Guinness

harr

I am not a huge drinker but do like the odd pint of Guinness when out. I haven’t been out in a few months so was only having the odd beer/cider at home.
Was out last night and had a few pints of Guinness in two different pubs , pubs that always had a good pint. The taste and temperature of the pints seemed different a lot lighter in taste and a lot colder than I have had previous.
Bar man said temps and lines are set up and maintained by Diageo themselves.
Anyone else notice this or are my taste buds ****ed ?

irish_goat

If you've been drinking craft beer your tastes may have shifted to now prefer stronger flavoured beers and thus the likes of Guinness will taste lighter.

If you are a complete cynic like me you might believe that Diageo is slowly changing the Guinness recipe to make it lighter and colder in an attempt to align itself with the macro lagers and make the beer more palatable to the likes of a Heineken or Coors Light drinker.

odyssey06

Think there were a lot of chat on this recently...
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057941340

harr

irish_goat wrote: »

If you've been drinking craft beer your tastes may have shifted to now prefer stronger flavoured beers and thus the likes of Guinness will taste lighter.

If you are a complete cynic like me you might believe that Diageo is slowly changing the Guinness recipe to make it lighter and colder in an attempt to align itself with the macro lagers and make the beer more palatable to the likes of a Heineken or Coors Light drinker.

This is what I had in my head ... it definitely seems lighter and colder but I taught I was being stupid. And yes maybe it’s the fact I am now drinking more craft.

rubadub

irish_goat wrote: »

If you are a complete cynic like me you might believe that Diageo is slowly changing the Guinness recipe to make it lighter and colder

+1, years ago I constantly heard about guinness being "an acquired taste", I very rarely hear this anymore. When I was just starting drinking ~25 years ago I remember people asking for tastes of guinness and often recoiling in disgust, lads and especially women.

Roll on a couple of decades and I remember "arthurs day" where some pubs were very limited so many people chose guinness. Rakes of women in their early 20s lashing down pints and not a grimace in sight.

I remember being in the porterhouse drinking one of their stouts and we were heading off in a rush, my mate saying "lash that down and come on", and I went to do it but could not, was saying "its not like its a guinness you know."

harr

harr wrote: »

....pubs that always had a good pint....

Careful now, there are posters here would have you believe there's no such thing as a good (or bad) pint, they're all identical and any difference you notice is all psychosomatic.

:pac:

DEFTLEFTHAND

rubadub wrote: »

+1, years ago I constantly heard about guinness being "an acquired taste", I very rarely hear this anymore. When I was just starting drinking ~25 years ago I remember people asking for tastes of guinness and often recoiling in disgust, lads and especially women.

Roll on a couple of decades and I remember "arthurs day" where some pubs were very limited so many people chose guinness. Rakes of women in their early 20s lashing down pints and not a grimace in sight.

I remember being in the porterhouse drinking one of their stouts and we were heading off in a rush, my mate saying "lash that down and come on", and I went to do it but could not, was saying "its not like its a guinness you know."

They stopped using the isinglass brewing method a few years back.

I'd say this has impacted on the taste.

jimmycrackcorm

rubadub wrote:

+1, years ago I constantly heard about guinness being "an acquired taste", I very rarely hear this anymore. When I was just starting drinking ~25 years ago I remember people asking for tastes of guinness and often recoiling in disgust, lads and especially women.

Same as that. First tasted down the country and was awful. Then I visited Dublin and it was really nice there, totally different.

But I heard several times that Guinness started to implement the programme of sending people around to every pub to sort out issues and the quality became more consistent.

Ironically is not as nice now as that time I visited Dublin.

Hotblack Desiato

Get a can or bottle of Guinness Extra Stout if you want to taste anything.

andekwarhola

I think a lot of people that say the acquired taste thing are generally people that were drinking it before or in the 80s. I started drinking it in the late 80s and I have been told by others that from the mid 80s onwards, they started using extract for some of the ingredients (sure some of the experts here can confirm this) and this - in combination with lowering the serving temperature (which will deaden the taste of stout as well) - gradually made it taste less and less like stout and allowed it to compete with colder, more fashionable drinks popular with young drinkers with less of a strong taste like macro lagers. My dad definitely claims that it's a really different stout these days.

Even anecdotally, I'm sure that a regular Guinness drinker would immediately see a large difference between Guinness and tasting a readily available stout like Leann Follain, Wrasslers or further up the ABV/taste scale, Guinness Foreign Exta Stout.

beardybrewer

Weather it has a lighter body or not is debatable but temperature alone has a massive impact. I hate those ice cold taps but they're a great way to hide a bad pint. If you're going slow hold it in your hands and as it warms up the flavour will open up. If it still tasted good close to room temp then you've found a good pint.

OldMrBrennan83

Cold is what's good to me. The main difference between a good pint and bad, unless it's a complete sour one altogether.