Why you won’t see Joe Biden drinking a Guinness in Ireland

Joe Biden has arrived in Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, part of a trip that will also take him to the Republic of Ireland to spend time in Dublin and both County Louth and County Mayo, where his family roots run deep.

The US president is intensely proud of his Irish heritage, having been raised among the Irish-American community of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and loves to drop recitations from the great Irish poets into his speeches.

But there’s one Irish custom he will not indulge in during his visit: ordering a pint of Guinness in a darkened pub.

It may come as a disappointment to the hundreds of press photographers watching his every move this week, desperate to get a shot of Mr Biden revelling in his homecoming, but the truth is that the president is a teetotaller.

“I’m the only Irishman you ever met that’s never had a drink,” he said during remarks observing St Patrick’s Day on 17 March this year.

More seriously, while campaigning as Barack Obama’s running mate in the presidential election of 2008, he explained his attitude by saying simply: “There are enough alcoholics in my family.”

Tom Bell, a childhood friend of Mr Biden from Scranton, alluded to a history of alcoholism on the future president’s mother’s side of the family, commenting: “Every family had it. But the Finnegans had more than their share.”

Mr Biden’s own son Hunter has written movingly about his own struggles with drink and drugs in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things, recounting how the death of his elder brother Beau from brain cancer in 2015 had set him on a self-destructive path, the pair having always been close since the tragic death of their mother Neilia and infant sister Naomi in a road accident a week before Christmas in 1972.

President Biden may not have to miss out entirely, however, as Guinness does now offer a non-alcoholic version of its legendary stout, known simply as Guinness 0.0.

The last American president to set foot in Ireland, Donald Trump, also refrained from touching the black stuff when he arrived in June 2019.

The same could not be said of his sons Donald Jr and Eric, however, who cheerily piled into a number of bars in Doonbeg, County Clare, pouring pints and buying rounds for the locals.

Mr Obama, who visited in May 2011, also had no qualms about ordering himself a parting glass at Ollie Hayes’ Bar in the town of Moneygall, County Offaly, while exploring his only family ties to the region.

Aware of the fastidiousness with which the serving of a pint of Guinness is conducted, Mr Obama remarked: “You tell me when it’s properly settled, I don’t want to mess this up.”

Leaving a fistful of cash on the countertop as he left, Mr Obama joked: “I just want you to know the president pays his bar tab.”