While many people think of Guinness as wholly Irish, it's actually brewed and consumed around the world. The UK drink the most of it, followed by Ireland, Nigeria and the States. 40% of worldwide sales are in Africa. Guinness has breweries in Nigeria, Canada, the Bahamas and Indonesia. It must be said though, that the base liquid (wort) is brewed in Dublin and is then shipped over to the other breweries to be fermented. So it's half Irish (just like most Americans claim to be).
A regular question that people ask me is "what's the difference between a stout and a porter". In actual fact they are one and the same. Maybe it's a testament to how Guinness tastes now, that I've heard many people say that they don't like porter, but like Guinness. And what I mean by that, is that Guinness of today doesn't really taste of anything. If you can, try the "Guinness Foreign Extra Stout". This used to be available in Estonia and is the nearest to the true Guinness that was brewed back in the 1800's. It's 7.5%, has very little carbonisation and is has much more taste than the more popular beer that we have here. I say popular, but of the 40% market share in Africa, almost 80% of that is made up of "export stout".
So what is porter and what is stout? Without getting into too much of a history lesson, "stout" was the strongest varient of the "porter" family. So in otherwords (like I said right at the beginning), they are both the same.
Time travel back to 18th century London. If you want to imagine a city in it's prime, then it's London. Loads of trade to and from abroad, as well as trade within the UK. London stations and docks were jam packed. These places needed people to transport luggage and goods from one place to another. These transporters came in the form of men who worked up to 20 hours a day. At the end of their working shift, these guys were hungry and thirsty. Not getting paid an awful lot, they had to make the best of what they had in their pocket, and they sided towards something strong and cheap.
** How can a beer be made strong and cheap**? Making beer takes time. Not just because of the process that is involved (fermentation alone can take up to 2 weeks), but because of the storage of beer. It's this storage that "rounds off" the beer. It matures it. It conditions it. The word "lager" means in German "to store". Think about a strong and cheap beer that you've tasted. This is the stuff in plastic bottles. It's strong and it's cheap because it's never had the time to mature, which is why it can be sold cheap (time is money) and tastes mostly of strong alcohol. However, the people who generally drink this stuff don't really worry about time (they normally don't have watches) and they are only interested in drinking and getting drunk as fast as possible.
Anyway, back to these workers who carried luggage for a living. They transported things so much, that they got the name "porters". They drank so much of the beer mentioned earlier that this style of beer became known as "Porters beer". At the time, it was common to drink a beer that was a mix of three different beers - ale (which contained hops), beer (which was a relatively mild drink of malted barley) and "twopenny" which was a strong beer. This new drink was called "Entire Porter", and was made to a recipe that didn't need to be mixed. We sell a stout (ok, this is confusing isn't it!) in Drink Bar made by Hopback called "Entire Stout" and this is where it gets it's name. It's an excellent beer which is bottle conditioned too. In some parts of the UK, it's still common to mix your beers. If you ask for a "black and tan", you'll get a mix of dark beer and ale. If you ask for a "Mickey Mouse", you'll get a mix of lager and ale.
But all Porter/Stout is from Ireland right? Wrong. As mentioned above, London was the place to be, and along with Burton on Trent, lots of the brewers set up camp there. Beer was brown back then (they hadn't discovered the technology of roasting malt until it was black until the early 1800's (more on this later). This brown malt beer required quite a lot of conditioning and this was usually left to the landlord. Nodding at the "time is money" quote again, many landlords sold the beer as soon as they got it, which meant that the beer was a watery brown with quite a sour taste. Ironically, it's called "green beer" today.
The London brewers decided that they would condition the beer themselves. This meant it was ready for drinking (in a condition that it was meant to be) straight away. Due to this maturing process, it had a slightly darker colour than the previous version, tasted stronger and more importantly sold with great success. This dark Porter beer suddenly became the talk of the town, and anybody who was anybody started to drink it.
Up until 1770, the alcohol levels of beer was largely guesswork. In 1770, the hydrometer started being used to measure the density of liquid to the density of water. In laymans terms, you put the hydrometer into the unfermented beer and it gives you a reading in the form of numbers. You then put it in again after fermentation and take the reading again. The numbers will be lower, because the yeast has eaten all the sugars in the liquid and turned them into alcohol. You do a small equation, and this then gives the the alcohol content of the liquid. Brewing is easy right? When the brewers making porter started to use the hydrometer, they found out that the brown malt they used didn't give as much sugar into the liquid. This meant they had to use more of it, which put the costs up. They decided to use pale malt as the main malt, with a little bit of brown and a lot of dark colouring. This had to stop in 1816, when a law was passed that only malt and hops were allowed to be used in making beer. Fortunately, a year later, the art of roasting malt until it was black and burnt was perfected, and the brewers could add a percentage of this malt instead of colouring. It wasn't until 1776 that Ireland in the form of Guinness started brewing porter. They mainly produced ales, but saw the success of the dark beers over the water. They produced a porter, but were still using brown malt with colouring. It was the ruling in 1816 that changed their recipe when they switched over to the black malt that gives the style of beer that we know from them today.
Although it's not quite the same today. Back then, it was much stronger: around 9% in alcohol. Guinness still produce this style today called "Foreign Extra Stout". If you can find it, try it. It's very good.
What about the other Irish stout that you can get here - Murphy's? Murphy's is from Cork in Southern Ireland and has been brewing since 1856. It's got a much lighter taste than Guinness, owing to the fact that it doesn't use as much roasted black malt, and uses caramel as a colouring agent. It's not as popular in Ireland as Guinness, but in 1997 when it's owners Heineken decided to put money behind a marketing campaign, it was the fasted growing stout in the world.
Stout is not just from Ireland and the UK. And remember, when I say stout, I also mean porter. In the Caribbean dark beers especially Guinness Extra and Dragon stout are very popular.Go over to Sri Lanka and lots of people drink Lion Stout. Baltic porters have their own category, with Estonia being very famous for producing some wonderful beers during the the realm of Catherine the II in Russia. It's Catherine that puts the Imperial in Russian Imperial Stouts.
So now you know a little bit about stouts and porters, and where they come from, and maybe a little bit about what they taste like. I'm reviewing Guinness and Murphy's, both available at Drink Bar, but don't overlook the following we have available too: Entire Stout (Hopback brewery), McCallums Stout (Belhaven), X-Porter (Huvila), Black Hole Imperial Porter (Mikkeller), Tokyo imperial stout (Brewdog).
The first one I'm having is Murphy's (ratebeer rating 81). It's relatively new in Estonia and is available in a 500ml can. The can contains a "widget", which is a device that contains nitrogen. It's like a small ping pong ball filled with gas - when the can is opened, the pressure forces the gas out of the widget and into the beer. This in turn creates the creamy composition that is the same as you get in a bar.
The problem with having a can that contains a widget, is that you must chill it. When beer is room temperature, it's much more lively than when it's chilled. If you opened a can of Murphy's straight from the shelf, it's more than likely to foam up everywhere. The downside of having it in the fridge, is that you lose quite a lot of taste and aroma.
So, the pour - well due to being nitrogen enhanced, of course it is super smooth. Very nice and creamy, and it's nice that it's 500ml, so you can try and replicate the pint from the bar (minus the shamrock or waiting 119.53 seconds that is). It's a nice deep ruby red (it's not black) colour with a great head.
Aroma is not so good. Maybe because it's been in the fridge, but probably because the nitrogen masks all the aromas. Or maybe because this is a mainstream beer and they aren't that big on aroma hops/dry hopping.
The taste - is nice! It's very smooth, not so roasty, but quite sweet. You can taste the caramel in the brew, not much hops, but a slight bitterness from what little hops is there. The overall taste sensation of this is "smoothness".
Overall a pretty good beer. I suspect the high ratebeer rating comes from all the Americans who like to think they are Irish.
Moving on. Now we have Guinness (rate beer score of 90). Also with a widget, but this time in a 330ml bottle. Pours nice and dark with a more tan head than the Murphy's. It's always a pleasure to watch the swirl of the beer before it settles in the glass. Here's a fact - if you are a good barman/woman, you can pour a draught Guinness in one pour. I can do it. It's all marketing bullshit this "two part pour" nonsense. I remember a brand manager for Guinness telling me how it all came about. The advertising agency were thinking about how to make Guinness more appealing to the younger generation. Almost giving up, they went out for lunch to have a bit of a rest from their work. One of the execs ordered a steak. They were eating in an open kitchen. The chef, being a good chef, took the execs steak from the grill, and instead of putting it straight onto the plate, he let it rest for 5 mins. Right in front of the execs open eyes and watering mouth. The way to sell Guinness had been found!!
Aroma - it smells quite sweet. That's the over-riding smell. No hops, no roasted malt - just sweetness. And I thought Murphy's is meant to be sweeter than Guinness?
Taste - wow, now this is a huge suprise! Ok, I drink Guinness very rarely, normally when I'm in a bar that doesn't have a good selection of draught beer or ale, but I don't remember it tasting this sweeeeet! And I mean sweet as in sugar, not an American adjective of pleasure. Maybe it's because the Murphy's was so mild, but this has such a creamy taste (as well as texture) that I've never noticed before. I don't think it tastes this sweet on tap, and I am certain it doesn't taste this sweet when it's the Foreign Extra version. As I said - very suprising. So much so, that I am going to have to get another bottle to try, and also head over to a certain Irish bar on the square to check out the taste of their draught version.
So what to say? I can say that I was suprised by the tastes of both of these beers (read stout, read porter). I knew that they would be creamy, but I didn't know that the overall taste of them would be of sweetness. Maybe it's because I am so used to American/NZ hoppy beers, that I felt lost when the hops was virtually non existent. But I don't only drink hoppy beers. I like dark beers too. But I like them because they are roasted, burnt toast offerings of alcohol, that make me slow down my drinking tempo and have me sitting in a chair with a lovely warm glow, and more often than not, a mouth that tastes like I have been licking an ashtray. With a smile.
Of course, these two beers volumes are probably more than the total craft beer volume in the UK put together. And it shows. As I keep saying "the moment you make something taste of something, is the moment people can decide they don't like it". Much the same as A Le Coq and Saku are battling it out over the "premium"beer market in Estonia, it seems that Guinness and Murphy's are doing much the same thing with stout (read porter, read beer).
Not bad beers - and at a push, I'd choose Murphy's over Guinness (only because it's the smaller of the two organisations), but if I had the option, I'd go for one of the stouts/porters I mentioned earlier. AND, (and it's not often you hear me say this enough), don't forget the Estonian porters. I actually look forward to A Le Saku's offerings at Christmas, because they may produce mainstream middle of the road beers for 10 months of the year, but when November comes and the Christmas porters come out, all of a sudden I am an Estonian beer fan.
Now that DOES sound Irish.
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