Why is Guinness always so bad in hotels

partyguinness

jt69er wrote: »

We are always looking for a reason why tonight's pint isn't quite the same as the pints last week. We're thinking is it the glass, the lines, the person pouring the pint etc. Sometimes we need to look at ourselves, especially this time of the year when our taste buds are working overtime with all the different food & drink being consumed. Maybe it's ourselves that's a bit off, not the pint.

I have though that myself sometimes. I suppose there is a bit of BS as well.

Lads afraid to come straight and say: "Great pints last night." for fear some Elder shoots him down and he feels like a young pup being scolded.

odyssey06

jt69er wrote: »

I actually did say sometimes!

Fair point ... mea culpa.

Andrew00

Kinda off topic/thread title but,

Another thing I've noticed over the last year is male college students trying to be cool and different by asking for a straight pour.

Thinking they're some sort of porter expert when infact they're just a complete nerd doing some arts degree haha

Ballso

Imagine expecting your beer to be simply poured into a glass! Damn hipsters

Andrew00

Ballso wrote: »

Imagine expecting your beer to be simply poured into a glass! Damn hipsters

Ah its not really that it's the fact they're literally only 21 or 22 and pretend to be bleedin experts and hipsters

partyguinness

Andrew00 wrote: »

Kinda off topic/thread title but,

Another thing I've noticed over the last year is male college students trying to be cool and different by asking for a straight pour.

Thinking they're some sort of porter expert when infact they're just a complete nerd doing some arts degree haha

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.

On rounds with beer/lager drinkers everyone hated the Guinness drinker.

partyguinness

Andrew00 wrote: »

Kinda off topic/thread title but,

Another thing I've noticed over the last year is male college students trying to be cool and different by asking for a straight pour.

Thinking they're some sort of porter expert when infact they're just a complete nerd doing some arts degree haha

Are they just trying to get it quicker by any chance?

Effects

I often ask for Guinness in a single pour. It doesn't affect the taste and I don't want to wait at the bar for five minutes instead on one.
I don't care about how it looks or comes across. And I don't care if a barman thinks I'm pretend hipster.
Sure anyone who doesn't wear boot cut jack and jones jeans is a hipster these days.

Ballso

I ask for a three part pour. Checkmate hipsters

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

ya most hotel pints are shíte. but i was in the ballina manor hotel in early November and the pints were class. chatting to the middle aged nordie bar manager who was ordering people around and was moaning that staff don't do things right. good pints of guinness seem to be all about keeping the lines clean which boils down to the staff giving a fúck, this guy obviously did.

Effects

Ballso wrote: »

I ask for a three part pour. Checkmate hipsters

Real hipsters get the first pour from Guinness in a traditional wooden cask, and get the second pour from the new keg.

Itssoeasy

I don't drink Guinness normally but I do recall a few years ago Guinness changed the glass type from a "ordinary" pint glass for lack of a better description to a glass that had moulding on it. I can remember Guinness drinkers in my local demanding to have the old glass. They were saying the pint tasted awful in the new glass but was it a mental thing or is there some truth to it that the new glass changed the taste.

Lewis_Benson

Itssoeasy wrote: »

I don't drink Guinness normally but I do recall a few years ago Guinness changed the glass type from a "ordinary" pint glass for lack of a better description to a glass that had moulding on it. I can remember Guinness drinkers in my local demanding to have the old glass. They were saying the pint tasted awful in the new glass but was it a mental thing or is there some truth to it that the new glass changed the taste.

People are idiota.
It will taste the same served in a teacup........FFS

L1011

You get people demanding the era of glass they grew up with too, if available - but then they forget and get used to it.

The standard shape for a Guinness glass now (excluding those extremely tall heavily moulded ones that I don't think are around anymore - but I would not have Guinness often) is not the same as it was in the 80s and absolutely is not the same as it was when nitro draught came out and the two part pour was invented to keep the same delivery time lag as the two cask system had.

odyssey06

Lewis_Benson wrote: »

People are idiota.
It will taste the same served in a teacup........FFS

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.

mrmorgan

Guinness out of the newer glasses is terrible

JustAThought

Slopped in one pour into a pint glass flat beneath the tap like an everyday beer. Guinness should reintroduce spot checks for premises allowed to carry theor product and make sure the bar staff give a damn and actually know how to pour one -in 3 parts and right -not one belch.

L1011

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.

With wine glasses you're generally getting quite different amounts of headroom and opening diameter - this is going to have some impact on airing and so on

Pretty much all recent beer glasses have nearly identical opening diameters and are filled to the top. And older glasses were shorter and wider and everyone got used to any change (if any) in perception from drinking from them.

Ballso

L1011 wrote: »

You get people demanding the era of glass they grew up with too, if available - but then they forget and get used to it.

The standard shape for a Guinness glass now (excluding those extremely tall heavily moulded ones that I don't think are around anymore - but I would not have Guinness often) is not the same as it was in the 80s and absolutely is not the same as it was when nitro draught came out and the two part pour was invented to keep the same delivery time lag as the two cask system had.

It's not the same beer in the glass either

Effects

L1011 wrote: »

Pretty much all recent beer glasses have nearly identical opening diameters and are filled to the top. And older glasses were shorter and wider and everyone got used to any change (if any) in perception from drinking from them.

Marketing people in beer companies want to have the tallest glass, because they think it stands out more and it means something. Not because it affects the taste, but because they think it gets their drink noticed more.

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.