A perfect pint of Guinness is a small miracle of timing, temperature and patience. Get any of the three wrong and you'll know within the first sip. Perth, it turns out, has more than a few bartenders who get it right.
We visited 12 bars across the city — from Northbridge to East Perth, Fremantle to West Perth — and ordered one pint at each, with no warning, no special treatment, and a stopwatch on the two-part pour.
The variation was wider than expected. Some pours were near-perfect: clean head, deep ruby-black body, dome resting at the rim. Others were rushed, warm, or surrendered too quickly to froth.
The top of the list belongs to a small bar on Claisebrook Cove where the bartender — a softly-spoken Scot — refused to talk while pouring. Two minutes, ninety seconds rest, top-up, presented at exactly the right angle. Textbook.
What separates the great pints from the merely good is overwhelmingly about routine. The best bars run their Guinness lines hard enough to keep the keg fresh, but never so hard that the pour gets sloppy.
If you want the full list and the scoring criteria, we'll publish them in next week's piece. For now: head to the cove on a quiet Wednesday and let the bartender do his thing. You'll see what we mean.