Alcohol or Art? (Guinness Draught)

Member Name: oldreekie

Product:	Guinness Draught
Date:	16/05/01 (370 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: looks great, tastes great, did i mention it looks great?

Disadvantages: bit pricey

The first thing that strikes me, and I must admit the reason I started drinking the stuff in the first place, about a perfectly poured pint of Guinness is how beautiful it looks.

Assuming that your bar person has selected a clean glass and has poured the pint correctly, they will place on the bar in front of you a pint of dark liquid with an indistinct creaminess as your Guinness goes thru its final settle.

Look closer at the liquid in the glass, and marvel at the ethereal beauty of the head seemingly flowing DOWN the inside of your glass whilst simultaneously forming on the TOP of the pint. There is a scientific explanation for this seeming contradiction, however I prefer to think of it as magic.

If you managed to resist pressing that cool dark glass to your lips, you will now have a perfectly settled pint in front of you; a nice tight creamy off-white coloured head, contrasting sharply with the black, black liquid. This contrast has been highlighted to great effect in some superb Guinness advertising campaigns over the years. This contrast of white on top of black.

Which makes it all the more ironic that the liquid is not black, but is in fact a dark dark ruby red. You can check this out by taking a sip from your pint, holding it up to light and tipping it slightly . Look at the bottom of the glass, you should see a dark ruby glow. This is the true colour of Guinness.

Now that your eyes have fully drunk in the beauty of the pint, its time to give your belly a shot.

Slowly lift the glass to your mouth, plunge your lips and take a long draught.

If you are used to drinking lagers and bog standard beers you may notice something strange, even alien in your mouth.

Its called flavour.

As I said earlier, it was the look of Guinness that first attracted me, the taste was acquired over time. Now I wouldn't drink anything else.

I know different people get different things from i
t. I find the initial swig and swallow is smooth and creamy with a not unpleasant slight metallic taste. The after taste has slight dry hoppy bitterness and a hint of warm wholemeal bread. Honest!

If you've been enthusiastic enough, as you lower your glass you will have a Guinness moustache, great for licking off, and an impression of your puckered upper lip in the head of the pint.

All this from a pint of beer, what a bargain.

Now that you've decided that you will drink Guinness the next time you are in the pub, you have a choice to make: Regular or Extra Cold.

Extra Cold Guinness is regular Guinness, but served...what can is say.....Extra Cold! I think it is chilled to about 2-3c where as Regular is about 5-8c, I think. I prefer the Extra Cold as I think that it is quite refreshing, especially on a hot day, in a way that the Regular is not. Ive also found that it forms a tighter creamier head and has less of a tendency to dribble down the side of the glass.

Ive talked about the perfect pint, however Ive found that where as lager is much the same from pub to pub, Guinness can vary quite considerably in quality. Ive had pints that tasted weak and watery with a very bitter after taste and a head so weak that it has collapsed under its own weight. Pints where the head settles to a thickness of about an inch, no matter how many times its topped up or repoured (the acceptable thickness of head is 5mm-10mm). Pints with dark brown heads that feel cotton-woolly in the mouth and taste sweaty, very unpleasant. If you do the ruby red test on these pints they tend to be a muddy brown.

Im not sure why this happens, perhaps something to do with the conditions under which it is kept. Anybody know?.


MY GUINNESS FACTS

The best pint of Guinness I have ever had was in Dublin. However it wasn't at the Guinness Brewery. The Guinness I got at the end of the tour of the Hopstore was so super chilled
that it hurt my teeth and I could barely taste it. The best one (or eight) was in The Clarendon bar. Its in Dublin, near the Gaiety Theatre, thats all I remember. Absolutely gorgeous, and far too easy to drink.

Not all Guinness in Ireland is great tho, one of the worst pints Ive ever has was in a hotel in Ennis, Co Claire. Not only was it one of the brown pints (see above) but it had little brown flecks of something floating around in it as well. Yuck.

Guinness contains just under 200 calories per pint which is less than "premium" lager e.g. Stella Artois.

Some people claim that Guinness has an unfortunate effect on their...ahem....motions. I have never found this to be the case.

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