Why is Guinness always so bad in hotels

hetuzozaho

partyguinness wrote: »

I remember the Guinness in college. In the new trendy bar it was cold and bitter but it was more drinkable in the old bar. We generally drank Guinness in the old 'grown up' pubs outside the campus but never on mad student nights out. I drank cans of Guinness at parties.

It's hard to keep up with who the hipsters are here!

RasTa

I remember getting a 4 part pour of O'Hara stout in Amsterdam. Strange stuff.

PhilOssophy

RasTa wrote: »

I remember getting a 4 part pour of O'Hara stout in Amsterdam. Strange stuff.

They were giving you the dregs of 4 kegs.....

chooseusername

RasTa wrote: »

I remember getting a 4 part pour of O'Hara stout in Amsterdam. Strange stuff.

I remember getting a 3 part pour of Guinness,where the barman? took a plastic spatula thing and took the head off,
then back under the 'flat' pump to get a 2mm head .
When I asked why he did it, he said I wasn't getting a full pint otherwise.
I said I'd rather have 3/4 of a pint with a head than that, but I drank it anyway.
It wasn't a bad pint at all.

Lewis_Benson

odyssey06 wrote: »

Ive tasted the same wine - from same bottle - from different sized and shaped glasses and it tasted noticeably different. I didnt believe it would happen. Mostly down to how your sense of taste and smell combine.

I dont know how Guinness would be affected but sometimes the vessel does have an impact on taste.

It's all in your mind.

ardinn

Bars that serve a lot of food - ie hotel bars, have a problem with grease and also milk. Grease from hands and mouths builds up over time in the glasswashers and will film the glass, this is noticable when the head of your pint runs off the glass instead of the sought after rings.

Some other instances.

Yeast - this is entirely dependant on the flow of guinness through the taps, the better the flow, the slower the yeast build up. The more time the beer is sitting in the lines, the quicker it will grow. This is not a bad thing however in most cases. We would get lines done once a month, with a fairly strong guinness customer base. Just after cleaning the lines, the beer is good, and will continue to be good/very good up until around day 22-25 - this seems to be "the sweet spot" for us anyway, as the yeast tends to be perfect over these few days and the pint turn from very good to fúcking phenomenal. After that, their is a slow but progressive deterioration until the lines are cleared again, its not noticable to the customer - but is to the barmen, as during the previous week people were raving about the pints.

Hotel function rooms are rough, again because of beer sitting in lines, and also this tends to be the place where a lot of food is served, and not a lot of cleaning of glasswashers occours. Old glasses tend to get pushed into function rooms, and less care is usually given by the bar staff as they are in a "get it out as fast as possible" mode.

It is a combination of an awful lot of stuff to be honest, when there is something wrong with guinness in a pub, and you are looking to fix it, it can be a very long process, but there will be an explanation.

Guinness spend tens of millions a year on quality control, I havnt seen nor heard of a "bad keg" in over a decade - they genuinely dont exist in this day and age. The technology in between going from keg to glass is huge, and if one part breaks down or isnt up to speed the whole system wont work, noticably in the end result.

Glasswashers
Glasses
Yeast
Length of pythons (line)
Age of pythons (older ones do not have the insulation, nor the water cooling pipes running through them)
Cooling systems

120 other reasons

6541

Sorry if this has been posted already
https://youtu.be/x6pgAcU8DBA

RasTa

Strange, lines get cleaned weekly for Guinness over here in the big chain pubs.

BeerNut

ardinn wrote: »

Just after cleaning the lines, the beer is good, and will continue to be good/very good up until around day 22-25 - this seems to be "the sweet spot" for us anyway, as the yeast tends to be perfect over these few days and the pint turn from very good to fúcking phenomenal. After that, their is a slow but progressive deterioration until the lines are cleared again

Interesting. Do you use the same process on the lager lines?

odyssey06

Lewis_Benson wrote: »

It's all in your mind.

No if you read my post - taste is in your nose sense of smell as well as taste buds in your mouth. Established scientific fact.
Which is why with a blocked nose things dont taste the same.

ardinn

RasTa wrote: »

Strange, lines get cleaned weekly for Guinness over here in the big chain pubs.

Well i have never seen that in nearly 40 years in the industry in Ireland.

ardinn

BeerNut wrote: »

Interesting. Do you use the same process on the lager lines?

Lager is done once a month also, they would all be done at the same time (guinness, bud, carlsberg, smithwicks and other diagios together - heineken, coors, applemans, orchard thieves the same but different company.)

Lager has less issues in my opinion, the biggest complaint would be about temperature moreso than quality, however you can see visually when lager is over exposed to yeast or is a bit off, it will be cloudy.

BeerNut

ardinn wrote: »

you can see visually when lager is over exposed to yeast or is a bit off, it will be cloudy.

Thanks. Amazing that the infection isn't extremely prominent in the flavour too.

conor678

Was back home in Dublin for s Christmas and had a few pints round town and I was very dissappointed with some of the Guinness getting served. Terrible head. Not creamy and not poured correctly. And this was in a number of city centre pubs. I do think they could do with some spot checks or training in certain pubs

ardinn

BeerNut wrote: »

Thanks. Amazing that the infection isn't extremely prominent in the flavour too.

Oh it will be - cloudy will be mank in most cases.

L1011

Currently in a bar with a totally fake but convincing Victorian interior (more rough and ready boozer then polished brass palace, but some of the feted Guinness pubs in Dublin are that) and a decent real fire going. Got given a Guinness by a barman who misheard what I asked for

The pints good :pac:

odyssey06

L1011 wrote: »

Currently in a bar with a totally fake but convincing Victorian interior (more rough and ready boozer then polished brass palace, but some of the feted Guinness pubs in Dublin are that) and a decent real fire going. Got given a Guinness by a barman who misheard what I asked for

Trying to figure out what your original order was but stumped...

L1011

Lagunitas. If you were half arsedly lip reading you've got many similar sounds and hence mouth forms in the right order.

RasTa

That happened to me last night when I asked for Steady(rolling man) and he gave me a pint of Flensburger....

Hotblack Desiato

irishgeo wrote: »

while i dont drink Guinness , i was in a hotel in cornwall last year and they had a non widget can and vibrating base to serve it.

The Guinness expert in our company nearly ran a mile when the barman got a can out, but when the barman put the half poured glass on this vibrating guinness tap, he had the whole groups attention.

The expert said it wasnt bad. This is what Guinness give to hotels in the UK who dont sell enough to warrant a keg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zjx0rTyZys

8-10 years ago I had one of those in a near-deserted pub in the IFSC (the place was much more about food than drink.) It was fine. The base vibrates at an ultrasonic frequency so the water is needed to transmit the vibration into the glass.

Effects wrote: »

I heard the keg came from the US, to make sure it couldn't have been tampered with.

But they don't brew in the US, so it would have had to come from Dublin.
Sounds like a load of nonsense, tbh.

Hotblack Desiato

This stuff about yeast build up - how can this happen with pasteurised beers? Wild yeast somehow getting into the tap? Surely if the tap is used at all, it will be flushed out before it can grow to any extent.

BeerNut

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Wild yeast somehow getting into the tap?

Where there's air there's yeast, and it'll happily take up secure residence in beer lines.

Hotblack Desiato

Is there air in the line? Shouldn't the flow of many pints per day wash anything out?

BeerNut

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Shouldn't the flow of many pints per day wash anything out?

I'm sure many a homebrewer has ruined a batch with that logic Yeast are stubborn. They get everywhere that's not sanitised and sealed, and they'll stay there until pasteurised or bleached out of it.

Effects

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

But they don't brew in the US, so it would have had to come from Dublin.
Sounds like a load of nonsense, tbh.

Doesn't matter where they brew it. They still want to be able to control any possible threats to the president. It's plausible they wouldn't just let him drink form a keg that anyone could have accessed.

Hotblack Desiato

You'll have to explain to me why the Secret Service supposedly thought that shipping a keg from Dublin to the US, then shipping it back to Offaly, is somehow safer than just shipping a keg from Dublin to Offaly.

How many thousand kegs come out of James's Gate every day? You'd be better off trying your luck on the Lotto than trying to predict which one would end up being drunk, in part, by the US president.

loyatemu

I don't doubt that the beer in the keg is the same everywhere, or that Guinness are doing their job cleaning the lines. I think it is a beer more affected by mouthfeel than lager or cider, so gas levels and temperature would be variables that could affect the quality of the pint (though I know some people prefer a warmer pint).

mickdw

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

You'll have to explain to me why the Secret Service supposedly thought that shipping a keg from Dublin to the US, then shipping it back to Offaly, is somehow safer than just shipping a keg from Dublin to Offaly.

How many thousand kegs come out of James's Gate every day? You'd be better off trying your luck on the Lotto than trying to predict which one would end up being drunk, in part, by the US president.

It's pretty clear why they would take control of the keg and keep it within their own secure environment prior to it being served to the president. Total assurance that it's not been tampered it. Any other system is liable to tampering at some point.

freak scence

mrmorgan wrote: »

Guinness out of the newer glasses is terrible

load of bollox

freak scence

RasTa wrote: »

Strange, lines get cleaned weekly for Guinness over here in the big chain pubs.

over where its once a month in ireland

noker

freak scence wrote: »

over where its once a month in ireland

I have worked in a few pubs and lines were always cleaned weekly.

freak scence

noker wrote: »

I have worked in a few pubs and lines were always cleaned weekly.

where, they are done once a month in Ireland , when did you work on a pub last ?

noker

freak scence wrote: »

where, they are done once a month in Ireland , when did you work on a pub last ?

In Wcklow and Wexford. Both heineken and guinness cleaned the lines weekly. December 2018 was when i last worked there. All busy pubs .

ardinn

noker wrote: »

In Wcklow and Wexford. Both heineken and guinness cleaned the lines weekly. December 2018 was when i last worked there. All busy pubs .

Absolute nonsense to be fair, if the lines were cleaned weekly it wasnt guinness doing it, it was the owner/manager - i have worked cleaning lines on and off, it doesnt happen.

jt69er

noker wrote: »

In Wcklow and Wexford. Both heineken and guinness cleaned the lines weekly. December 2018 was when i last worked there. All busy pubs .

Nonsense, monthly as stated before.

Ballso

jt69er wrote: »

Nonsense, monthly as stated before.

Is it inconceivable that an Irish pub maintain its own lines? Does anyone do it other than a few craft pubs?

TheW1zard

Pipes are too long

RasTa

freak scence wrote: »

over where its once a month in ireland

Brexit land.

Always wondered why Irish bar staff aren't trained in that manner. Tis simple too.

irish_goat

RasTa wrote: »

Brexit land.

Always wondered why Irish bar staff aren't trained in that manner. Tis simple too.

I think originally Guinness wouldn't trust pub landlords to do it and now the pubs expect it so they've no choice but to carry on doing it.

akelly02

freak scence wrote: »

load of bollox

not a load of bollox in my opinion. and im no guinness snob

Ballso

akelly02 wrote: »

not a load of bollox in my opinion. and im no guinness snob

:rolleyes:

tastyt

Can someone explain to me so how in some pubs the head is gorgeous and creamy and pure smooth whereas in other places its a bubbly mess ?

Just a **** barman at pulling the pint or what, because 100 percent it differs

ardinn

tastyt wrote: »

Can someone explain to me so how in some pubs the head is gorgeous and creamy and pure smooth whereas in other places its a bubbly mess ?

Just a **** barman at pulling the pint or what, because 100 percent it differs

Wet glass trapping air bubbles
Guinness "dropped" into glass - glass held too low down in other words
Pint is not cold enough (you will see this more on the first few pints but not if there is a good flow)

The main culprits

feargale

bobbysands81 wrote: »

Nobody in Ireland says Boxing Day.

Salary Negotiator wrote: »

Think he means no “real” Irishman.

Aye. Equality of esteem for some but less of it for others.

The last time someone posted in this thread we were able to be fussy about where we were drinking Guinness.. a simpler time.

I drank Guinness for a period when I was 19-20. Only started back into it about two years ago as the aul lad frequents a lot of pubs that don't have IPAs so found myself having a few and now I'm back full time on it.

Having tried the cans plenty of times over the years I had just taken to drinking the craft stouts when having a few at home instead of the cans.

I was missing a pint so much I got 4 cans a few weeks ago after seeing a Rorys Story video doing the upside down pour, never tried it and I was itching to replicate the draught pint.

The cans were ok but I didnt have a proper tulip glass and I've even found in pubs if they use different glasses it seems to change the taste for me.

So I said I'd try again with a Tulip glass which I purchased in Dunnes, I also put the cans in the freezer for an hour or so too. The results aren't too bad.
Washed and dried the glass after each can.

The tulips hold a better head, the extra coldness from the freezer keep it fresher and cooler to the end and the rapid pour seems to give it a longer settle.

I might not beat my local, but it beats a bad hotel pint.

Glebee

Guinness cans just dont taste the same. The worst hotel pint would taste like nector now.:D:D