Yesterday I wrote about the 5-minute process for pouring a perfect pint of Guinness. That fanaticism alone should be a clue to the quality of Guinness in Ireland — any country willing to wait five minutes for its drink is a true aficionado. When I lived there, I found many Irish to be passionate and very specific about how Guinness should be drunk. Once a stranger stopped me in a pub because I was drinking a pint that hadn’t fully settled — he was that concerned about it.
I frequented a two-story pub in Galway, and another regular, an older Irish man with watery blue eyes and a red nose, would only get his pints from downstairs. “The Guinness has to travel too far up the pipes to get upstairs,” he informed me. He believed that the Guinness was purest and freshest the less it has to travel.
That opinion holds true for geographical location as well — it’s a widely-held belief that Guinness tastes best in Ireland, and specifically Dublin, where the brewery is located. I have to agree — the drink is just richer there. In the States my pints always taste flat and watery.
So why is that? I did a little research, and here’s what I came up with:
- The popularity of the drink in Ireland means that kegs aren’t sitting around long. Therefore, the Guinness is almost always fresh — and certainly more fresh than overseas since it doesn’t have to travel as far.
- The lines are cleaner — pub owners in Ireland are visited every three weeks by a Guinness representative who flushes the lines to Guinness kegs.
- Guinness should be served at room temperature — an oddity to us who associate the pleasures of beer drinking with its coolness on a hot day. I’ve noticed that most bars in the States tend to chill their Guinness along with the rest of their beers, which definitely changes the flavor of it.
Some other theories that I had a hard time verifying:
- The water at the Dublin brewery is better than the water where most Guinness brewed for export is made (in England).
- Guinness taps in Ireland are pressurized with nitrogen, while taps in the US (and elsewhere, I assume?) are pressurized with carbon dioxide.
What do you think — is the Guinness really better in Ireland?
Thanks to John Udell for some Guinness facts.