Yes Guinness is better in Ireland. Less travel time, not being pasturised, ingredients etc. have a huge impact on the taste.
But there is also a lot of places in Ireland were the Guinness in muck. This is because of the way it’s treated in the pub/club. A lot of the new super pubs(huge expensive kips) serve terrible Guinness and the young people either accept it or don’t drink it.
Guinness in Ireland have done a huge amount of QC on their product within normal pubs. They offer deals on cold rooms etc and have checks on the quality of the product served in pubs. Also Guinness is the most popular tap drink in Ireland so there’s a good run on the drink and it’s never sitting in the lines too long in most pubs.
I’ve tried Guinness in most places I’ve traveled. The best Guinness outside Ireland was London IMO followed by Boston(Littlest Bar in Boston). We did get a good pint in Vermont but that was after going behind the bar changing temp and flow speed, training the staff how to pour a pint properly and buying the Americans in the bar 2 pints each to get a run on it(we drank Sam Adams while this was going on :D)
The worst Guinness I had was on the island of Panang in Malaysia. It was terrible, really terrible but I told the barman it was lovely as he was very impressed to be serving it to a man who came from “Guinnesstown” as he called Dublin. I went onto Tiger beer very quickly
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BTW as to the quality of the pint on the Guinness tour. I went there with Coldfire, Globetrotter and a few others a couple of years back and I wasn’t impressed at all. While not terrible it was not great which is what I’d expect from Guinness itself. However the tour has changed and now and you now drink in the Gravity Bar which give a 360 degree view of Dublin. I’ve been told by my father that the pint was very good in the Gravity Bar.
Oh and in case you’re wondering the quality of a pint is a major discussion point for Guinness drinkers.
Well I hope my comment didn’t sound too snarky. I am English, but my ancestral connections mean I’m eligible to play for Ireland at sports. There seem to be a few places these days that serve “cold” and “ice cold” Guinness side by side, and the “cold” tastes better to me.
Not been tempted, considering it’s 9%… Sounds more like barley wine to me.
Ironically, Guinness in Dublin have started brewing “export Guinness” for the immigrant African community here, because they found that the Africans were importing Guinness brewed in Nigeria into Ireland.
The billboards are well patronising: they show a black hand clutching a bottle of the stuff (no problem here), in front of a blurred out fruit market. Coz obviously all Africans are around fruit markets all the time :rolleyes: Except if you look closely at the market, you realise that it’s actually Moore Street in Dublin.
I’m not a Guinness drinker, so this story is based solely on my observations, the next day of five exceedingly and evilly hungover Irish Guinness drinkers and one bright as a button Nigerian Guinness drinker.
One of our engineers is from Nigeria and he had been roundly scoffed at for years by the native Guinnessers in the office for saying that the Nigerian Guinness was a superior beast.
Nigerian Guinness is now available in Dublin in - God, I can’t remember, but I’ll find out - and he took the boys down to this particular place wherever it was and the following day they all conceded that it was indeed rocket fuel and that the Nigerians must be an awful shower of hardy bastards*
Praise indeed.
Isn’t it more than twice as alcoholic?
I know that there is a Pit thread going on at the moment, about hate speech and racism, but to allay anyone’s fears, in Ireland, a phrase like this is entirely complimentary and represents an envious viewpoint.
In fairness “Export” which is 7.5-8% has been brewed since the 19th century but wasn’t on sale in Ireland for quite some time as it didn’t really have a market. Now with the amount of Nigerians in Ireland there is a market so they’re selling it locally again.
I got a few bottles last week just to try it and it’s like all strong bottled beer/stout. It’s got a very strong taste and I didn’t enjoy it that much.
Guinness offers stout defence for recall of thousands of kegs
Thousands of kegs of Guinness which could have left customers with a nasty taste in their mouths have been recalled en route to Europe and the US.
It seems they found a “potential risk that the pint might not taste as good as usual due to prolonged storage” (quote from Times not Guinness)
I’ve never had it in Ireland, but I’ve had it on tap at an Irish pub in London on several occasions.
Beamish is better than Guinness, in my opinion, although they are both fine, fine, brews. (I don’t think that my opinion will cause an argument in THIS thread.)
I think a Beamish head is creamier, which I like, although it may be a bit too much for others’ tastes.
And I’ve been able to find Beamish on tap here in the States on occasion.
If treated well by the pub there is no reason why your US pint shouldn’t be good. The several pints I had in Boston and London were easily better than a lot of pints I’ve had in Ireland in places where they just slop it out.
Rule of thumb in Ireland. If there is a old man drinking Guinness in the bar it’s a good pint.
I drank a few pints in Botswana which I assume was brewed in Nigeria rather than Dublin. It was suprisingly good, after the staff were shown how to pour it (i.e. NOT like cider). My friends dad owned a hotel in Francistown and thus allowed us to ‘play around’ with his bar to make it better, so we did just that.
I can honestly say I wouln’t have known the difference between a pint there and at home. I certainly didn’t notice it being any stronger, although it may well have been.
(And it was several years ago and many brain cells have since been destroyed)
Whereas you drink Buckfast by the bucket, I don’t doubt! (Actually, I meant spiff.) Though in my soused and impecunious youth I admit I was known to partake in the odd can of Kestrel. And me and my brother really livened up my sister’s birthday party with some Special Brew a few years ago…
Tsk, tsk, tsk – nineiron and Spiff both used the B word. In fairness, both Beamish and Murphy’s are often better than Guinness in the UK because they’re less well-known and have to try that bit harder.
This is giving me a thirst. Only half an hour to go though :).
