guinness
You mean some beers aren’t vegetarian?
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 | Beer | 4 Comments
This is most definitely the case, as per the FAQ on the Fosters website. I came across this interesting and under-publicised tidbit at BeerLeaks.org, which is a WikiLeaks parody brought to us by Brewdog Brewing. It appears their new website was recently shutdown, probably because the giant breweries threatened to sue the pants off them (their Twitter account has also gone quiet). Amongst their claims that many big brand beers aren’t vegetarian (and they named some big names, one of which rhymed with Guinness, I mean, yeah it was Guinness), they also let it be known that most imports aren’t actually imported and that clear bottles lead to skunkification. The last two I knew, but I didn’t think the giant evil beer companies would stoop so low as to trick vegetarians into betraying their principles. So much for the Bavarian purity law, eh? At least the solution to the problem is clear, people should stop being vegetarian, or at least switch to craft beer.
Now containing dead animal!
I found about BeerLeaks.org through this article on the 37signals blog about Brewdog’s struggle to become a top craft brewer. It’s really good reading and so you should read it.
Cheers,
Chris
After work drinks
Sunday, November 7th, 2010 | Beer | 2 Comments
In BC I would rarely ever meet somebody, coworkers or friends, after work for just drinks. If I was meeting people after work it would be for an occasion and there would be food involved. I don’t think I am an atypical person in this regard and I have two explanations. First, I (and most people) would almost always be driving somewhere, which makes meeting up for drinks downright irresponsible. Second, Vancouver, and especially its suburbs, does not have the same after work pub culture that London and the rest of the UK has.
Ever since we’ve been here I’ve noticed that any pub worth visting is jammed from 5pm on weekdays and overflowing onto the streets on Fridays. It’s fairly typical for Londoners to meet with coworkers or friends after work more evenings than not, like three out of five weekdays, every week, forever. I was impressed at this because I really enjoy after work drinks. With us moving to a new city and starting new jobs, it’s been good for our social integration. I have also been surprised at how after work drinks are frequently carried out. While it’s common to just have a pint and then be on your way, it’s almost equally common to have one, then two, then three, then a lot of pints, completely lose track of time, realize you haven’t eaten, and get carried away late into the evening. Seriously, some people just won’t eat. As a hungry person, this offends me. Weekday benders are common enough that showing up for work extremely late is easily forgiven and when I was recently actually sick most people just assumed I’d had a rough night.
I’m not passing judgement here, just remarking on an interesting cultural difference, one which I mostly enjoy (hangovers…). When I joined my colleagues had already selected their favorite pubs and I must say I quite enjoy their choices. The Bricklayer’s Arms is a Sam Smith’s pub that charges just over £2 for a pint. You can’t find any beer in London that cheap, much less tasty Sam Smith’s beer. The Toucan is a Guinness pub in Soho that my Irish boss loves. They do serve a proper Guinness, and you can’t argue with the people watching. Fun fact, Jimi Hendrix played his first London gig at The Toucan.
The Toucan in Soho
Cheers,
Chris
Guinness Tastes Better in Dublin
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 | Beer, Breweries, Pubs | 11 Comments
Our extended stay across the pond was always going to involve a trip to Dublin and a visit to the Guinness Storehouse. I obviously needed to look into the widely speculated rumor/myth/fact that Guinness tastes better in Ireland. Hopefully you’ve already gathered from the title of this post that I did indeed find this to be the case (if not it’s you, not me). I also find Guinness to taste better in London than in Vancouver, and better in Dublin than in London. Why might this be? I think the answer has to be freshness.
Gate to Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, other tourists taking pictures
Beer is like food and the same principles of freshness apply (although Guinness isn’t a meal in a glass; it has the same calorie content as most other beers and it’s the nitrogen bubbles that make you feel full). The differences in flavor I tasted I would describe in terms of freshness and staleness. The Guinness over here has a deeper roasted malt flavor than the Guinness at home and just tastes fresher, where the latter might have something to do with the oils contributed by the hops not yet breaking down. Guinness in Vancouver tastes like a mere shadow of what I tasted in Dublin.
Brew Kettle in the Guinness Storehouse
When you consider that Guinness is brewed in Dublin and is widely consumed in the British Isles (meaning kegs don’t sit around for long), it makes sense that the majority of the Guinness consumed here is fresh as can be. Whereas Guinness in Vancouver has taken a boat trip across the Atlantic, a train trip across Canada, and then sat in a BC Liquor Cartel warehouse or shelf for a while. Had I any foresight whatsoever, I might have brought a can of Guinness over here to consume along side a fresh pint from the Storehouse in direct comparison. In addition to being fresher, Guinness over here is much better taken care of. Bars carrying Guinness have Guinness representatives coming into clean their keg lines quite frequently. Bars are supposed to clean their lines regularly anyway, but most don’t. Dirty lines can sully a good beer, but no Guinness in Ireland is subjected to such shame.
Barrels in the Guinness Storehouse, they show you the whole industrial beer making process
This past year we were contacted by Guinness’ PR firm in Canada and asked to write about why Guinness was so remarkable for it’s 250th birthday. I wasn’t so sure Guinness was that remarkable, from a beer perspective at least. Now, having visited the Guinness Storehouse, I know why Guinness has thrived for 250 years, marketing and branding. The Storehouse itself is all part of the experience and the most impressive piece of beer tourism I’ve ever seen. You are ushered through five floors of Guinness history, from how it’s made to Guinness adverts of ages gone by. And what happens at the end? A free pint of fresh Guinness in the rooftop bar with panorama city views of Dublin. The Guinness Storehouse is a must see for anyone, not just beer lovers. You will surely feel more affection for Guinness having completed the tour, sheer marketing brilliance.
The bar on top of the Guinness Storehouse, pouring Guinness is an art
There’s more to Dublin that just Guinness though, and we made a point of checking out one of Dublin’s microbreweries. We actually ended up at Porterhouse Brewing Company’s Temple Bar location more than once. This maze like pub spanning several floors was packed out on both Friday and Saturday nights. They had the most amazing Guitar player on Friday night too (he put my Guitar Hero dominance on medium to shame). The beer was phenomenal too, way better than Guinness, we’re talking top quality microbrewery stuff. I particularly enjoyed their Oyster Stout and the Temple Brau lager. This is a great pub and another must visit.
Do you remember when lying was okay in advertising? Oh wait, it's still okay.
We also did a Literary Pub Crawl of Dublin. It was really fun, not for the beer, but for the story telling and literary history. Turns out every famous Irish writer was a massive drunk. But we were only in Dublin for two days and did our fair share of drinking, so who are we to judge?
Cheers,
Chris
Strawberries and Cream, Beer at Wimbledon
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 | Beer | 2 Comments
One item on the to do list was always going to get done and that was to visit the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. We didn’t have tickets, but that didn’t stop the wife and I from heading down to Wimbledon from London to try our luck anyway. We waited 1.5 hours in a kilometer long line, but eventually made our way in. Entry to the grounds after 5PM cost us £14 and tickets to centre court after that were only £5 more. It was amazing to see centre court where so much tennis history has taken place, not to mention it’s where the Queen herself is sitting today. We saw Victoria Azarenka thrash Mirjana Lucic while making noises I felt would be more suitable in the bedroom than on a tennis court.
Start of the giant Wimbledon line
Centre Court at Wimbledon, across from the Royal Box
While at Wimbledon we obviously had to eat strawberries and cream. We brought our own strawberries (£2 for a large basket) and crème fraîche (£1), which we sprinkled brown sugar on. It was delightful. We also sampled the strawberries and cream sold at Wimbledon. For £2.50 we received eight strawberries sitting in what looked like unwhipped whipping cream sprinkled with sugar. It was not nearly as good and if you go to Wimbledon, I recommend bringing your own delightful concoction. We also brought our own bottle of champagne, which I found pretty crazy considering the attitudes in North American sports concerning outside alcohol. We were well equipped, but I still needed to check out what kind of beer was made available to patrons at the All England Club. Guinness and Grolsch for £4.40 a pint, not an English beer in sight. I was a bit surprised by that, but then we were in the chump area and not in one of the fancier clubs, chalets, restaurants or other gathering places of the privileged few.
Strawberries and Cream with Champagne at Wimbledon
Wimbledon was an amazing place to visit and I’m going to register for 2011 tickets when the lottery opens in September. We even caught the beginning of Isner vs Mahut on Court 18 in what we didn’t know would turn into the epic longest tennis match of all time. Turns out Boris Becker was watching too.
Boris Becker above Court 18
Cheers,
Chris
Calorie Content of Beer?
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | Beer | 5 Comments
My initial reaction to the question ‘How many calories are in beer?’ is who gives a crap? If you really care about losing weight, you should probably not drink beer at all. But then if you care about being happy, you probably should drink beer and just not care about calories. However, many of you do seem to care about the calorie content of beer, particularly of Bud Light Lime. Going through our top search keywords in Google Analytics, meaning keywords Googlers are using to find our site, I found the following ranked rather high up:
- bud light lime calories
- bud light lime sucks
- calories in bud light lime
- bud light lime ingredients
What does this mean? It means that a lot of Bud Light Lime drinkers are after it because they think it is diet beer or because they think they can drink twice as many of them without getting fat (or something similarly depressing). It also means that a good portion of you hate Bud Light Lime as much as I do, which gives me hope. A few of my friends have told me they are getting sick of me ragging on Bud Light Lime, so this will be my final mention of it. It really is that bad though; this is why I think so:
- It tastes bad. It tastes like Sprite gone off. I’ve heard people say ‘it’s not that bad’, but why not settle for half decent, pretty good, or better yet, actually good? I don’t understand why someone would want to drink Bud Light Lime when they could have any one of the wonderful beers that I listed in my previous post that garnered so much attention.
- Real Lime Flavor. This is not the same as real limes, real lime juice, or real lime anything. Real lime flavor implies something unnatural and, more importantly, unnecessary. If it is lime you are after, try this: buy a lime, cut it, squeeze it, and then let the juice drip into a beer.
Anyway, the purpose of this post was not to rag on Bud Light Lime one last time, but to talk about the calories in beer. I’ve heard many mentions of ‘a meal in a glass’ in reference to dark beers before, but the color of beer has nothing to do with calorie content. I’ve also heard complaints that beer makes you full. In my opinion, beer should make you full because it is food, but that extra full feeling one gets comes from carbonation or nitrogenation. The gasses remain in your stomach and make you feel ‘foamy’, as Erik and I call it when we’ve had a few too many. In reality, the colorie content of beer has most to do with alcohol levels and residual unfermented sugars in the beer. The alcohol content of a beer will be most indicative of calorie content. For example, a 10% ABV beer will likely have close to twice as many calories as a 5% ABV beer. Now for the actual numbers:
- Bud Light Lime has 116 calories per 12oz
- Bud Light has 110 calories per 12oz
- Guinness has 210 calories per 20oz pint
- Normal 5% beer ~ 150 calories per 12oz
- Normal 7% beer ~ 220 calories per 12oz
- Normal 10% beer ~ 300 calories per 12oz
It seems to me, you are generally looking at about 30 calories per percentage alcohol point in a 12 ounce serving of beer. Is the 30 calorie savings that Bud Light Lime offers over a good beer worth it? Rest assured that I’ll be choosing quality over quantity until the end of my days.
Cheers,
Chris
Is Guinness Remarkable?
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | Beer | 4 Comments
Earlier this week, we received the email below from Brenna, a PR firm employee representing Guinness in Canada:
Dear Erik and Chris,
I read your blog and I’m sorry to hear that the Whistler Beer Festival was cancelled. It sounds like you guys had a fun time anyway! My name is Brenna and I am contacting you on behalf of Guinness Canada. Guinness is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and as one of Canada’s influential beer writers, I thought you might be interested in helping us celebrate.
In the spirit of Arthur Guinness and his remarkable contributions, we want to recognize and discuss what remarkable means to Canada. We are seeking requests for remarkable experiences through our Web site that Guinness Canada will fulfill for a lucky number of winners – one of which could be you or one of your readers.
Please let me know if you would like additional information about the Be Remarkable Canada campaign to pass along to your readers, and we hope you check out www.guinness.ca/beremarkablecanada or the supporting news release http://www2.guinness.com/en-ca/Pages/pressrelease.aspx
You can also follow us on Twitter (@remarkable250) where we will be sharing remarkable links to get people thinking about “remarkable” and on Facebook where we will be sharing all the submissions to spur further discussion around the concept of remarkable.
With all these online initiatives, we hope you will help us to define what remarkable means to this generation of Canadians. You’ll see from the first video on the news release page that we have already asked some people to share their thoughts.
Happy Canada Day!
Cheers,
Brenna
I think what Brenna’s firm is trying to do for Guinness is kind of cool, although I’m sure they are being paid handsomely to get them some publicity. I appreciate that Brenna at least read one of our posts and personalized her email to us, but I don’t believe she is a regular reader. If she were a regular reader, she would know that we aren’t some of Canada’s influential beer writers! I’m not a huge fan of PR, mostly because it usually isn’t coming from a point of passion. Brenna is probably a very nice person and very good at her job, but she might not even drink Guinness or stout beer in general. I like that Guinness is paying to make some dreams come true, but does that have anything to do with remarkable beer? I suppose there isn’t much more Canadian than a pint of Guinness…wait, what?
So I ask the question, is Guinness a remarkable beer? I drink Guinness from time to time, but I personally don’t find it to be a remarkable tasting beer. It is a very smooth (nitrogenated) and drinkable Dry Irish Stout, but is not the best rated example of the style on Beer Advocate, not to say that BA is the be all and end all of beer ranking. I seem to recall drinking more interesting and enjoyable stouts (Old Yale Sasquatch is rather delicious) and I would have to say that I place Guinness at the low end of the taste scale.
What I do find remarkable about Guinness is its longevity and global brand power. In the world of mass market beer, there is yellow beer (macro lagers) and there is Guinness. At some point in the past, whether it be by luck or considerable marketing skill, Guinness became THE dark beer. I sort of hate that every dark beer any uninitiated beer drinker drinks or sees reminds them of Guinness. There is such a range of wonderful dark beers out there (that’s a whole other post), but all anyone ever thinks they are getting is “a meal in a glass”. This is another common phrase that I hate, because Guinness contains less calories than most other macro beers. It is the bubbles that make you feel full. Anyway, I do find the Guinness brand remarkable, just not the beer. That being said, I wonder what a pint of Guinness tasted 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250 years ago? I’m not saying that the current Guinness is bad, because I do drink it, but I bet it used to taste wonderfully different.
Cheers,
Chris
PS> The Guinness Book of World Records guy worked at Guinness in the 1950′s, not the same guy who made the beer 250 years ago.
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