Brands founded several centuries ago have a few advantages when it comes to history, lore, and tradition. But for Guinness, a modern social media trend is upending a drinking culture that dates back to 1759.
That new phenomenon is called "splitting the G," in which drinkers try to swallow enough beer on their first drink that the line between liquid and foam ends up halfway through the "G" of the Guinness brand on the glass. (There are variations, like getting the line to land between the text and the brewery's harp logo just above it, as well as online arguments over the proper procedure, as might be expected from any internet trend.) It sometimes shows up in the form of a bar bet, in which a bartender might offer to pay for the pint if a drinker can split the G perfectly on the first try, or as a competition between friends to see who pays for the round, or just as a bit of fun.
And that fun seems to be building steam globally this year after a quiet, unclear origin. A dedicated web app launched early this summer. In June, a play called "Splitting The G: A Controversy" debuted at an arts festival in Ireland. In July, the Australian parody website the Beetoota Advocate settled the "contentious" issue of where the split is supposed to go by quoting a "real actual Irishman." John Cena starred in an Instagram reel about splitting the G on Aug. 18. A TikTok from a teary-eyed traveler in Dublin on Sept. 4 quickly hit 1.3 million views and 150,000 likes. A couple of weeks later, the Jonas Brothers posted a YouTube video from London with their own self-promotional variation, in which a moderator and one of the brothers attempted to "split the J" on a custom-made pint glass with the siblings' last name on it.
That's a lot of "2024" for a brand with a 265-year history. Ironically, the brewery seems to be keeping the trend at arm's length, decidedly not pushing it in its own marketing. Connoisseurs tend to look down at it for various reasons. And apparently, no one is entirely sure how it all got started.
Ali Dunworth is the author of "A Compendium of Irish Pints: The Culture, Customs and Craic," a fascinating A-to-Z guide to Irish drinking culture that was published this spring. Although it includes a small entry on splitting the G, she was initially hesitant to write about it, thinking of it as a foreign import.
"It's not an Irish tradition. I mean, I can't say exactly where it came from, but in my feeling it came more from the U.K.," she says. "The first time I heard of it was people coming to Dublin and doing it when they got here. I didn't know any Irish person who did it."
But as an internet trend, splitting the G is arguably part of Irish drinking culture now, especially among younger drinkers.
"It's a social media phenomenon," she continues. "It became a challenge. Social media loves a challenge. I think that's where it came from -- people drinking Guinness on Instagram or TikTok."
Known online as Prime Mutton, Jason Hackett has some 125,000 followers on Instagram and over 16,000 subscribers on YouTube, where he often focuses on reviewing great pints of Guinness and the pubs where they're served. "Splitting the G" first came across his radar around two or three years ago.
"I think it had come about as a drinking game in the years preceding Covid, not too many years before that," he says. "It caught on very quickly and a lot of people took it to be some sort of official way of drinking Guinness, which it isn't."
"I think it's a terrible way to drink. You're not really enjoying the beer properly. You're enjoying the experience of beating your friend at something really trivial."
Online commenters often condescendingly inform posters, especially newbies, that splitting the G is mandatory, he says. But they'll even correct people who are famous for their posts about the black stuff.
"I call them 'the Guinness police.' If I don't do it on my videos, I get them saying, 'Oh, I can't believe this guy's not split the G again,'" he says. "And I tell them that they're talking a load of cobblers. I say it's not necessary."
That said, it can be a fun way to drink. And sometimes, splitting the G just happens.
"I've nailed it myself a number of times -- I think I managed it last night, actually," he says, laughing.
A more demanding version of the game calls for the line of liquid after the first drink to land precisely on the typographical "bar" in the middle of the letter G.
"In terms of getting the white line to settle just on top of the sort of 'handle' of the G, that is actually pretty difficult. I've only done that a few times," Hackett says.
If the earliest online videos featuring drinkers attempting to split the G date from around 2021 and 2022, its origins are definitely a bit older, with the first entry for the term showing up on Urban Dictionary in May 2018. The growth this year is clear on Google Trends, where searches for "split the G" have peaked at the maximum of 100 in April and late September of this year, compared to about 20 in previous years. The top-rated locations for searches are Ireland, the U.K., the Antipodes, and, surprisingly, Iceland.
Although the trend is growing, there's also a bit of a pushback. The Jonas Brothers might have filmed their "split the J" video at the Devonshire, hailed by Esquire magazine as "the buzziest pub in the world" in a glowing profile last month. The Devonshire is said to hold the record for selling the most Guinness in the world -- a Guinness World Record, in fact -- and has been ranked as offering one of the best pints of the black stuff in London by several newspapers. But for co-owner Oisín Rogers, drinking a massive swig as your first sip isn't the best way to enjoy a great pint of stout.
"People do it all the time. It drives me mad," he says. "I think it's a terrible way to drink. You're not really enjoying the beer properly. You're enjoying the experience of beating your friend at something really trivial."
It is at least relatively harmless, he acknowledges, compared to other dumb things people might do when they're drinking. But the large volume of beer required to split the G also means that drinkers have fewer gulps. He calculates a normal but full sip of beer as less than half of what is required to split the G.
"I think it's a beer that lends itself to theater quite well. You know, you're sitting at the bar, you're watching it being poured. And then when you get it, it's like you don't have to drink it immediately. People are having lots of little creative fun points around that, I think."
"I would imagine you should get seven or eight good slugs from a pint," he says. "If you were to continue to drink at the rate of splitting the G, then you'd only get three mouthfuls out of your beer. It's not the best way to enjoy what has become a drink of real enjoyment."
But other pub owners have promoted the trend, with some even offering a free pint to drinkers who can pull it off. With its connection to drinking in large volumes, at least for the initial sip, Guinness seems reluctant to embrace splitting the G. Guinness global brand ambassador Padraig Fox instead prefers to talk about how much people missed the culture of social drinking during the Covid lockdowns, and cites other examples of "people having fun with their pint of Guinness," like the so-called "tilt test," whereby fans tilt a full glass to see if the beer's creamy foam is stable enough to stay on top without spilling over the side.
"As pubs and bars reopened, we noticed that people were really having a lot of different drinking experiences with Guinness that they probably wouldn't have had five, six years ago," he says. "I think it's a beer that lends itself to theater quite well. You know, you're sitting at the bar, you're watching it being poured. And then when you get it, it's like you don't have to drink it immediately. People are having lots of little creative fun points around that, I think."
There are, of course, many other elements of drinking culture that have built up over the centuries. Fox cites a longstanding tradition of bartenders in Africa always leaving the bottle cap next to an open bottle of Guinness when serving it. Hackett talks about the importance of visiting pubs that go through a lot of Guinness, which keeps it in good shape, and stresses the importance of finding places that dispense it on roughly an 80-20 nitrogen-CO2 blend, which contributes to the creamy mouthfeel. Also, newcomers should make sure they're drinking beer, not just foam, when they first sample it.
"Some people don't take enough of the first sip, and they just get a slight mouthful of bitterness if they just have the head," he says. "Drinking through the head and into the black liquid is important."
For Dunworth, there's an entire book's worth of Irish drinking culture to discuss, from the importance of purchasing your round of beers in a timely manner to the nuances of correctly sharing bags of potato chips. Splitting the G is perhaps a new thing in Ireland, but it fits with the drink's deep connection to the country. People drink all kinds of things in pubs that don't end up ever spiking on Google Trends. For whatever reason, there's simply something about Guinness.
"If you had vodka and Coke, you wouldn't take a picture of it," she says. "You wouldn't show it off. You wouldn't be like, 'Look at me.' Even a cider -- you don't feel like that. Guinness does have so much myth and lore and marketing. And, I mean, it tastes great. That also helps."