Guinness is not that good
Though as a source of iron it's basically a health drink
Guinness is having a good month in Britain. International brewing behemoth Diageo, which owns the brand, have had to tap reserve stocks to keep the pumps in Britain flowing. That was before talk of commandeering supplies from the stout’s home in Ireland, followed by feverish tabloid reports of shops being stripped of Guinness cans ahead of New Year’s Eve. Both the 1800s and the 2020s feel honoured.
As with most boozing stories the yoot is seemingly to blame, spurred on by TikTok influencers and Kim Kardashian. ‘Guinness is good for you’ t-shirts are back in style as attractive people are spotted wearing them.
As it is the season of goodwill, I’ll suspend my disbelief that artificial scarcity played a part here, and put it down to marketing nous. Guinness in particular, and stout in general, is supposed to be an old man’s drink. My drinking buddies a decade ago regarded me as a little fusty for switching to it after my fourth pint of San Miguel. Clearly somebody deserves credit for making me an unsung pioneer.
I still drink Guinness, on occasion. It’s a fine beer. But my objection is that it is merely fine. As stouts go it’s actually pretty boring. It does not deserve the current hype, and it gets in the way of stouts that do.
Like a London sewage pipe, much bullshit has collected around Guinness, eagerly gulped down by drinkers who don’t know better. Take, for example, the two-part pour, in which Guinness is left to settle halfway through it. This a historical hangover rendered obsolete by better technology, as even some Irishmen will admit.
You then have the more recent invention of ‘splitting the G’, a drinking game in which young men use their first gulp to bring the waterline down to the middle of the aforementioned letter on one of those (admittedly rather satisfying) Guinness glasses. If the beer was that good, you wouldn’t waste a third of it in the first mouthful.
Most annoying – at least for the purposes of structuring this piece – are those who treat a pub’s Guinness pour as emblematic of the establishment’s general quality. While it’s a comfort in any venue that Ireland’s most famous export is available, if it’s the best drink on tap you are definitely in a bad pub and should go elsewhere.
Because far from being a sign of worldliness and sophistication, liking Guinness is pretty basic. It is like buying the pricey sourdough at Sainsbury’s and calling yourself a gourmand.
Obviously as a man who has occasionally spent £7 on a single can of beer, I would never judge other people by the quality of their beverage. But the intrinsic pleasure of snobbery aside, there is a practical argument to be made here. The more that noobs wax about Guinness, the harder it is to get hold of decent stout in a pub.
The more you buy, the more they will sell it. And that’s bad news for BrewDog’s Black Heart, Aspach & Hobday’s London Black, and the imperial stouts of 10% abv or more which are like drinking alcoholic treacle. But most importantly it is bad for me, personally. Get yourself a better stout so the pubs can sell me one too.
I always find Guinness a bit like a Big Mac, delicious in my imagination but always disappointing in reality.
Nothing will make you fall out of love with Guinness faster than a visit to the Guinness Experience in Dublin and their property in Baltimore MD is if possible less impressive. Guinness itself is the crisp light lager of stouts, which makes it the worst choice in any bar that has a real selection of stouts but also often the best choice in many American bars with poor beer selection.