named what?
Project ACORN
Project ACORN stood for Advanced Cans Of Rich Nectar, and its false-lid gas chamber was patented in 1969 before the idea lay dormant until 1984.
Q 25The 7 cm widget inside a bottle of Guinness, unlike the ball in a can, is nicknamed after which object?
A rocket
The 'rocket widget' is a 7 cm tube with a small hole at the bottom, while the can version is a hollow sphere a little smaller than a table-tennis ball.
Q 26Guinness says the two-part 'perfect pour' of a pint, settling wait included, should take exactly how long?
119.5 seconds
Guinness puts the whole ritual at 119.5 seconds, a precision that is pure theatre: modern dispense systems no longer need the pause, but the wait makes the drink feel special.
Q 27Which crime novelist is credited with creating the 1920s slogan 'Guinness is Good for You' at the S.H. Benson agency?
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers wrote the line after market research found drinkers said they felt good after a drink; such health claims are now banned in Irish alcohol advertising.
Q 28Which Dutch actor fronted Guinness's darkly humorous late-1980s UK ads under the slogan 'Pure Genius'?
Rutger Hauer
Rutger Hauer's 'Pure Genius' spots ran from the late 1980s into the early 1990s, extolling the brewing with deliberately dark humour.
Q 29Joe McKinney's dance in Guinness's 1994 'Anticipation' ad sent which Pérez Prado mambo to number one in Ireland?
Guaglione
Guaglione reached number one in Ireland and number two in the UK after the ad, which used jump cuts to make McKinney's moves impossible in reality.
Q 30Guinness's 2005 ad 'noitulovE' rewinds evolution from a London pub until three drinkers become which creatures?
Mudskippers
The three men regress all the way to mudskippers, in a Daniel Kleinman-directed spot that won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix and was among 2006's most-awarded commercials.