Thursday 18 February 2021

Serving Guinness Stout

This is the video I remember seeing, showing (I assume) Stout being served by decanting into jugs. And then, shuffled from glass to glass, which was a process described as the excuse for swapping to nitrogen pressure by Guinness themselves.


 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1361963753257000968

Based on this video, serving draught this way was a real palaver. It looks like there was only the highly-conditioned beer. All the messing around being needed to be able to fill a glass with beer.


3 comments:

Mike in NSW said...

According to the Bill Yenne book I referred to (Guinness: the 250 year quest for the perfect pint) draught Guinness is fermented for only about 40 hours at a fairly warm 24 degrees and given a very short secondary, so it's raring to go out of the brewery.
It would have been lively in the extreme in the old casks and needed that "taming".

I tested that 24 degrees with Wyeast Irish Ale yeast and that was the one that won me a comp and a trip to New Zealand!!!

On the keg nitro version it reminds me of the original Watney's Red Barrel that was supplied to rather upmarket places like clubs etc but not to the general pub trade. Mostly because of its longer shelf life.

I wonder if that was the original idea behind the Nitrogen serve? The photos in your other post seem to show some rather posh establishments.

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous Mike in NSW,

Older descriptions of Irish brewing say that Stout was effectively kräusened with high gravity wort. Which would explain the very high condition.

The nitro serve must have been trying to emulate at least the appearance of beer served the old way.

The beer in the video looks fucking wonderful to me. Wish I could have tried it.

Mike in NSW said...

Definitely mother's milk! Serving can really alter a beer. When I lived in Cardiff in the 1970s Brains beers were served through a tight sparkler and initially the glass just looked like a glass of cream. Then as it settled out they would gently stroke more beer in until it was a perfect pint of SA.
Much as with Tetley's as I remember.

The spilt beer would go into the drip tray and back down to the cask.

When CAMRA got going the pub round the corner started putting on a cask of SA up on the bar, served on gravity. Absolutely a different beer, spritzy, no head etc. Didn't last long, back to the proper serving method.