Channel Four's Inside the Superbrands last night looked at the world's most popular stout, and major Irish export, Guinness.
When I started drinking in pubs as a teenager in the late 80s, I occasionally drank bottle-conditioned Extra Stout as well as the cask bitter in my local Holt's house, or Draught Guinness in keg-only places, but since the former became a filtered and pasteurised, and to my palate rather thin, product and the latter is now usually sold in the Extra Cold form that tastes of nothing, the only version I really still like is bottled Foreign Extra Stout, which is much closer in both strength and mouthfeel to the original Extra Stout.
There was a bit about the alleged continuity of their brewing methods which I found a little hard to believe when they were standing next to a row of shiny new, sealed stainless steel vessels, but I didn't spot any of the many myths about Guinness which often pop up in things like this. There was also an interesting section about how the famous Guinness adverts began in the late 20s (although I thought they might have mentioned the Anglo-Irish Trade War just after that, which led to Guinness building a brewery at Park Royal in west London, too).
The programme spent a lot of time discussing Guinness's lack of appeal to young people in Britain and Ireland and the likely impact of this on future consumption of the beer, although as long as it still sells well in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean I can't see the company being too threatened by that, and despite the marketing spiel rolled out by PR agencies and pluggers I'm still unconvinced that the key to attracting them is the non-alcoholic Guinness Zero which they launched a couple of years ago.
How it intends to perservere is by partnering with beer weblogs like Beervana and Good Beer Hunting. I have no {well - actually one*} qualms against Guinness; when I attend for-profit beer festivals, I do visit the Guinness kiosk to taste the beers from Baltimore, MD. They are OK. I could see myself ordering one on-premise.
ReplyDeleteI have the mild {oops} perception that Guinness is trying to build up "good vibes" with these admittedly influential beer-orbiting blogs and podcasts. Is this because there may be some heinous news on its horizon which it perceives will become public one of these days, and it can influence them to rise to its defen(s|c)e?
* = Guinness has decided to sponsor the sports program(me)s of the University of Notre Dame [Indiana, U.S.A.]. I loathe the sports teams of Notre Dame. I hope they lose every athletic contest.