Is Glasgow's top Guinness influencer the scourge of pubs or their saviour?

In my many years working at a Glasgow pub, there’s one thing I know every bartender fears: a Guinness drinker looking over your shoulder. 

“Let it settle!”

“Not enough head!”

“Where’s the feckin flake?”

God forbid you run out of Guinness glassware and resort to pouring it in a Tennent’s pint glass. 

Fluff to some, but gospel to many, the perfect pour — a two-part process lasting 119.5 seconds, involving a glass angle at 45 degrees, a roughly 60 second settling period before topping off the beer with the perfect foam dome — is written in the sacred texts of every Glasgow pub.

But this obsessive precision could not be upkept by best-practice manuals alone. Rather, a very alive and active community of pint nerds keep our beloved pubs going, and the lore of Guinness growing. Herein lies the success of the Instagram account @girl_drinks_guinness, the Glasgow-based “Guinnfluencer” who has built a following of tens of thousands in her six years reviewing Guinness pours across the city.

Sarah Love, the woman behind the account, isn’t the first Guinnfluencer, but she’s become a dominant voice in the Glasgow scene after the original @glasgow_guinness_man was forced to retire in a cruel twist of fate due to a coeliac disease diagnosis. 

“It’s clear she has influence,” says Callum, the manager at the charming City Centre boozer, Corner Bar. His pub received a flood of Guinness-motivated footfall for weeks following Love’s 9/10 review. “It’s mad. I’ve never seen that kind of effect,” says Callum. By his estimates, they went through an extra one to two kegs the week following her rave review. “Guinness is like a religion,” he says, with the same astonishment as many of us non-practicing voyeurs.

One might think that the valued reviewer is a relic of a bygone past, but Love’s influence means pubs like Corner Bar emerge as “Guinness spots” (as cemented by the toilet graffiti reading “Corner bar has the best Guinnes!”). However, holding the spirit of a true Glaswegian, she’s a pint fanatic but a harsh critic.

“METALLIC AND BITTER,” she said of the Guinness at the Picture House in Rutherglen.

“ONE OF THE WORST TASTING PINTS EVER,” receives Sheddens Bar in Shettleston.

“ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER RUBBISH PINT,” read the review of the Olde Burnt Barns.

And this is when I humbly admit I too have been burned by Glasgow’s pint pundit. “I recognised her face right away,” my coworker, Luke, tells me about the night she ordered at our workplace, the Hug and Pint. A busy shift and a dodgy cooler earned us a 2/10 rating, alongside a description of a “tobacco aftertaste” and “monstrous head.”