Q 01/05

Guinness pours black, yet the brewer officially describes its colour as a very dark shade of what?

A) Chocolate brown

B) Ruby red

C) Midnight blue

D) Coffee black

Answer · why

B) Ruby red

Guinness is officially a very dark ruby red, a colour that comes from roasting a portion of the barley before brewing.

Q 02/05

In Guinness's 1999 ad 'Surfer', voted the best commercial of all time in a 2000 UK poll, waves turn into which animals?

A) Polar bears

B) Grey wolves

C) White horses

D) Black bulls

Answer · why

C) White horses

The crashing breakers become white horses, an image lifted from Walter Crane's 1893 painting 'Neptune's Horses'.

Q 03/05

Guinness plc merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to create which London-based drinks giant?

A) Pernod Ricard

B) Carlsberg Group

C) Constellation Brands

D) Diageo

Answer · why

D) Diageo

Diageo's name, coined by branding agency Wolff Olins, joins the Latin dies (day) with the Greek root geo (earth).

Q 04/05

Which royal's death in 1861 led a Brooks's Club bartender to invent the Black Velvet, stout mixed with champagne?

A) Prince Albert

B) King William IV

C) The Duke of Wellington

D) Princess Charlotte

Answer · why

A) Prince Albert

The Black Velvet mourned Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, on the notion that even the champagne should be in mourning.

Q 05/05

How much beer did Arthur Guinness ship to England on 19 May 1769, the brewery's very first export?

A) 6.5 barrels

B) 60 barrels

C) 600 barrels

D) 6,000 barrels

Answer · why

A) 6.5 barrels

The first export was just 6.5 barrels; by 1914 the brewery was turning out 2.652 million barrels a year.